Every year, often close to end of financial year the business will take stock and analyse the business spend, looking at every subscription, every invoice and confirming that there is return on investment for the outlay.
Technology often comes under the microscope as we try and justify the outgoing dollar and also seek to understand the relevance and benefit of the initial implementation.
In my experience, in most cases offices are only using 30 -40% of the functionality available, although paying 100% of the fee to the supplier. How many times have we heard “oh we have that system, we don’t use it very well though” or “we would love to do that – just need to update our data”.
There are a few steps listed below on how to review and plan to make the most from your technology.
1. Survey
Send a quick survey around the business asking your team to list all the applications, hardware and software that they use or have installed on their laptops, phones or tablets and the main function. Also, ask for a quick rating on the percentage of functionality used and a relevance rating to helping the individual achieve their targets.
2. Understand Why
Why was the hardware/software purchased originally and who was the decision maker. You may find that no one is really sure of the benefit or the driver of the tech may no longer work in the business. There may also be benefits that you were completely unaware of or an opportunity to streamline that hadn’t yet been made obvious.
3. Allocate a champion
From the survey results look at the person most invested in the tech and appoint them as an application champion – their task now is to investigate the purpose, the opportunity and gauge the current use, it is important to provide the opportunity for them to present to the team so that collectively they can make a decision on whether to invest or make the project redundant.
4. Project proceed!
If the decision is to proceed the “champion” can now delve deeper into the business benefits teaming up with the supplier to develop a renewed implementation roll out and training plan. Short sharp ongoing training sessions which will engage the team and allow them to learn and implement and see ongoing benefit.
This purpose of technology is to enhance your internal processes providing seamless workflow and time saving opportunities – however the technology is only as good as the driver and needs to be embraced, nurtured and constantly reviewed.
Empower a tech champion for each application and encourage them to stay close to the provider updates to ensure you are receiving value for money.
