Technology and the Tools of Communication

Prentice Hall presents

Business Communication Videos

Over the years, the business communicator has had two basic challenges. The first is how to provide information in a way that is easy to read and understand, no matter how complex the topic.

Challenge: Information must be easy to read and understand

The second challenge is even more important: How to get your communication noticed and read first.

Challenge: Getting you communication noticed and read

Whether at home or work, your audience is constantly being bombarded with different communications and different messages. Some are important, and most are not. How do you help your audience distinguish between the two? How do you get your communication to the top of the must read pile? As a business communicator today, you have access to tools other communicators just a generation ago did not have. There are many different ways to get the job done. For example, I could use this hammer to put this screw in the wall: fast, easy, but not effective. It takes the right tools to do the job right.

Challenge: Determining which media and delivery vehicle is right for your audience

The same is true for communications. Part of your job, part of the challenge, is to look at the situation and determine which tool, which vehicle of communication is the right one to get your message across to your audience.

How do you determine which is right? When developing your communication strategy, there are many issues you must consider. Among them are: one, what is the appropriate medium?

What is the appropriate vehicle?

print, audio, audio-visual, interactive web, and the appropriate tool for the message.

Two, in what form does your audience expect or desire the communication?

What are your audience’s expectations?

Three, how long will it take to develop the communication?

How long is development time?

Four, how much will it cost to develop and deliver it?

What are development and distribution costs?

Five, how long will it take to distribute?

How long to distribute it?

And six, how many people will it reach, and will they read or use it?

How many people will it reach?

As a business communicator, you have access to a whole range of communication tools. We like to refer to it as your communications toolbox. What tools do you have at your disposal? There are general correspondences, like interoffice memos, bulletin board postings and posters, newsletters, brochures, and booklets.

Interoffice memos

Bulletin board postings and posters

Newsletters, brochures and booklets

But these are more traditional tools. What tools does this generation of business communicators have? Well, there are personalized letters and statements, on-demand custom printed booklets, voicemail, video and DVD, CD-ROM-based interactive programs, e-mail, websites, and other Internet-based tools and applications.

Personalized letters and statements

On-demand custom printed booklets

Voicemail

Video and DVD

CD-ROM-based interactive programs

E-mail, Web sites and other Internet-based tools and applications

This is the communicator’s pallet. What you can do with it is limitless, but must work within your communications strategy and budget.

Let’s look back to the six questions:

What is the appropriate vehicle?
What are your audience’s expectations?
How long is development time?
What are development and distribution costs?
How long to distribute it?
How many people will it reach?

From these questions, you can create a kind of grid, a decision matrix to help you evaluate different methods of communication. For example, let’s assume you have to get an important message out to all employees as soon as possible. What do you need to consider? Let’s assume you’re a medium sized company of a thousand employees spread across multiple locations. Some employees are in the field and don’t have a computer.

1,000 employees

Multiple locations

Filed employees don’t have computers

So what would be appropriate vehicles for your communication? And how do your employees generally expect to receive important communication? You have an interoffice mail system that gets mail to everyone: office employees in one day, field employees in two days. You could mail the memo to employees’ homes, which might be key if the employee’s family needs to read the communication. Or you could send out an email, but remember, not all employees have computer access at work.

So, possible vehicles are memo, letter, and email. Add to that the understanding that employees like the timeliness and direct nature of e-mails to communicate important business information.

Now you need to look at other factors, including time of development, costs, delivery time frame, and the audience it will reach.

Time of development

Costs

Delivery time frame

Audience it will reach

By filling in the blanks, you can get a better understanding of the viability of each option. An interoffice memo will reach employees at little cost. A mailed letter with printing, folding, stuffing envelopes, and postage is a bit more expensive but it has the added benefits of reaching family members at home. An e-mail is the least expensive and the fastest, but it doesn’t reach everyone. So what would you do?

Vehicle / Expect / Time / Costs / Delivery / Reach
Memo / E-mail / $200 / 2 days / 2 days / 100%
Letter / E-mail / $1,000 / 3 days / 3 days / 100%
E-mail / E-mail / $0 / Immed / Immed / 85%

As this example shows, there are often no clear cut answers or one solution. But what technology does is technology give the communicator and the audience options.

Technology gives the communicator and the audience options

For you, the solution may be to e-mail the communication to all employees. For those who don’t have email access, you could either send it via interoffice mail, or have the managers of the employees who don’t have email print out the memo and deliver it to them. For your audience, now they have the option of reading it on screen and saving it electronically or they could print it out, read, and file it with other important papers.

Oh, I have mail.

And responding to your communication: opening up the doors of two-way communication is now faster and easier. No pen or paper, no envelopes or stamps needed. Communications through e-mail makes responding to company communications just as fast and easy for the employee and that means you’ll have your finger on the pulse of employee thoughts and concerns in no time.

