Author: ispolitical1

In today’s world, upgrading and modernizing are par for the course and not keeping pace means becoming obsolete real quick.. Manufacturing is getting more efficient, computers are faster and smaller than ever, and information is shared at a breakneck pace. But the world of political accounting software hasn’t kept pace.

At least, it didn’t. Until we came along.

AI Political Accounting Software…Wait, is That a Thing?

We just took a giant leap forward in making your life easier by being the first political accounting software company to introduce artificial intelligence. This is going to save you valuable and critical time, money, and effort. With our AI based accounting software, instead of leaving the office at midnight, red-eyed and caffeine addled, maybe you’ll start leaving a few hours sooner, and finish that last slice of pizza you ordered for the interns in the privacy of your own home (radical concept, we know).

What’s AI All About Anyway?

So what is this revolutionary technology? Before you go looking up AI on Wikipedia for a refresher course (or a plot synopsis of Terminator), let me try an analogy. We all have that one intern—they’re slightly slow, pretty inexperienced, but work harder than even some of your paid staff, right? They don’t know everything, but they get better as they go. That’s exactly what we created: the moderately intelligent intern, in computer form. Best of all, this one doesn’t need rides home, won’t quote the same three episodes of The West Wing endlessly, and you’ll never need to write it a letter of recommendation.

How AI Can Help With Political Accounting

So, how is artificial intelligence changing political accounting? AI@ISP does menial tasks, looking over repetitive data and performing some trivial actions, but far faster than you or your intern ever could. It saves you from the long, obnoxious parts of your job. Best of all, it gets better over time; AI really is intelligent and will learn how to do its job even more efficiently as it runs. But don’t be alarmed, this isn’t the start of the robot takeover. You definitely won’t have your job stolen by this AI based accounting software. Or, at least, not the fun parts. Unless you’re an intern. Then you should be scared.

What, Specifically, Can AI do to Help With Political Accounting?

Let’s get into the specifics of what AI@ISP does with some examples of where it thrives. AI combs through your filings so you don’t have to, looking for ways to improve, for things that won’t pass compliance, and even for target audiences who might be willing to do a little campaign donating. It excels at pouring over lists of data, looking for anomalies that would normally be your job. Why spend time scrutinizing a donor list or hunting for duplicates when AI can do it in seconds? All that time wasted trying to combine duplicate records can be saved. Better still, automated!

Safety, It’s On Everyone’s Mind

We also made it safe. If it comes across a duplicate situation that it isn’t sure about, it’ll defer to you. AI@ISP also imports online donations in your database, auto-combining with existing records and recording everything for you. If you have repeat donors, it’ll log those too, providing important metrics for your campaign. Further, it has automatic red flags that are meant to focus your attention on critical donations. There are triggers built in that notify you of possibly risky donations—monetary limits, type of donation, where it comes from, etc. It stays sharp even when you don’t. Our AI political accounting software is designed to help you make sure every donation taken is safe, streamlining your job and increasing the efficiency of the campaign you serve.

AI: All That and a Bag of Chips

This incredible tool isn’t a panacea, but we don’t think it should be! This is a 95% tool, something that does almost everything, but leaves the important calls to you. The last thing we want to do is make a mistake that will cause you trouble, so our robot will make sure big decisions are in the hands of people with authority. It recognizes that there are just some situations where it isn’t qualified to make a decision, just like a good intern should!

We set out to build software that lives up to our company’s values: it needs to be responsive, smart, and useful. It needs to learn at all times, making sure it’s changing where necessary to be as helpful as possible. With our new AI, we met that mark on all counts. Its insistence on learning from the client is fundamental to its nature, just like ours.

Do you have ideas about how AI@ISP could be even more helpful or questions regarding this or any of our other services, please don’t hesitate to contact us!

It isn’t uncommon for software companies to call their clients “users,” since, well…they “use” their products. But that seems pretty robotic, doesn’t it? I mean, because you’re a person, not a user. You could be a mother, father, son, daughter, brother, sister, aunt, or even that crazy uncle most people only see at Thanksgiving. You’re human. You have emotions. You get angry. You get frustrated. You can be happy. You can be sad. You like and dislike things. When you walk through a park on a sunny day, you smell the grass, feel the sun gently heating your skin. You’re human. Guess what? We’re humans too! That’s a lot we have in common!

