So you’ve found the perfect internal communications software. Now comes the tough part: convincing your team and leadership that it’s worth the investment. In this post, we’ll help you build a surefire business case for internal communications software.
Today, there are countless internal communications tools available on the market. With so many options, choosing a tool that you’re confident pitching to your team can be tough. And getting buy-in from senior leaders and IT departments can be even harder.
Depending on your company, you’ll likely have a set internal communications budget allotted for team software and applications. You may also need your IT team to verify and approve a new vendor application.
With this in mind, you’ll need to be compelling in proving how the internal communications software you’ve discovered can influence change in your organization—whether it’s boosting employee engagement or cost savings.
In this post, we’ll show you how to build a business case for internal communications software—and get approval from your procurement team.
What is Internal Communications Software?
An internal communications software is a tool dedicated to improving business efficiency by optimizing the distribution of employee communications.
While there are many different types of internal communications software, they all share a common goal: helping employees stay informed on key company news, while staying in touch with organizational values and culture as a whole.
Internal communications tools make it easier to connect employees to a range of resources, opportunities, and information that helps them work at their best.
At the same time, Internal Communications software also helps managers and internal communications professionals do their job more efficiently.
Types of Internal Communications Software
Internal communications software is a broad term—one that hardly does justice to the different types of tools under the label.
To truly understand the value of internal communications software, it’s important to recognize the different types of software out there and their core purpose.
Here are a few common options to keep in mind:
- Internal email software: this type of software synchronizes the way you create, send, and track employee emails. As a result, it helps enhance and accelerate the process of building and dispatching internal communications. ContactMonkey belongs in this category, enabling users to build HTML emails and measure employee engagement straight from Outlook or Gmail. On a relevant note, learn why not to use Mailchimp for internal communications.
- Intranet: think of it as a website designed exclusively for your company. Intranets function as a hub that connects all of your other communications channels, such as team chats, newsletters, payroll, and more.
- Employee chats: these are messaging tools that are strictly for you and your colleagues. Popular options you’ve likely seen already include Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Google Hangouts.
- Collaboration tools: this includes a range of project management software designed to improve workflow and coworking across your teams. Think Google Drive, Trello, and Asana.
What are the Benefits of Using an Internal Communications Software in Your Company?
The value proposition behind any internal communications software is to help employees deliver and consume essential workplace information more quickly and easily. By the same token, they help employees stay informed and engaged, which in turn creates a domino effect of benefits, ultimately impacting the whole of your organization. Internal communications software can also help you get the most out of your existing email infrastructure, allowing you to avoid issues like the Outlook and Gmail email sending limits.
Important considerations include:
- Net new revenue
- Increased productivity
- Increased employee engagement and satisfaction
- Improved net efficiencies per employee
Let’s explore how this works in more detail by looking at each of the individual benefits of internal communications software and how you can use these benefits to prove the business case for internal communications software.
Net new revenue
Research shows that companies with a rate of employee engagement at 50% or higher retained more than 80% of their clients. What this demonstrates is that informed and engaged employees deliver better, more impactful customer service. As a result, this leads to greater revenue.
If you want to see improved customer loyalty, it’s essential to invest in a tool that keeps up the consistency and clarity of internal communications.
With an internal communications software like ContactMonkey, it becomes easier to streamline product education and training to help employees deliver great customer service. The dynamic email template builder lets you create dedicated segments for employee resources and attach important documents using smart links rather than bulky files.
Moreover, with embedded event management, ContactMonkey’s internal communications software lets staff easily sign up for training sessions right from their email.
Meanwhile, managers can use the software’s email analytics to check whether vital resources were opened and read. They’re also able to see read times, popular clicks, and a range of other engagement metrics.
In addition to these quantitative metrics, you can gather qualitative information about your email engagement via ContactMonkey’s click maps feature:
Click maps help you understand how your employees engage with your emails so you can optimize your design to ensure your recipients see the information you need them to.
If your organization has internal or external regulations around email privacy, ContactMonkey’s anonymous email tracking allows you to gather email metrics while maintaining your employees’ privacy.
Increased productivity
Role clarity and well-defined workplace expectations are essential to employee productivity. When employees lack the resources to do their job well, or feel confused about something and don’t know who to reach out to for help, productivity suffers.
With a solid internal communications system in place, it’s easier for internal communicators to roll out consistent resources, define expectations, and create a channel where employees can ask questions and clarify tasks.
Internal communications software enables this by automating and streamlining things like content scheduling and employee feedback. Forgetting to send out key information becomes much harder.
With ContactMonkey’s Internal Communications software, you can easily create employee email templates with automatic feedback options. Staff always know where to ask questions and get clarification on any points discussed in your emails.
Not to mention, your internal communications team saves time on creating and building out employee emails, and can focus more on delivering insightful and engaging content.
You can further save time by generating new content with ContactMonkey’s OpenAI ChatGPT integration. Write a prompt describing what you’d like to include in your email, generate the text and edit it according to your audience.
