As an employee, there’s nothing more frustrating than being unable to access the information you need to get your job done – and this goes double for situations in which a single person has access to the data needed to move important projects forward. Let’s face it; we’ve all wasted hours of our lives waiting on follow-up emails that are slow to come or standing outside office doors, hoping that information gatekeepers will emerge soon with the answers we need.
But unfortunately, employees who find themselves stuck without access to important information are often those without the purchasing power and authority needed to implement programs designed to free up this flow of information themselves!
If you find yourself in the position of needing to sell a senior staff member on the benefits of an Enterprise Q&A program like Quandora, check out the following tips on how to make your case as effectively as possible:
Demonstrate the cost of wasted productivity
One of the biggest issues with trapped information is that it wastes employee time. When important questions go unanswered, projects can’t move forward and – as a result – business objectives can’t be achieved. In some cases, these delays affect only internal priorities, but in other situations, slow response times result in frustrations that are passed on to clients – potentially leading to a loss of sales.
If you have measurable evidence demonstrating lost revenue as the result of poor access to information, by all means show this data to your company’s C-level executives in order to compel them to move forward with the purchase of an Enterprise Q&A system.
But even if you can’t quite make this connection, try making a rough estimate of the number of productive hours that are lost waiting on employee responses over the course of a year and multiply this number against your average hourly wage or salary. C-level buyers respond well to concrete numbers like these, and the odds are good that your missed hours of productivity will more than equal the cost of purchasing and implementing an information management system.
Demonstrate the decreased burden on executive time
At the same time, keep in mind that company executives are busy people. Though your requests for information may be the highest priority on your plate, these senior staff members face dozens of equally important demands every day – while also shouldering the burden for keeping your company afloat.
As a result, another strategy for pitching your company’s C-level staff members on the value of purchasing an Enterprise Q&A system could come from the decreased burden on their time as trapped information is allowed to flow more freely throughout your company. When employees have better access to information, the number of questions that must go through senior management is decreased – leading to fewer requirements placed upon C-level team members by their staffs.
Demonstrate the business continuity benefits of better managed information
Finally, if neither of the above arguments proves sufficient, consider that most C-level buyers see business continuity (as in, preparing to handle business changes as efficiently as possible) as a major priority for their companies. But while this type of planning typically focuses on infrastructure management and data security, keep in mind that the knowledge each employee within an organization holds is just as valuable a resource.
For this reason, companies must be concerned about the unexpected departure of employees who are solely responsible for key business practices and procedures. If the information each of these team members holds isn’t codified in a way that’s accessible to others within the company, it represents a risk to business operations should the employee leave.
Enterprise Q&A programs can manage this potential loss by centralizing and democratizing important information, minimizing the risk of resignations and terminations taking with them valuable company data. As this represents a major threat to many organizations, it’s an essential part of convincing the C-level staff members within your organization to implement a program like Quandora.
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