Investing in technology products is always tricky. Waiting could be beneficial as the prices go down with time, but then there is a cost to using older technology as well. There are budget considerations, project time availability, and several other roadblocks that we all grapple with. We have been selling technology solutions for almost a decade now and thought we should share the secret on why this is the best time EVER to invest in portals technology.
Intranets, emails, and shared drives are old technology now. Your Customer profile is changing and your organization needs to start talking their language fast. You also want to employ the brightest and show the best results. To do all this, you simply have to think about new age tools. These tools developed over last 5-7 years have now become mainstream and your Employee Portals and Board Portals should leverage tools such as Blogs, Activity Feeds, Employee Walls, Alerts, Subscriptions, and Dashboards. Don’t be left behind, start leveraging the power of social tools built for the enterprise and see the positive outcomes!
Use the Entire Plan year: During the last quarter of 2011 every organization is engaged in planning for 2012. Once you finish the session and formalize the plan, the very first hurdle is keeping everyone informed and on the same page about your annual strategic plans and goals. The best way is to use Dashboards and share it with Employees and the Board. So start the year with a portal for your Employees and /or Board and don’t miss out on the opportunity to share a full-year with dashboards of your key performance indicators right on the home page of your portals
Annual planning also means finalizing the hiring plans for next year. It’s easy to get swayed by the countless requests from various departments for adding new employees. A viable alternative is to consider automation. While doing the analysis the following basic calculation has to be kept in mind:
Employee Portal solutions cost less than the fraction of the cost of 1 employee ($10,000- $20,000 a year) and become a great resource for employees you already have. Think about where the bottle neck is. Invariably your staff needs a better way to get organized rather than just getting another employee, and that’s where employee portals fit right in!
Board portal solutions, especially if you purchase in Q4, cost less than $50 per meeting (for every portal user). Think about the efficiency gained by your executive support staff, your management team, your board members and various committee members and then this cost does look get dwarfed compared to the value you can get from it. The importance of a timely and secure delivery, with the ability to make changes instantly if needed cannot be truly calculated but should weigh in heavily in your decision.
Every technology company like Passageways is trying to end the year with a bang. Yes, the fourth quarter is the best time to look for the best deals. Every sales person, their sales managers and pricing strategies are willing to reward you if you make your decision before December 31st, even if you start using the solutions in 2012.
There are a lot many more great reasons for taking the leap and investing in Employee and Board portals. We would love to hear from your experiences. To share your thoughts on the benefits, please leave a comment here!