Passageways Blog : Transforming Enterprise and Industry Knowledge into New Success

If you could save 10 minutes each time that you did a chore, would you do it?  If you could save 10 minutes each time that you do yard work, shuttle the kids, clean the house, work out,  and drive; why wouldn't you?  Actually, you more than likely already do.

Over the years you have already figured out how to be more and more efficient when it comes to your personal, daily, and mundane responsibilities.  Think about the simple things that you probably don't even register.  You probably found the quickest route to/from numerous places that you travel weekly like the grocery store, supercenter, hardware store, restaurants, coffee shop, fast food, and so on.  Have you found the quickest and easiest way to mow your grass?  You know you have, and now it probably changes rarely. 

Now think technology. What do you do that wasn't used 20 years ago simply for the ease.  The concept is otherwise known as Gaining Efficiency while Saving Time.  A few of these off the top of my head are microwave, computer, cell phone, dishwasher, and cordless home phone.  Now go back 200 years.  Things like automobiles, gas stoves, bicycle, washer and dryer, refrigerator, movies on dvd's, the INTERNET, are so basic and common that you don't register them. These have because utterly importantly and are used on a daily basis.  The idea or concept is that advancement and technology has always been here and continues to affect us moving forward. 

With the above in mind, why are we not utilizing this same mindset and advancement at the workplace?  What is the most critical need of your enterprise?  Is it all of the widgets and gizmo's?  No, it's Time.  In a day, your enterprise is constantly working, making calls, emailing, sharing/publishing information, managing, meeting, writing, and so on.  It all has to do with Communication and it all takes Time.  If you could use today's technology to streamline this communication and gain efficiency, than why haven't you?

A portal is the modern intranet.  These portals are designed to allow your enterprise and/or board to communicate more effectively while decentralizing management.  Today's technology no longer requires an IT staff to run its daily operations, saving invaluable amounts of time for the unit to work on the more critical aspects of the business.  Such portals allow for and many include tools that specifically help with documents management, workflows, streamlining business processes, knowledge management, vendor management, expense reporting, board packet creation, help desks, instant messaging, user profiles, bulletin boards, discussion boards, reservations, blogging, rich text editing, and so on.  These tools are designed to gain numerous efficiencies while saving critical amounts of time per employee. 

Let's put it in mathematical terms.  Let's say you have 100 employees.  Each employee works 2080 hours or 124,800 minutes per year with an average annual compensation at $40,000.  That breaks down to an average CPM (cost per minute) of $0.3205 per employee.  Save each employee just 10 minutes a day of time and that equates to a weekly savings of $1,603 and an annual savings of $83,333.  How about saving 15 minutes a day as opposed to 10 minutes?  That's a weekly savings of $481 and an annual savings of $125,000.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The American way has always been to utilize advancement in technology to save time and money. If your enterprise or board could gain such efficiencies while saving such substantial amounts of money simply by using a portal, why aren't they?

I live in Milwaukee the home of Harley Davidson. Every summer I get a reminder on how Harley Davidson has built one of the most loved brands and a passionate client group in the business world. So in learning about customer loyalty and world class brands, I recently invited Sara Hanaway from Harley Davidson to West Lafayette for a lecture at Purdue University. She was a real treat for the class and her lecture is the inspiration behind these observations:

1. Harley Davidson (HD) has always tried to make "dreams" come true. The HD team is always focused on: Fulfilling dreams, riding, and having fun and enhancing the ownership experience.

• This is just brilliant; how they have taken a product and equated it to a lifelong dream for their customers. Far too many other companies miss out on this idea of creating a longing for their product, going far beyond creating a demand.

2. It's no secret that the magic lies in the community HD has created around their products. They call them Harley Owners Groups (HOG) and there are no less than 1400 chapters worldwide. These have over 1 million members, all paying annual dues to support these HOGs.

• Notice how they are not called User Groups, they are called Owners Group, empowering their customers. Every software company could do the same, call their user groups -"___ owners groups"
• This is a paid group and is certainly not a cost center for Harley Davidson.

3. There is an online presence to these HOGs but the offline meetings are truly the secret sauce and allow them to stay in touch with their customers regularly.

• HD has planned this to perfection. They don't have to run these HOGs, they just participate in them, as their staff owns the bikes and ride as often as they can as fellow HOG members. Of course an excited and knowledgeable staff creates great products.
• Also, imagine having multiple client conferences everyday somewhere in the world and your staff always being there...PowWOW everyday of the year!
• In fact, they once got the prince of Jordan to attend their HOG meeting. Imagine attracting royalty as a colleague in your user groups.

4. HD does not own these HOGs. This allows HD to focus on just having fun at these meetings and not make them into a forum to get feedback on their products. They have other ways to support their products and these meetings are strictly about fulfilling dreams, riding, and having fun. The goal is to always enhance the ownership experience.

• So your online community has to be separated quite well from your client care department or else the community with be just another channel for supporting your products.
• The element of fun has to be present for these communities to produce evangelists that stay giddy about your products long after they first used them. Just give such clients an audience (i.e. community portal) and watch them go from there.
• HD organizes events such as the "Riding Route 66" event which was sold out in 45 minutes and got riders from across the world.

5. HD has a lot of customization options for their bikes. This open system they created, which is rather unusual for his industry which is clamoring for standardization, is one of the main points of pride and discussions in these HOGs as no two bikes would be alike.

• If your offering can be customized, then the customers will have a greater sense of ownership about it due to their choices and customizations.