Increased employee engagement and satisfaction with lower turnover
Employee engagement happens when staff feel like they’re aligned with workplace values and goals, and feel personally invested in their teams. In fact, research shows that 80% of employees feel more engaged when their work resonates with the core values of the organization.
To achieve this outcome, employees have to have a clear and consistent idea of your company identity, mission, and vision. An internal communications software is great at facilitating this by offering a consistent platform to channel brand identity and opportunities to connect employees.
Since email is already the resource your staff rely on the most, an internal email software is the best place to start.
With an email template builder like ContactMonkey, you can promote your brand identity by creating branded email templates with consistent visuals. Synchronize company colours, logos, and slogans to use across all of your communications:
Increased employee engagement means less employee turnover. This not only improves your brand reputation, but adds cost savings in the long run, as you avoid the hefty financial burden of losing valuable staff.
In fact, employers who don’t invest in employee engagement can expect to spend up to $7,000 on replacing valuable staff. On the other hand, companies with an engaged workforce see an average of 21% more profits and 17% more productivity than their disengaged counterparts.
Improved net efficiencies per employee
Creating and dispatching employee communications without a dedicated internal communications software can be slow and unreliable.
Imagine your company is going through a merger, management shift, or simply navigating the new environment of remote or hybrid work. There may be multiple leadership communications, documents, or event invites to send out in a single week.
With internal communications software, you can synchronize and streamline all your internal communications into a single platform. This makes it faster to deliver employee communications and easier for your employees to access them.
ContactMonkey’s library of customizable Outlook HTML email templates allows you to build out and organize your email with dedicated segments for multiple communications themes and topics.
Pulse surveys can instantly be embedded into any email template, allowing you to gather quality employee feedback in just 5 seconds.
You can also embed videos, insert GIFs in your Outlook emails, feature custom graphics, and include employee feedback boxes, which allows you to accomplish more with a single email.
Not to mention, your customized email templates are easy to save and share. If important updates emerge, all you need to do is plug in the new content, rather than create a whole new email.
ContactMonkey’s Gmail and Outlook integrations also means you can send out all of your internal emails without leaving your mailbox, and using your existing email distribution lists.
You can create custom email lists without needing IT using ContactMonkey’s List Management feature. Build email lists to reduce the number of irrelevant emails your employees receive, and integrate your email lists with your Human Resource Information System (HRIS) like Workday and ADP, as well as Azure Active Directory, so they’ll update automatically as your employees join and leave your company.
How to Build a Business Case for Implementing Internal Communications Software
When you think you’ve struck gold with a new internal communications tool, it’s easy to assume that others will instantly see it your way. But when company budgets are on the line, vetting new tools can be a rigorous process. And you’ll need to be ready to answer some tough questions and show the ROI of internal communications software.
Below, we’ve broken down our top tips for building a compelling and foolproof business case for introducing internal communications software in your company.
Communicate benefits strategically
If you’ve found an internal communications tool that you want to pitch to your team, you probably know its benefits inside out. Even if you’re eager to list all the awesome features, you need to pause and think about how to communicate the benefits strategically.
The decision to invest in a new business solution is made when everyone on the team can clearly see how the tool can improve your large or small business communications.
Start by asking yourself some of the very same questions that your team may ask about the tool, such as:
- What need(s) will this software help address?
- How will we be able to measure and demonstrate success?
- What key challenge will this tool help solve?
- Are the business benefits of this tool a viable trade-off for the resources it demands?
- What does success look like?
- Who will be the core users / administrators of this tool?
Prepare notes to address each of these questions and structure your conversation about the software in a way that covers every point.
Leverage data
Whether it’s your Sales team’s quarterly targets, or the Marketing team’s conversion rates, data is what drives business goals. When it comes to internal communications, things aren’t that different. You’ll need to show metrics if you want to get buy-in for a new internal communications software.
A good place to start is examining internal email benchmarks. This data adds context to your internal communications performance.
By highlighting industry standards, both you and your team can have a clearer understanding of what defines good internal communications at your company.
Is your email open rate too low? Does your click-through-rate lag behind others in your industry? Does your current IC tool not even provide the analytics to determine performance?
Answering these questions may help you make a good business case for investing in a dedicated internal communications software.
For companies like Cimpress Technology, internal email metrics empowered them to gauge which messages resonated most with their team members.
“Email tracking for us feels like a necessity. I should know how many people are opening, clicking and reacting to my emails—It ends up informing long-term planning. ContactMonkey has helped me figure out which subject lines catch our team’s attention,” says Ashley Allen, Director of Strategic Communications at Cimpress.
ContactMonkey’s Internal Email Benchmarks Report helps you set clear, realistic goals for your email metrics. It’s also useful when presenting the business value of your internal communications software of choice to your team.
Show sample results
If you haven’t committed to a single internal communications software just yet, but want to compare different solutions with your team, case studies and free trials are your go-to.