Yes, technology offers greater options. Now the marriage between technology and communications doesn’t stop at email; it only begins there. What about this press-printed brochure? It’s attractive to the eye and it’s an interesting read, but for the most part, traditionally printed materials everybody gets and reads the same information. But here’s a new challenge to consider: within your target audience there may be different groups with different needs that require different information, different messages, even different languages.

Challenge: Within an audience there may be different groups with different needs

How do you bridge this gap? Today’s commercial, high speed, laser printers allow you to print variable text in anything from a letter to a book. Direct mail marketers have used this technology for years, making your sweepstakes entry as personal as possible. Dear Joe, you may have won the blah blah blah blah blah. In this case, the marketer is taking some public information, running it through a computer program, and making your letter a bit more personal and pertinent to you.

For the business communicator, the process is not all that different. And seeing that you have far more information about your employee, including their work location, their birth and hire dates, their pay, etcetera, you can create a highly personal communication that doesn’t speak in general terms but speaks directly to the person who is reading it.

So, now, in your company of a thousand employees, you can speak to the CEO as well as the mailroom person in one vehicle, delivering only the information that each needs to know and the message that is right for each person.

So, technology plays another key role. Technology allows for greater audience and message definition.

Technology allows for greater audience and message definition

E-mails, brochures, these and other vehicles help the communicator make the communication more personal and pertinent, and, thus, more important to the audience. But, are they interesting? We live in a world where technology has also created certain expectations. We live a world of sound bites and MTV. What we watch has to be fast and interesting, or I can turn it off just as quickly and easily as I can turn it on. The World Wide Web can give us even more communication options, but, more importantly, it gives the end user greater interactivity and greater choice.

Everything we have been talking about so far has been a push communication. Something you are pushing to the employee because you want him or her to read it. Technology also enhances pull communications as well. What we mean by pull is the audience selects what they want and pulls it down.

A newspaper is a good example of pull communication. There, the reader chooses what they want to read, sports, business, uh, local news, national news, etcetera. A newspaper, or a company newsletter for that matter, is hardly engaging or entertaining. But, put the same information on the web, and look what we can do. No limitation on color, since you’re not printing the piece. Headlines can be animated. Still pictures can be video clips. Hyperlinks allow the user to get what they need quickly and easily. And the user can customize both the content and the look and feel of the site to make it even more appealing.

So technology has, yet, another advantage: technology can make communication more interesting and personal, keeping the audience’s attention longer.

Technology can make communication more interesting and personal, keeping the audience’s attention longer

And with technology, you can now accurately track the reader’s experience and measure such things as how many people are accessing the site, who is accessing the site, what articles are people reading, how much time they spend at the site, what links they are using.

How many people are accessing the site
Who is accessing the site
What articles people are reading
How much time they spend at the site
What links they are using

Such information means that you can better measure the return on your communication investment. And with the Internet, your options are even greater. What would be the cost, both in terms of hard dollars but also loss in productivity, to gather all of your thousand employees from around the country, or even just the top 100 managers together in one venue for an important two-hour meeting? Now what would the cost be if the same meeting was held via a web cyber-cast? Probably a lot less, and you can tape the event and store it in a real or online virtual library so employees can access it whenever they want and from wherever they are.

Now, technology does not come cheap. The development of a comprehensive website or an intranet can be costly, both in terms of upfront development and ongoing maintenance and support. But there are two things to keep in mind: one, in today’s business world, technology is an important aspect of any overall communication strategy.

In today’s business world, technology is an important aspect of any overall communication strategy

And, two, technology allows you to better measure the return on your investment.

Technology allows you to better measure the return on your investment

And, again, think about expectations of your audience, whether they are your employees, customers, or shareholders. At Apple, they were among the first companies to put all company literature online, no paper. Would you expect anything less from an innovative computer company? That communication decision helped to reinforce the company culture and served as a tool to show customers what the PC revolution could do for you.

So the challenge is: How can you leverage your company’s current structure, product, or service line and its culture to support your communication efforts, and vice versa?

Challenge: How to leverage and define culture through communication choices?

Technology and communication are wonderful partners when used appropriately. But while technology is wonderful, it is not a panacea. Business communication is still about the basics: determining which media and delivery vehicle is right for your audience and their expectations, writing and presenting information in a way that is easy to read and understand, getting your communication noticed and read.

Determining which vehicle is right

Making sure information is easy to read and understand

Getting your communication noticed and read

Technology is only a tool. The most important tools still remain: your brain, your skills, and your talent.

Hello? Okay very funny, guys. Now come on, come on. Ugh. I hate technology. Oh e-mail, how I love it.

produced by

Deerfield Productions

in conjunction with

Prentice Hall