 

Harley Davidson has achieved their status not just because of their great products. They have also thought through providing an on-line and off-line experience that makes their customers share their excitement with each other. There are several lessons here for every one of us to learn and apply to our client care, yet the biggest one is planning and nurturing a vibrant client community!

These past 6 months I got an opportunity to teach a semester on entrepreneurship at Purdue University, Chris co-piloted this with me. Apart from gaining a few friends and followers, I learnt a lot from guest speakers we invited and this blog is a result of one such session. As part of this program, the class had to do a write up on Verona, our shinny new collaboration solution.

So what did you find interesting about these observations?

Paroon and Chris discussed the current status and future plans of Passageways, social media, and portal technology at PowWow 2010.

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Mark Meyer, CEO of the Filene Research Institute, was the Keynote speaker at Passageways' PowWow 2010.  Mark talked about current trends in the financial world and some tips on how financial institutions can plan for the future.

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There are a lot of software applications out there that advertise that they help your business streamline important processes.  Well I'm here to help you narrow that field down.  Here are three Passageways Portal applications that your business should take a look at. 

Lobby Manager - Do you have a receptionist available at each branch, available to check in customers/members?  How are their needs tracked?  Does anyone know how long their wait time is in the branch?  Who helps the most people?  Are these reports available to your branch managers or sales and service managers?  If not, you should definitely take a look at Passageways' Lobby Management Solution.  Our Lobby Management Application runs directly on your existing portal.  It allows for a member or customer to be checked in to a queue, outlining their needs, and any other specific information regarding their visit.  It then alerts all member service representatives that a customer is waiting, and allows them to serve the customers from the queue.  There are lists of services that they might be inquiring about, as well as respective checklists that are associated with each and every service, to ensure that no steps are missed.  The best part about this?  Everything is tracked in a report.  Managers can see employee activity, number of members served, average wait times, and peak times of branch traffic (which definitely helps in scheduling), as well as the number of members served in a particular time period.

Knowledge Management - Many of Passageways customers are using our Products and Services Module to organize their product and service information, such as FAQ's, policies and procedures, as well as documents related to certain products.  But what about those items that do not fall within the category of being a product or a service?  That's what our Knowledge Management Application is for.  Knowledge Management will easily organize your documents, FAQs, as well as your procedures that are non-product related.  It provides a great search tool that searches all fields within knowledge management, as well as through the documents themselves.  AND, it links to products and services.  Search for "Free Checking".... You might find links to procedures for checking products within products and services, you might find some FAQs in products and services, and you might also find an internal policy on employee checking accounts.  All in one spot. 

Meeting Packet Creator- Typically, the task of creating and publishing out a meeting packet can be gruesome for the lucky person who gets assigned this task.  Collecting all the data and content, putting it all together, publishing the packet, printing, binding, packaging and mailing...... Ugh!  With the Meeting Packet Creator Module, this process is streamlined beautifully, and eliminates the majority of those headaches!  Templates of a meeting packet are created.  Once the packet is started, different sections can be assigned out to those individuals responsible for populating those areas.   They can then visit the portal to update their content, and once all the content is uploaded and populated, the packet can then be created into a .pdf file, sent for approval (if required) and then published out to the portal.  No paper involved.  Another wonderful thing about this process is that if, after publishing, there is an addendum to the packet, there is no need to print a new copy of the packet and send it.  New, updated packets are published out to the same place, always ensuring that the packet information in the portal is up-to-date and accurate.

If you haven't seen all or any of these applications, you are missing out!  Let your account executive know, and we'll give you a private, one-on-one tour! 

Chris recently got a chance to talk with Kathy Houghtalen from Beacon Credit Union and found out how she uses the Passageways portal both at Beacon and for the OSI Client Association.

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We have heard it said that time is money. Let's think about the time value of money. A dollar in your hand today is worth more than a dollar in your hand in a year from now. As an example, if we invest that dollar in a secure financial vehicle, over a period of one year that dollar will gain interest of 3%. So a dollar today, in time, is worth $1.03 next year. This is a familiar demonstration of the fact that time is money.

Let's talk about the money value of time. Specifically, let's talk about how it affects the Corporate Secretary department and its preparation of board packets for the Board of Directors.

As a sales consultant selling an online board portal solution for the last several years, I have had the opportunity to witness the workflow for preparing a paper-based board packet in various sizes of organizations. On average, the Corporate Secretary's department spends 40 hours preparing board and committee materials every month. If we consider an average hourly rate of $25 per hour for the Legal Administrator preparing these documents, the money value of this time spent is $12,000 per year.

 Having worked through over 50 implementations of an online board portal solution, I have witnessed an average time savings of at least 60%, sometimes 80%. That's a cost-saving of $7,000 to $10,000 each year, notwithstanding the additional savings of eliminating printing, binding and courier costs! An online board portal solution eliminates paper, streamlines the packet creation process and allows multiple users to collaborate and compile materials into one concise document. Additionally, an online board portal solution provides the intangible benefit of peace of mind. Peace of mind in that board packets arrive on time, all the time, and don't get lost in the mailing/couriering process; Priceless.

When choosing a solution partner be sure to work through a cost-savings calculator with your sales consultant. The budget for the purchase of a board portal is not about funds that are available for new projects, rather it is about the current budget allocated to the packet creation process and how this budget can be re-allocated more effectively, more efficiently.

We've always known that time is money. It's time we recognize that money is time. An online board portal saves us both!