By Keith Unterschute, Director
of Consulting Services, Mainstay
I have to admit that there have been more than a few times in
recent years when I struggled to understand how an emerging technology would actually
change the world. In the early days of smartphones, for example, even marketers
struggled to think of applications that would make the phone truly
revolutionary.
Sure, you could do email, text messaging and maybe web
browsing on these phones, but that is where our imagination ended. In many
cases, the reality of the future just doesn’t map to our efforts to envision it.
In the case of the smartphone, my imagination was limited by what I knew were
current limitations that existed in the technology.
Fortunately, we have “use cases” – a commonly used business
analysis technique that illustrates a specific business use of a technology’s
capability – to help people quickly understand the value of a particular
technology. It’s a powerful way to overcome our imaginative shortcomings.
The beauty of the use case is that it often doesn’t look too
far into the future. In fact, one customer’s future is another customer’s past.
A great example is a technology as simple as instant messaging. You would be
surprised at how many companies still don’t value an enterprise IM solution.
IM often gets introduced into enterprises because their own employees
go to work from the future, their own personal lives. They start to use it to
get things done at the office because they have been using it to get things
done at home.
Let’s take a closer look at the humble instant messaging
app. How on earth can this simple app do anything to really help a business? Isn’t
it just a more primitive way of talking on the phone and certainly inferior to phone
conversations?
Perhaps not. Most of us now know that IM is the preferred
mode of communications in certain situations. IM lets you ask a quick question –
and get a quick answer-- without the need for a lengthier conversation governed
by rules of etiquette. IM has its own, more efficient etiquette. Quick answers
to simple questions can be critical when time is of the essence.
A great use case example is found in medical environments
where case managers (those dealing with insurance companies in behalf of a hospital
or patient) may only have 24 hours to build a better case to overturn a denial of
coverage. These cases are built on physician input, and you can’t afford to burn
12 hours waiting for a very busy and mobile doctor to get to their email or
voicemail to respond with a simple yes or no answer. Putting IM on his or her mobile
device with the understanding that messages in that form require a fast
response can make all the difference for the case manager -- and ultimately for
the hospital and patient.
So, if you want to sell the idea of an
enterprise IM solution to a non-tech-savvy business executive, consider presenting
it in the framework and language of a use case. Instead of jumping to the
conclusion that it will only waste employee time, the executive will clearly
see the tradeoff between time and money and make a smarter investment decision
as a result.
