Convincing Management...

[stevecasper]

Hello all,

 

I haven't been on the forums much in the past year or so, mostly because I changed jobs and - much to my dismay - I now work for a company that automates virtually nothing. On top of that, they are so paranoid about... well, everything that they don't even let us plug stuff into our surge protectors, let alone install software which has not been previously and expressly approved on our machines.

 

It is so bad here that I only very hesitantly asked my supervisor if there were any chance of getting approval for some ME licenses. Surprisingly, she told me to write a proposal, including cost/benefit analysis and she would take it to the powers that be.

 

Getting to the point:

 

I've used Macro Express for years... Originally using Keyboard Express starting in 2000, my company migrated to ME 3.x in '02 or '03, I believe. I have used it ever since, upgrading to MEP when it launched. I understand the benefits of the program very well, and can find a way to get it to do just about anything I need it to do - and when I am stumped, I know I can call on my PGM Forums friends and colleagues for input.

 

The problem is, there are a lot of benefits of MEP that I've never used, which others on the board have. What I would like, if I may ask it, is for anybody reading this post to give me some very basic ideas of what you have been using ME for. Obviously, any tasks requiring boilerplate responses (with or without variables) would fit in this category.

 

Also, if anybody has done any time/benefit analyses or has an effective way to estimate or calculate such a comparison, I would be very interested in something of that nature.

 

To give a brief idea of the areas in my job where it would come in handy:

1. We have a form with about a half-dozen drop down menus. This form must be filled out on every call. For some reason we cannot save preferred settings for these drop downs, even though they almost never change. ME can make this redundant step painless.
   
2. We send out a number of boilerplate emails in order to update clients on the status of their tickets. Though canned responses are available in the system they say things like "Good <Enter Morning, Afternoon, Evening> <Enter Client's Name>," which is ridiculous and tedious to go through and delete. ME can eliminate the need to hunt down every variable and can fill in the blanks for me.
   
3. There are a number of tasks where we are required to collect information from a .csv file, organize it, eliminate duplicates, reformat it, and save it to a separate drive. Insanely tedious. Takes about an hour to do the task each day, and with ME I imagine it would take a few seconds.
   
4. There's more, but that's all that comes to mind immediately.
   

 

Anyway, I want to thank everybody in advance for your suggestions and ideas.

[kevin]

Welcome back Steve!

 

As you have noted, all of the tasks you have outlined can be automated by Macro Express. For other ideas, have you read through the case studies on the How Customers Use Macro Express page? (Be sure to click through to the details). These contain real-world examples of how Macro Express has saved other companies and organizations time and money.

 

The Customer Comments page also contains descriptions of how much Macro Express saves organizations. This is one example:

 

"We save over 1,100 hours a month using Macro Express. Our company uses Macro Express extensively. One macro alone is used 33,000 times per month. Each time this macro is used, it saves our customer service representative 2 minutes." --Name and company withheld upon request

Send me a personal email or call me if you would like a few more details about this example.

[acantor]

Article on macros quadrupling productivity

 

Although this case study deals with an employee with an upper-body mobility disability, my experience is that people without disabilities who use macros are also able to work significantly faster, more accurately, and with less mental effort.