Recently I had a chance to sit down and chat with one of our favorite clients, Abby Atkinson. Atkinson is Senior Director at Infor, where she pioneered the Infor Ambassador Reference Program. We spoke about the many things that have made the Infor program unique and such a success.
One of the main things that makes their program different is that they use a “butler service”, where the program is managed by a centralized reference department, rather than the more typical self service mode. This has allowed for better documentation and tighter control over reference usage.
Atkinson said that recently due to the tougher economy, her budget for the reference program was threatened of being cut. She had to defend the value of the program in order to keep it staffed and active. Using key metrics and simple figures, Atkinson was easily able to determine the savings Infor was achieving with the program as well as the negative impact they would feel without it. By the time she was finished Atkinson had increased her budget by 60%.