A quality internal communications software provider will have a number of case studies and customer success stories under their belt. You can use these to present real-world examples internal communications software in action, and its ROI among other companies.
Case studies can usually be found on the website of your chosen internal communications software provider. Make sure to keep a lookout for key outcomes, figures, and tangible data which you can include in a presentation or report for your team.
With ContactMonkey, you can conveniently access a range of real world use cases and results on the Customers page of our website. For a more detailed breakdown and tour of our internal communications software, schedule a free demo for yourself and your team with one of our dedicated Account Executives.
Demonstrate cost savings
In addition to performance metrics, your team will likely want to see the benefits of your proposed internal communications software for the company budget. A quality internal communications solution should be able to deliver on this.
Maybe the new Internal Communications software can reduce the number of hours your team dedicates to building out internal emails. Or, perhaps you no longer need as many people helping out with internal communications, and these individuals can focus on other outstanding projects.
If you’ve managed to decrease the number of people involved in the initial process from five to three, or simply cut down the time required for the work, calculate the ROI on this.
Start by determining how many hours a day or a week the original work had demanded from employees. Use this number, along with your company’s average annual salary, and multiply it by the number of hours it took. In other words, show that $20 an hour x 3 hours of work x 2 employees = $120/week saved, multiplied 52 weeks = $6,240 in savings.
Remember, proving the ROI of your internal communications software isn’t a math quiz and the numbers you display can be estimates. But if you can show the logic and calculations behind your reasoning, you’ll be able to make a much stronger business case for internal communications software.
Prove time savings
Time savings go hand in hand with cost savings, and a great internal communications software should be able to deliver both.
Where you think a new software can help your teams save time, make sure to highlight the specifics. Maybe it’s about your IT team saving hours in the month fixing unresponsive emails. Or maybe it’s all about allowing your internal communications team to focus on creating more engaging content rather than building out HTML email templates.
With ContactMonkey, for instance, companies like Mettler Toledo were able to save 4 hours a week and 25 days a year by streamlining and synchronizing their internal communications.
Of course, if you haven’t taken the software for a test run, proving the time savings to your team can be tough.
With ContactMonkey’s all-in-one internal communications software, you always have the advantage of a free trial to test and report on the tool’s time-saving benefits. Book a free demo to learn more about the tool and get onboarded for your personalized free trial.
ContactMonkey Makes it Easy to Build a Business Case for Internal Communications Software
The right internal communications software can single handedly optimize and enhance your internal communications strategy. It does so by saving you time, cutting costs, and helping you grow employee engagement.
When it comes to getting the most from your internal communications software, ContactMonkey hits all the boxes. Here are just a few ways our tool can help you embrace internal communications best practices and boost employee engagement across your company:
Streamline workflow with Outlook and Gmail integration
ContactMonkey’s internal email tracking tool lives in your Outlook or Gmail inbox as a sidebar, allowing you to build and send emails without ever leaving your inbox.
Get in-depth email analytics
Purpose built for internal communication email tracking, ContactMonkey allows you to gather precision analytics on everything from open rates to most popular clicks. In turn, you can strategically improve your internal communications.
Gather quality feedback fast
With ContactMonkey, you can gather employee feedback in a matter of seconds. Using the drag and drop email template builder, add emoji reactions, employee pulse surveys, comment boxes, dichotomous scales, or all of the above.
Save time with a simple user interface
Our drag and drop email template builder lets you create professional HTML emails in minutes, saving your team time that they can put towards developing engaging content.
Expand reach with responsive design
Whether you choose a design from our library of professional email templates or opt for your own customized design, you can always be assured that your HTML email template will display seamlessly across all digital devices.
Build authentic connections with personalization
Easily individualize email subject lines for each employee on your distribution list, or uploaded CSV file.
Strengthen brand identity
Give your internal newsletter creative and visually captivating touches without sacrificing brand consistency. With default brand colours and customizable templates, you can tailor your email design to match your company colours, messaging, and image style.
Improve collaboration
With ContactMonkey’s email collaboration, up to 5 users can work on an email template simultaneously and view changes being made in real-time.
Show the ROI of Internal Communications Software with ContactMonkey
Finding an amazing new internal communications software is exciting, and you may anticipate that others will easily see the benefits too. But, if you’re trying to get buy-in from your whole team, you’ll be faced with competing perspectives and lots of questions. Not to mention, if the colleagues evaluating the tool aren’t working in internal communications, seeing the benefits may not be as straightforward.
This doesn’t mean convincing others to get on board will be an impossible feat, but it does mean that you’ll need to be well-prepared.
With ContactMonkey, it’s easier to show the ROI of internal communications software for your business. Our all-in-one IC tool not only boasts a range of features to satisfy internal stakeholders, but it’s also backed by data. Just take a look at one of our customer case studies to see real results and lasting impact. When you’re ready, book a demo with our team and get onboarded for your personalized free trial.
