How to Purchase and Track Productivity Tools In a Lean Company
A person finds a tool they like because it solves a business problem. Here are the scenarios that ensure:
The Personalities
The Maverick
Great, I want to purchase that tool! Let me charge it to my credit card and then start experimenting. It says 14 day free trial. I will just cancel after that. Fail! No one cancels this and what started off as a good idea now will charge silently in the background and reduce your company’s firepower. The first of many Lilliputian strings have been cast!
Meg From Finance: “What is this recurring $599 charge every month for MonkFirstCMS? “
CEO Charlie: “I have no idea, can you send an email around?”
Meg From Finance: “I did.. and It turns out that David bought this 8 months ago to try it out and never used it. We just spent $4,800 with no return”
David: “Not my fault”
The No Person
A person brings up a tool to the finance depart and gets resistance. Why go up against the friction of pushing through that when you are an easy going type? You won’t. If anything, you will slightly resent the no person and go back to your cave and suffer without the tool you need.
The Gentle Warmer
The best way to start using a tool is to put your toe in the water.
In an ideal world, you want to get a small pocket of people are using it productively and typically stay on the trial version or just buy one account. After proving it to be successfully, there will come a point when you want to upgrade.
The Pocket Problem
When is that point? When another pocket of people start using in your company. What you don’t want is small pockets using it on their own account. It becomes almost impossible for people to bounce back and forth between accounts. Here is why this is bad:
Stefanie: “Hey Jimmy, can you the project with the new files?”
Jimmy: “I can’t because your project is on Emily’s account!”
Stefanie: “Ok, I will talk with Emily then!”
Jimmy: “She is on vacation in the Poconos! I will have to wait until she gets back or else I have to recreate everything from scratch. “
Stefanie: “Ok, we can hold off”
Client: “I am so made my project wasn’t updated… you are fired! Give me my money back”
Stefanie: “If only we had an admin controlled account!”
The Rusher
Lets buy 100 accounts so everyone can use it. They might want to use it later on.
The Solution
Become A Champion - If you like a tool and wants to push a spend, you are the Champion.
Analysis / Decision - They must write a hypothesis for why a tool along with a basic ROI analysis. Doesn’t need to be more than 1 sentence each. They must email the decision to management. Finance and operations have to agree.
Document - Once they agree, the champion documents the SAAS tool in a program of record, like google docs. They must store the hypothesis, admin username and password (securely), set the account to a group alias with leadership an other team members, document the account.
Payment - Slowly escalate with the minimal spend possible. Never sign up for a year program is there is a monthly option. If the tool is bad, you want to be able to drop it. You should purchase as little as possible and let the account grow naturally. Can you survive with 1 or 2 paid accounts? Yes? Then do it.
Re-Evaluate- Every quarter, operations and finance should do a review to see if the tools are holding up their end of the bargain from an ROI perspective.