Jenni - Examples of the Ideas People Suggest

See how your organisation might benefit in key areas of business

Jenni

Sales		I'm in Sales. Why don't we have a structured field discount system? We had one in my last company. It doesn't need to result in needless discounting if there is regional tiered control. I can show you more if you like? It would pay for itself with one large sale!

Marketing		I think we should copy Virgin who have an empty chair in every meeting for "the customer". Another idea I have: do a phone survey NOW of all customers for five improvements to our series 8 product. I bet we'll get new product plus cost savings ideas immediately! However I'm not the Product Manager in this area...

HR		Could we try using a simple employee survey. I know the company is not keen but the CIPD online forum discussion has lots of people saying there are many new bespoke tools. Or we could do a two hour brainstorm with the Directors...we did something like it before and identified 20 reasons for employee dissatisfaction. It reduced turnover.

Finance		Let's benchmark ourselves against our main competitor in terms of how well we do our risk assessment. We are far more profitable but I worry we are complacent and exposed, if for example we lose key players in our team...but I'm not the boss!

Learning & Development		For external courses we should use Golf Clubs they are so much cheaper venues than hotels! Universities and Colleges, they are really good value!

Sustainability		I've heard how we could apply for an ISO standard in Environmental Management. Only larger, engineering and public sector companies seem to be going for it. So if we did it we'd be able to differentiate ourselves winning public sector bids and tenders.

R & D Team		Let's have our company planning sessions 4.30 pm for 30 minutes each Friday instead of the 2 hour Monday morning meetings. We can then all have short sharp 10 am 30 minute sessions Monday because we will inevitably have all slept on issues and be ready to deal with them.

Website & online		Could we use online communities such as Facebook and Bebo to engage with our members especially our younger ones? Could we look to use some of the voice or speaking technology to make our site more accessible to deaf and hard of hearing people?