Why Do Software Companies Call You a “User”?

So why do other software companies call you a user? It’s easy. When you’re talking to a software developer, it’s simple to say the ‘user’ does this. They probably don’t know who Kelly, Natalie, Christina, Laura, Jason, Kevin, or Tom are. Because developers aren’t exactly expected to have “people skills,” they rarely talk to their clients. There’s a gap between you and the person building your software. The developers don’t know your name or who you are or how many kids you have. This gap creates a tremendous problem that will significantly set back all hopes of user-friendly software design.

Even the staff charged with relaying your feedback to developers (assuming the company cares about your feedback) will call you ‘user’ instead of your name. At more abstract levels, when designing new functionality from scratch, a developer will use the vague concept of ‘user’ to map out the user interface. Since the developer doesn’t know his clients, doesn’t know their names, what else does he/she have to go by? They use a vague concept. They build software for ‘users’ instead of software for humans. Seems understandable enough, right?

Why Software Developers Should Program For People

What’s the big deal if a developer thinks of a user instead of a person? Many companies don’t see any issue with designing software for users. It gets the job done. The software performs the task required. But here’s the thing; it’s software for a user, not a person. And software made for a user tends to suck. It sucks because a user is not a person.

A user is a vague concept. It’s bland, inhuman, humdrum, robotic, inorganic, and lifeless. A user performs a task. A user has no life, nothing else they’d rather do, nothing else they must do. A user has no other priorities than using the software, completing individual tasks as conceived of in the imagination of a developer.

Think of it this way, a developer writes code for one little piece of the entire system at a time. If they write this code for a user, they will consider only how to accomplish it. Because a user is inanimate, they only care that something can get done. They don’t care how it gets done. And that is a big, big deal. Because a user won’t complain. A user won’t throw a computer out a window when the user has to click a completely useless button 500 times. A user won’t smile when something goes right. A user won’t dole out any social consequences (no frowns, no bad reviews, no crossed arms, no frustrated sighs, no angry remarks) or rewards (no smiles, no hugs, no ‘thank you’s, no excellent reviews, no referrals, and etc.).

So there’s no social pressure on the developer to go the extra mile, to reduce friction, to make sure the task gets completed in the most efficient and pleasant way possible. When a developer builds software for a user, you get software built for a user. Humans rarely like this kind of software.

Humans hate this kind of software precisely because it’s not designed for them. It’s a subtle point with staggering consequences. A person simply is not a user. You are vibrant, have feelings, are guided by them. You get impatient. You smile. You frown. You have a million ways of letting people know whether you’re happy or angry. A good support and development staff will remember these signals and get better at interpreting them over time. And the surest way to guarantee that is to use real names.

A Rose by Any Other Name Would Smell as Sweet

That’s why ISP uses names when we design our campaign software. Because the moment we do, a world of social pressures in an imaginary landscape emerges where we begin to envision your smile or frown. When we use your name, we have a better sense of what will make you happy or frustrated. We literally imagine you sitting in front of a desk for hours, plugging away at your work. We know you have kids to pick up from school, we know their names. We know you have fundraisers, campaign managers, and candidates who need reports. We know their names. We know the kind of pressure they put on you to hurry or to produce a different report type. We know you’re dreaming of getting out of the office and home to your family. We know you want to finish reports faster to take on more business, so you can buy a house. We know how happy you’ll be when you can.

Software is Built to Help HUMANS

This is the point: the goal of software isn’t to complete a task, it’s to get you what you want overall, to satisfy what you want as a person. In this mental landscape, your personal goals form a crushing pressure on our software and mold it into something more comprehensive than a bunch of discrete functions that complete individual tasks. You get software made for you; a person.

That’s why ISP doesn’t say ‘user.’ We call you by your name. If you ask for something, we say you asked for it. Our developers know who our clients are. They see their feedback. They’ve learned about them. When they hear your name, they are no longer just completing a task. When they hear your name, they know they’re building for you. They know they’re building software for humans.

Call it bedside manner or call it the human touch, at ISP, our coders and programmers have real people in mind when they are working their magic. They put themselves in the shoes of Holly, Josh, Thomas and Katherine….all working on reports and budgets, all with other things on their minds as well. This way, we can better understand your pain points and what you want out of an accounting software. Do you love being treated like a person even if you’re just “using” a program? We thought so!