Your guide on how to pitch new tech at work

Companies are pulling all levers to try to navigate today’s waters, whether it’s decreasing headcount, delaying bonuses, pushing back timelines for new products, pausing hiring or tightening travel budgets.

However, as organizations look to find ways to streamline costs, an opportunity also arises to explore and implement innovative technology solutions that boost efficiency and daily operations. In fact, It's important to recognize that investing in new technology and processes can not only save money, but also increase productivity in the long term, and these solutions should be explored even during a recession. While budget constraints may cause delays, it's essential to prioritize these changes as they can greatly impact our workplace's success and potential for the future.

For example, One study conducted by McKinsey & Company found that companies that consistently invested in innovation during recessions outperformed their peers by an average of 30% in the years following the recession. On top of this, individuals, teams, and organizations are also shown to become more resourceful and innovative when the right amount of constraints exist.

So what tech would yield these long-term results? Here are just a few:

• HQO – Relied on by 57% of the Fortune 100 companies, HQO is a workplace experience operating system for commercial real estate. The software aims to make it easier for companies and commercial property teams to create workplaces for the modern era.
• Robin – Robin is a hybrid workplace experience software that among many other things, aims to increase the transparency between employees and employers to create high-performance organizations.
• Omnipresent – Omnipresent is an HR godsend that takes care of payroll, benefits, compliance, taxes and administrative work. The platform also helps automate repetitive manual tasks, such as drafting local employment.
• Parkable – is a parking management system that gives teams more visibility into parking bay availability and allocation by automating manual time intensive tasks. The platform makes life easier for operators, improves employee experience and increases ROI.

There are a lot of moving pieces required to get workplace technology up and running. Now, with this in mind, the question goes: How can you get others within your company on board? At Parkable, we’ve developed a guide to help you encourage and implement internal tech adoption.

What is a business case?

After you've come up with a tech solution to a challenge or inefficiency in your workspace, you can use a business case model to shape your pitch. Building a business case is a great way to get others within your team or company on board before you're able to adopt the new, potentially disruptive solution.

It gives reasoning for undertaking a new project, program, or portfolio. It's a comprehensive look at the benefits, costs, and risks of all of your options. A good business case walks the audience through the logic that led to this specific solution to a challenge.

This approach is great for catering to the priorities of a workspace, such as cost, risk, efficiency, productivity, and profit margin.

In a report by the Project Management Institute (PMI) called "Is this really worth the effort? The need for a business case," it writes that "The Business Case sits at the heart of the project" and that, ultimately, this can act as a reference point before, during as well as after the project is implemented.

How to build a business case

"The best way to justify the spend [on new technology] is to build a business case that demonstrates how the chosen technology or solution will meet stakeholder expectations and organizational priorities and drive business outcomes," according to management consulting firm Gartner, "To do that, you'll need to show the full value of the purchase across costs, value, and risk, and convey that value through simple but compelling storytelling."

So now with that storytelling concept in mind, here are a few steps that you can follow to start putting together a business case:

1. Identify the priorities of your organization or workplace and the challenges that are most pressing. Any tech solution should align with and advance the goals of your organization.
   
2. Measure the possible outcomes and effects of this tech on the workplace in terms of your organization's priorities. This is when we want to get into cost-benefit analysis, business value, and other metrics that are relevant to your specific workspace. How, exactly, will this piece of technology end up changing this workplace's numbers? For example, one outcome of the Colorado Housing and Finance Authority (CHFA) implementing Parkable was that it realized 30 parking bays in its location sat empty. With this, this unutilized real estate can now be sublet to contractors, acting as another revenue stream.
   
3. Lay out costs because every tool or solution will cost something and will have some drawbacks. It's best to be upfront with what these are and then move past them by laying out why this piece of technology has a value that is worth that cost.
4. Build an actual plan for implementing this tech. Outline the steps of adopting and implementing this technology. This plan could include a budget (or different payment plans), the Intended impact, key objectives, phases, roles, and/or a timeline. This is also when you would outline the resources you would need to implement this solution and the support offered by the sales and implementation team of the solution company you’re considering.

Applying your business case to your specific audience

When you have a business case laid out, the best way to pitch it is to know who you're pitching it to.

Depending on the person/people/team that you're trying to sell on this idea, you need to be savvy in your approach as, because ultimately, each group will have its own objectives it's trying to meet.

And, of course, we'll give use Parkable as a tech solution example:

1. Human Resources: HR prioritizes the workplace experience and how people interact with one another. When pitching to HR personnel, it's best to focus on the actual human experience aspects of your proposed tech solution.
   1. For example, Parkable makes commuting easier, bringing up worker satisfaction and creating a more equitable work culture. Specifically, two in three employees say that workplace parking is fairer, with Parkable making it easier to incentivize workers to work from the office amid a remote/hybrid work push.
2. Facilities/operations: If you're pitching to the team that manages or runs the property or building of your workspace, then you should consider their priorities in terms of property operations, efficiency and the costs of maintenance and installation.
   1. For example, Parkable can maximize the use of any parking lot, increasing occupancy. And its automatic features provide for reduced admin, lowering car park administration time by up to 93%.
      
3. Office managers: The role of an office manager is all about making sure that everything is running smoothly and that there is communication and operationality to everything happening within the workplace. Pitching to an office manager means appealing to how this piece of technology will contribute to the mechanics of the workspace.
   1. For example, Parkable's system is entirely flexible, so a manager can easily maintain all kinds of parking. As an organization changes, so can its parking situation. Parkable facilitates casual (first in, first served) parking spots, individually allocated parking spots, visitor parking, electric vehicle charging, tandem parking, and carpooling policies.
4. CFO/accounting: When pitching to anyone in a financial department, it's crucial to talk money. Lay out cost efficiency, personnel efficiency, time efficiency, cost saving, and pricing details. Numbers are your friend here.
   1. For example, Parkable creates a great option for generating more revenue. If your workplace chooses to charge for parking, Parkable's software is great for making easy payments, and automatic revenue payments are sent monthly. This feature enables recouping of costs, a new revenue stream, and/or a charity donation fund. For example, Australia-based Pro-Cam uses Parkable to rent out six of their car parks and earn income, so the space doesn't lie vacant between leases. "Parkable turned unused assets into revenue with no hassle," explains founder Ian Bates.

And, of course, including information that's not necessarily relevant to the person or team being pitched to is perfectly fine when making a business case. But just be aware of your audience and what they're trying to achieve themselves to ensure that the case remains relevant to them, compelling, and engaging.

Bringing your business case all together

When you've gone through all of the steps to build your business case, pulling it all together is all about storytelling to your fellow colleagues!

The facts and numbers of your pitch are important, but organizing your case to show the impact that your idea can have in terms of human cause and human effect is what will keep it all connected. How can everyone in the room better reach their goals with the help of the tech solution that you're proposing?

Change is often avoided in the workplace setting. After all, if it ain't broke ... But there is always room for improvement – even amid a recession – improvements that can actually serve the whole organization in the long run.

Just to summarize so you have a quick, high level synopsis on how to put your business case together:

1. Identify the priorities of your organization or workplace
2. Measure the possible outcomes and effects
3. Lay out costs
4. Build an actual plan for implementing this tech
5. When pitching, ensure you customize your delivery for the audience and their objectives

Ultimately, if you can prove that your idea will lead to significant enough improvement, then you can also win over your team, other departments, and the organization as a whole.