Julian Davis is MemberWise Ambassador for Finance and Operations and the Chief Operating Officer at World Commerce and Contracting. He has been leading the development of a new AI assistant for members called ‘Ask Tim’, launched at their annual conference in October. World CC is moving to the unified member experience platform ReadyMembership and will discuss their approach to getting their team, technology and data ready for AI, with Chief Executive Alex Skinner in an industry expert insight seminar at MEMX on Thursday 14th November.
Here, he shares how he transitioned his commercial IT expertise into the membership sector, guiding them to pinpoint AI’s potential and shape a solution that adds real value for members.
Tell us about your background – have you always been involved with technology?
I started in IT software development and infrastructure before moving into relationship management and consulting in the banking sector. I transitioned into programme management and operational roles in various industries, from insurance to oil and music. I’ve been involved with implementing technology change throughout my career – with AI, the pace is faster than ever.
How did you find it moving from the commercial world to the membership sector?
It’s a friendlier, less “political” environment but faces similar challenges. At a large corporation, there is usually a financial solution. In membership, as other professionals will be fully aware, there’s limited time, money and resources, so there’s a greater need for prioritisation and focused improvements. I also found that while there was a lot of enthusiasm there were skills gaps in certain areas.
What approach did you take to address these skill shortages?
Recruiting external experts in specific areas such as marketing, project management and business intelligence and pairing them with internal staff helped improve skills. With limited time and resources, this targeted approach has helped raise skills across our organisation. Seeking external expertise was the approach I took when developing our AI solution.
Were you keen to adopt AI as soon as possible?
When generative AI became popular I was determined that we shouldn’t jump on the bandwagon and spend time and money on a solution if we didn’t have a clear problem to solve. Later we saw that Contract Lifecycle Management providers were using AI for several purposes: checking consistency across contracts, generating improved contract language based on “good” examples and automating contract reviews. There was a clear demand in our industry for dedicated AI tools.
So why did World CC want to develop an AI assistant?
Like many associations, we have vast amounts of knowledge and expertise that can be difficult to access. Tim Cummins, our President, was frequently being asked by members to answer complex questions on contracting management. Tim would willingly search our archive, find answers and respond to queries with resources and recommendations. We recognised that AI could do this quickly and efficiently by referencing our knowledge – freeing Tim up to focus on other priorities.
How does Ask Tim work?
Members can Ask Tim questions about contract management and the AI will respond with targeted summaries that provide links to sources – highlighting specific points in a document or video. It also provides suggested follow-up questions. This initial version has been trained on a subset of our knowledge repository – eventually, it will access all our resources in multiple formats including reports and webinars.
What did you learn from the development process?
A major learning was that our data quality wasn’t good enough! We went on a steep data maturity journey to get it to a good standard. We also needed to be consistent in member surveys – asking the questions with the same wording from survey to survey – so the AI could easily recognise and compare data. You can discover the full story behind Ask Tim at our MEMX seminar.
What are your top tips for associations looking to implement AI?
We learned a lot from the development process. My top 5 tips are:
- Have a clear problem to solve before you start
- Develop incrementally in bite-sized chunks; adopt a proof of concept approach
- Take an agile approach with a small, dedicated team
- With our limited capabilities, find an external partner you can trust
- Demonstrate value to your members before embarking on a full implementation
Our staff are excited by the potential for faster turnaround of member enquiries, freeing them up to focus on other tasks – addressing the common challenge in all membership associations of lack of time and money.
Hear Julian Davis discuss how World CC developed Ask Tim at Membership Excellence on Thursday 14th November
11.50am, Room 5
5.3 AI Prep: Data-Driven Groundwork for Membership Excellence
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