How We Leveraged Data to Convince Leadership to Invest in Automation

Synopsis:

Over the past five years, IMEG has grown its automation capabilities from a handful of Dynamo graphs to a full-fledged software development team. The cornerstone of this growth is usage data. In this presentation, we will discuss how we collected and leveraged this data to convince leadership to invest heavily in custom tools and build a team dedicated to supporting this effort.

Learning Objectives:

1. Describe the importance of collecting usage data at any stage of your automation journey
2. Formulate a plan on how to collect and visualize usage data
3. Understand how to calculate the impact of your custom tools
4. Understand how to leverage your usage calculations to garner more resources

Body:

Over the past five years, IMEG has grown its automation capabilities from a handful of Dynamo graphs to a full-fledged software development team. It takes a significant and ongoing investment to build and maintain a custom software. Our leadership is all in on automation, but that was not always the case. Whenever we share the story of the IMEG automation journey, the most common question we get is “How did you convince your leadership team to invest so heavily in automation?” One of the most important factors to gaining the support of leadership is quantification of the impact automation has on the organization.

While many of us know the value of tools we build, leadership typically requires hard data to justify the expenditure of resources. During the tool planning process, this requires estimating potential time savings, and determining what a successful implementation looks like. Once a tool has been released, we then collect actual usage metrics, quantify the actual time saved, and verify that the success metrics have been met. The usage data is most easily visualized and digested via rich, interactive dashboards using software such as Microsoft Power BI. This serves as a powerful tool for demonstrating value to leadership.

In this session, we will demonstrate how to collect and visualize tool usage data at any stage of your automation journey, how to calculate the impact of each tool, and how to leverage that information to negotiate for more resources. We will show you ways to collect user metrics and build dashboards to track usage, utilization, and estimated time saved for each tool, discipline, office, and team.

No matter the size of your organization, automation has the potential to increase productivity, create more consistent results, and reduce errors and omissions. As automation creators and technology enthusiasts we understand the value, but typically we have to prove it to firm leadership before they will invest the required resources. Once you get started, those resources typically need to scale as your catalog of tools grows. Quantifying the impact of automation within your organization through measurable data that is easily visualized allows you to confidently demonstrate the value to your organization’s leadership. This is the evidence you can lean on when negotiating for additional resources as your automation efforts evolve.