Selling IT solutions to a technophobic boss

[Steph77]

I'm really just looking for any experience or insight any of you have had of how you deal with bosses who don't understand the value and particularly the strengths and weaknesses of IT solutions and how and where to apply them (and vice versa where not to apply them)

A little background. I work for a company that maintains a moderately sized dataset (about 6000 overall records with about 30 fields per record) entirely through Excel. To do so they have split it up and keep some information in this file, some information in that file, some information in another file, etc. They have 6 identical versions of a few of the files that only concentrate on 1 of our 6 project regions, and in some other files the 6 regions are split between 6 worksheets in the same workbook.

A lot of the work is better done by human minds and I fully understand that. For example when a judgement call is required about whether the root cause of an event is a contractor not performing their work on time or a failed delivery of materials or a mismanagement of a project such that the contractor was booked to show up on the Tuesday and the delivery was booked to arrive on the Thursday. These are things it's very difficult or impossible to write properly accurate and reliable formulas or VBA coding to deal with because it involves reading through emails, checking various other files that are only accessible through a bespoke online file storage system, or other things like that.

But one problem I am running into, and I've heard my boss say the same thing to various solutions I've proposed for a few different issues we have (that are almost always caused by relying on a human to perform some task that can be writen with such clearly defined and simple rules that the solution is almost childs play) is "but if we do this the people won't pay as much attention to their work" or "why should we get the computer to do their job for them?" and it makes my spidey-senses go bananas!

For instance, our projects have various deadlines built into them. If a deadline passes without that particular activity being completed then the project should be flagged and reported on. But at least 30-40% of the time we report on these late because checking for these deadline flags and inputting them manually is just one of maybe 10 computer-suited tasks that the human users have to do every day and they don't always do all of them because of either sloppiness or other workload pressures.

So, have you experienced this problem, and if so what are the best ways you have found to get over them and get to a point where the computer is doing the work best suited to the computer, and the humans are freed up to spend their time doing the work best suited to the humans?

 

[wigi]

Hello

This calls for a solution in MS Access, or SQL Server with a front-end in Excel and using some VBA.
Much better than having tons of spreadsheets and so many manual tasks to perform.

Maybe you could work out some part of it with less rows and less columns? Quick and dirty solution that shows the real benefits?

 

[Steph77]

I know we'd be better off using a relational database built speficially to handle these projects, thing is I'm running into issues even getting them to let me put a few lines of VBA in the automatically flag the deadlines (I've written it and tested it and can prove it works fine) so what chance do you think I can persuade them to adopt a whole new software package?

I can reduce 30 of those files to a single file and automate a lot of the changes (such as those deadlines) and even send automated emails out to remind our project managers when deadlines are approaching and I'm currently spending my own time building a prototype of this. What I'm really asking is what strategies do you all use when trying to get technological solutions adopted when senior management are so averse to even simple modifications. Are there particular ways to point out the advantages and disadvantages that are more or less effective in your experience?

 

[wigi]

Hello

I see what you mean. The thing is, I'm not in the good position to comment on this.
In my job as business intelligence consultant, I implement the software that the customer buys.
So the customer already decided to automate and improve.

Hopefully others can jump in here. I would tend to believe that if you build parts of it and prove that it's working... you can't do much more if management does not want to change. Very sad situation though.

 

[onlyadrafter]

Hello,

from my past experience, you will have to point out how much time and/or money you will be saving them.

I created a spreadsheet that reduced a specific task that reduced the time taken (manually) from at least 10 minutes to literally seconds.

I didn't explain how it works as his usual reaction/opinion is 'it's only pressing a few buttons'.

All he was interested in was the time saving and the increase in efficiency.

 

[TinaP]

I've run into the same situation and I agree with onlyadrafter. A cost-benefit analysis softens even the most technophobic boss. Also, try selling the boss on accuracy. A computer is far less likely to miss reporting a deadline than a human manually scanning the data; and computers don't make transposition errors or fat finger the keyboard.

The fact of the matter is, though. If your boss is dead-set against automating tasks, only his boss can make him change his mind. Even that might not be an option.

 

[Oaktree]

I could maybe understand the reluctance of a small business to go the database/SQL route if the Excel only approach currently "works" (maybe it's arduous, but it meets the deliverables/needs). Boss might have a legitimate concern about the extra costs of investment/maintenance/contingency planning/etc.

...but, shooting down an idea to streamline & improve processes within the existing framework is strange.

Are you part of a team? Maybe ask your boss if s/he would mind if you set up a brainstorming meeting with your peers to try to think about ways to improve the current process. There may be some things downstream or that other people use in ways you didn't think of.

If the whole team gets on board and everyone whose job it is to work with it acknowledges it's a better change, run both in parallel for a little while to show your boss it works (and works better). Shouldn't be too hard to convince the boss for something that makes everyone's lives easier, sacrifices nothing, costs nothing, improves accuracy, and has the buy-in of the team.

 

[sous2817]

You also have to think about the expertise needed to update, maintain, and upgrade whatever solution you come up with. Sure *YOU* can do it, but what happens if / when you move on? They'll be stuck in a bit of a jam. I'm not saying it's a very strong argument against automating a solution, but it's one you may have to address. How strong is your documentation? If you were to get hit by a bus tomorrow, would someone be able to pick up the manual you created for your solution and, with a bit of a learning curve, be able to update your existing code?

 

[Steph77]

Thanks for all the responses folks - all have been noted and considered.

Re: cost/benefit analysis - I'll try and present things that way a bit clearer. I do try and offer a problem/solution type proposal for any given change but my boss prefers me to talk to her about what I want to change which can make it difficult to get a more analytical point across completely

Re: team brainstorming session - very good idea I'll definitely have to propose that

re: maintenance - I'm only writing very simple VBA code to achieve these changes. It could no doubt be written in a more complicated and elegant way using array variables or other intermediate-advanced tricks, but I deliberately keep it simple so that the other VBA savvy person on the team (there's 5 of us) can go in and troubleshoot fairly easily. Also all the code is well commented to make it clear what each section is doing. (also I can't write very good advanced level code yet - I'm still learning)

Also on that last point. I'm automating things they are currently doing manually. I'm not adding extra functionality to anything that isn't part of the manual process. So if I was to win the lottery and move to a tropical island never to be seen again and it did break, and the other VBA savvy person couldn't fix it, the worst that would happen is they would go back to doing things manually like they were doing before. They would have benefitted from a few months of automation and lost nothing (everything is backed up daily, there's no possible way anything I write breaking down could lose them more than 1 day of changes and all changes are triggered by emails that can be retrieved and the changes re-done, we've had to do it before because of other problems occurring and it's not that big a deal - a pain for sure but not the end of the world.)

 

[scrizo]

Remind your boss that technology is around to help not replace. Your ideas are to help lighten the load of the employees and simplify some jobs that seem over complicated. I would also make a small power point presentation about your idea and get him to watch it.