So, as of late, I have been talking to people who are the "gotta justify it" point of their respective journeys.
And I came across one method of justification that just might work for you in your situation, and I wanted to share it.
The Challenge Of Justification
Any sort of productivity enablers are difficult to justify, generally speaking. Add to that the increased complexity of justifying productivity software (more abstract, adoption challenges, etc.) and this can be a daunting task.
Most of the discussions I've seen have started with the inadequacy of email, or content-oriented collaboration as not doing the job.
But there's an alternative path that might just work for you.
Companies Really Do Get Collaboration
Just not the way you're thinking about it. So, maybe think about it in a traditional sense first, and see where you end up?
Let's look at some examples ...
First, how much does your company spend on conference rooms? At my company, we have a large number of conference rooms that always seem to be full. There's cool A/V equipment in most of them. And there's a dedicated staff who keeps them functioning, provides support, etc.
So, go find out what the number is. If your company is of any size, I bet you'll find a number with lots and lots of zeros.
Second, how much does your company spend on concall bridges? We have a nice set of services here: audio bridges, WebEx, LiveMeeting, et. al. I don't really like the collaboration experience, but people use them all the time.
Once again, if your company is of any size, I bet you'll find another nice number with many zeros attached.
Third, if you really want to have fun, ask the same question about email at your company. Once again, you'll find a very large number. If you're using document-oriented collaboration extensively, go ahead and add that it.
Now, step back for a moment, and consider all those investments in total. I bet it's a really, really big number.
So, for anyone to claim "my company doesn't get this collaboration thing", I'd offer you're wrong. They're investing a lot of money to help people communicate and collaborate already.
It's just not an effective, opimized investment, IMHO.
An Alternative Positioning Strategy
What if we positioned social productivity software as complementing the other approaches? Making them more effective? Perhaps reducing the need for some of these more traditional approaches?
What's the value of another dozen or so conference rooms around the globe? Or a 10% reduction in concall bridge and WebEx usage? Or perhaps avoiding yet another capacity upgrade on email?
That's called "cost avoidance" in justification parlance. Most businesses want to avoid additional costs, or reduce existing run rates.
And that's BEFORE we start ranting about how inefficient physical conference rooms can be, or how the whole email / WebEx / bridge thing really doesn't meet our needs, and so on.
The Bottom Line
I didn't have to extensive justify our investment in technology and people here at EMC.
I was lucky in that regard.
But, when I heard this approach, I thought to myself "gee, if things were different, I'd probably look at it this way".
Maybe you should too?
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