Make Your IT Team Your Business Partner

“The technology champion has to be a business partner to the rest of the organization,” said VSTI-Partners COO and Partner Todd Tolbert, CAE. During the pandemic, technology was leaned on in a way that hasn’t been seen in the association space in a very long time—maybe ever. “We need to continue to really focus on the business use of technology,” he said.

The prior focus on servers, phone systems, firewalls, and internet connections isn’t as prevalent—or relevant—anymore. That means IT staff needs to change their view from nuts and bolts and hardware to how the organization should use technology.

“How do we pull these ecosystems of tools together to be a cohesive technology that enables our business, not just as silos of data or functionality?” Tolbert said. It’s also important to tie a technology strategy to the vision of where an organization wants to go and its overall mission.

While democratization is good, having a clear understanding of how ethical decisions are made is essential, too. “Ethics is an up-at-night issue for me,” Liu said. There needs to be a clear understanding about how decisions are made about people’s data and the technology products that associations are leveraging and using, especially around artificial intelligence.

“With greater democratization of technology comes greater responsibility,” she said.

Next Steps

Going forward, technology champions will need to open their minds and move past what’s historically been done in the association space. “The future of the IT department is similar to what it’s always been,” Tolbert said. “Keeping your eye on the horizon and not just discarding something because you think your organization would never pay for it or there’s not an application.”

Data analytics are going to be key, especially for helping to put the customer first. “As a whole, we are talking a lot more right now about personalization and how we can better serve members by leveraging data,” Liu said. “One of my key priorities this year is to continue building out the infrastructure that would support initiatives like that.”

Liu and her team are focused on structures that can support larger initiatives around automation and personalization and providing access to data so ASHA staff can make knowledgeable decisions as the group moves forward.

Technology champions need to move forward in adopting technology that can empower their organizations and rethink how the data comes together. “The answer is not a new association management system,” Tolbert said. “The answer is what makes sense to get the appropriate data together so you can make the decisions you need to make, monitor what you’re doing, and really run your organization as a better business.”