Switching from Paper to Digital - How do you convince the boss?
Last week, we had a discussion with the GovLoop communications facilitators and one issue that came up was the switch from paper to digital.
A number of members had mentioned that while they'd like to make the switch from costly print statements, magazines, flyers....that still senior leaders had a strong attachment to the original paper products (plus an argument about the audience-like retirees- not being online).
If you've been in these shoes, how did you convince your boss to move digital?
Tags: digital
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Terrence (Terry) Hill on
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Everything comes down to a matter of cost. If paper costs more, management should be convinced (eventually) of the efficacy of the paperless approach. I've seen this done with paychecks, leave and earnings statement, training requests, leave slips, timesheets, vacancy announcements, newsletters, and even the official personnel folders. All were at one time printed on paper, mailed to employees or maintained in big file rooms. It is a matter of time before all communication methods go virtual.
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Permalink Reply by Jeff S on -
Cost is the answer. If you can show that digital version does not cost as much as print the older staff will go along. We finally were able to switch to electronic CFR's after several years of discussion. Its also easier to find regs in the CFR by searching than reading thru it.
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Permalink Reply by Dustin Haisler on -
Sometimes it's easier to convince management to start small, with something easy- like paperless statements. Use that to prove value of digital documents and let the fun begin!
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Permalink Reply by Dave Hebert on -
Cost is certainly primary. And a good follow-up is "How many people can or do get to our paper products in a given time period vs. getting to our web resources and products?" The disparity between those numbers should be pretty big.
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Permalink Reply by Henry Brown on -
IMO Two issues at work here.
Cost:, others have beat that horse bout till it can't walk anymore....
"That is the way I have always done it" or if you will resistance to change ...
Much easier to justify change via cost analysis, but much harder to convince people that change is good (in some cases)
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Permalink Reply by Raymond Clark on -
In my experience, cost is a smoke screen. Some folks, even the modern hip young crowd, want the paper. Why? Its accessable, tabable, and you can write on it. Yes, you can do this with a bookmarked searchable PDF, but its not as easy. And, folks with severe time contrainsts demand the ease of access paper products provide.
Real world example: I am responsible for providing the Congress with the Air Force Budget every February. These products are called J-books; large detailed budget justification paper documents. The cost to produce these is enormous for the entire defeense department compared to digitization. I started an initiative to digitize these into a seachable, self-executing PDF files. Here is what I found, irregardless of age: Those who worked with the products on a daily basis wanted the paper copies. Those who only used them for occasional reference preferred the CD version.
So, even though products such as Adobe Professional have made digitization more accessable, we have yet to solve the immediate and continuous accessability desired by day to dat operations.
Is there a solution? I open it up for the community to discuss.
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Permalink Reply by Robert Bacal on -
Here's the thing so many people miss on a number of e-issues, and you come close to hitting it. The MEDIUM changes how people interact with the content of the media. More specifically, eye scan patterns, how people read content, and a lot more are different across different media, and in particular print vs. e-reading. It's even going to be different from one e-device (let's say e-ink) and reading on a monitor.
So, it's not just an issue of preference, or age, or anything like that. When you change the experience of dealing with the content, you change how people assimilate that content. Even more to this, there's some evidence that suggests that content served via Internet/Social coupled with the fact some people have stopped reading print, actually changes brain structure for those people, and in negative ways -- brain plasticity.
One unfortunate thing about the technos and thinking about techno solutions, is that where the rubber meets the road is at the nexus point between human and machine, and very few people who push the technology as fixer upper have any clue about human information processing. And of course, that's why we get such bad e-learning, and a range of bad stuff, that "should" work, that is so long as you pretend human cognition and emotion doesn't come into play.
Same for social media. It's never worked the way so many people think it "should", because it doesn't fill the human needs its supposed to fill. It's kind of obvious.
Off soapbox.
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Permalink Reply by Raymond Clark on
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Excellent point! This is really the issue isn't it? How people interact with the media is key. Definitely something I need to learn more about.
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Permalink Reply by Elliot Volkman on -
I have been in very different shoes, but based upon what I say next will make it very relevant. Newspapers. While some of you may still enjoy your weekend coffee and the features sections it is very likely that based on the fact that you are reading content on this site that you no longer get the majority of your news from a newspaper.
A few years back I was the editor for one, it was dedicated to a small community, but there was a massive decline in ad sales and readership. While we had a rather terrible site initially I started to play with certain features that made it more interactive and easier to read. When I showed the data to my boss the answer was quite clear. They wanted to start with digital subscriptions, increase engagement on their content, and move away from paper.
Granted when it comes to agencies it's more about ease of accessing information and saving money, but in my case it was about still adapting to the needs of others. If employees and citizens would be better accessing information online, it takes less time to publish, then why not?
However, I still prefer holding a book when I can, but an e-reader is much easier while commuting or traveling.
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Permalink Reply by Raymond Clark on
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Interacting with news on line is very different from accessing daily working files, especially detailed budget or technical documents. I love to get my news from my kinfle fire or Window's 7 phone because I can see what I want and get to it rather quickly. Finding all the references to the "ADS-B integration into APX-119" is a bit more of a challange electronically. People who work such technical and budget data still like to "touch and feel" it.
But, Elliot, you've go m ethinking. Perhaps I've been looking at this wrong. We are taking a paper product people are used to touching and handling and simply turning into a PDF that can be viewed electronically. Maybe the answer is to design an online/electronic version of our budget information from the ground up as an electronic product?
Has anyone done something like this?
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Permalink Reply by Elliot Volkman on
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You are exactly right Raymond! Many times the transition from paper to digital has come in the form of protected repositories with search engines built in. That way when you are going to look for specific information you can access the repositories based on what information was needed. I won't say which agency it was for, but when we were designing ours we also made it so that people were given access based upon their clearance and need. It worked pretty well, was accessible anywhere with the proper credentials, and you could still print it if needed. I'm sure there are other agency examples of new systems that have been designed specifically for the transfer of paper to electronic/new library of content information storage though.
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Permalink Reply by Robert Bacal on
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Waiting with anticipation for the RESULT, sir!!!! So compared to your high point of print circulation, what was your high point with digital subscriptions?
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