"Survey after survey reveals that managers typically use less than 15 percent of the functionality of PowerPoint..."

The above quote is from an article by Michael Schrage in last month's CIO Magazine "The Value Inside."

If I were to take that quote out of the context of the article, I might say, "Can you imagine how awful a presentation might be if managers used every single one of PowerPoint's features?"

But the article isn't talking about one presentation. Instead, Mr. Schrage hints at the idea of counting software functionality as enterprise assets.

And in many cases, organizations badly underutilize their software assets.

For example: I had lunch with the head of an application development firm, who told me that a large international client had asked them to create an application that would let employees give presentations to their various audiences. The company, of course, already has a significant investment in PowerPoint.

The company in question had the perception that PowerPoint might be OK for internal presentations, but too limited for the various kinds of presentations they want to give to their many public audiences. Management had a long list of requirements for their external communications that they felt PowerPoint couldn’t handle.

Key words: “they felt”. They didn’t really know.

My lunch companion is working with the company to show them how their current investment in PowerPoint can meet their stated business objectives. Instead of a development contract, he ended up with a software training and communication consulting contract.

However, my lunch buddy (who's not really a communication consultant or trainer -- he's just being paid to play one for a few months) isn't in a position to address three other eyebrow-raising issues:

Marketing. PowerPoint software has a huge perception problem within this organization…and many others, I’m sure. And that’s a big marketing issue for Microsoft. What is Microsoft doing to combat the growing perception that PowerPoint is a “weak” presentation product, unfit for external presentations? And where was Microsoft when management decided to outsource a custom presentation application?

Governance. If corporate management doesn’t have a strong grasp of their software assets… that’s a huge governance issue. Why didn’t management take an inventory of their current software assets before leaping to the conclusion that they needed a custom app? What can large companies like this one do to avoid wasting time and spending big bucks on redundant software development?

Intellectual Assets. What about the actual intellectual content contained within the company's presentations? Where is the content? What is it? What are the best examples? A huge, multinational, public corporation -- with no digital asset management for PowerPoint content and no presentation evaluation system? Isn't it 2006?

Sure, company employees can probably benefit from software training (and they'd probably be best served by getting their education from professionals that actually focus on training, too!) But there are much larger problems in this organization that mere software training isn't going to fix...

PS:

In all fairness, I only intuited these problems from a two-minute story told to me within the span of a one-hour, no-martini lunch...and all without the benefit of meeting anybody within the organization. It could be that everything's just dandy within this company.

But re-read the quote that I used to begin this post. You know, the one that begins "Survey after survey..."

Poor asset management is a documented, ongoing, expensive problem for large companies. And you might be a shareholder. How's that make you feel?

¶ 5/02/2006 01:59:00 PM