[off-topic] how to "sell" GIS idea?

[Stephen Woodbridge]

Eduardo,

Executives want to know feature and benefits at a high level.

That are the benefits:

increased capacity - do more with less
better planning and time to market with products
   - where do you need to make roads to move logs
   - over what kind of terrain
better inventory assessment and analysis of forests and uses
better awareness of environmental conditions and issues
lower costs - better deployment of resources
improved products - better assessment of tree inventory in the field 
means less waste

Think in terms of what are the business advantages and benefits.

Make a list of the benefits then in a separate section list the features 
of your system and how it will assist them in there objective benefits.

-Steve W.

Eduardo Patto Kanegae wrote:
> Hi folks,
> 
> Recently one customer asked me a hard favor: to sell GIS ideas to the 
> president's company!
> 
> For me , this is very hard to do, because "presidents" normally knows 
> *business* language, not GIS-language
> or IT-languages .
> 
> What we are trying to do basically is to *sell* the creation of a new 
> department inside the company. The company
> is the forestry division of a pulp-n-paper brazilian insdustry.
> 
> the main goal of this new proposed department is
> to create, test and prototype GIS solutions for the forestry day to day 
> operations. ( and of course,
> my contribution here is help them to do it only using FOSS solutions... 
> or as much as possible :-).
> so, HOW to do it will not be the problem.
> 
> My real problem is: "how to SELL GIS benefits, but NOT using technical 
> terms?"
> 
> does anybody recommend any links or bibliography?
> 
> best regards.
>