Populating initiatives

To properly frame an initiative for the client, there are several sections in an initiative that can be completed to provide greater clarity for a client. The following steps outline multiple sections required to fully complete an initiative.

1. Setting up your Initiative

   1. Populating the Initiative from a template

2. Point of contact

   1. Transfer of Initiative ownership

3. Working with Initiative templates

   1. Create a new custom initiative template

4. How to use budgeting in an initiative

5. Manually adding assets

Setting up your Initiative

You can add target quarters and even choose custom templates explaining to the client in simple terms the importance of the initiative you are creating that they address problematic assets in a timely manner.

1. Initiative priority - When you create an initiative, you can set the priority of the initiative to show your client the urgency of this initiative.

2. Templates - Templates are designed to assist with communicating 'the why' behind your recommendations.

3. Internal notes - You can enter internal notes for yourself and your colleagues to reference.

4. Target quarters - Set target quarters to show your client when you intend to take action on this initiative.

Populating the Initiative from a template

When selecting a template to create an initiative, ScalePad automated the workflow as much as possible by auto-populating several sections of the Initiative. The sections that are auto-populated are:

• Initiative title

• Executive Summary

• Budget items and estimated costs

Point of contact

By default, the Initiative's point of contact is whoever created the Initiative in ScalePad. The Initiative owner (point of contact) receives all communication regarding that Initiative.

Transfer of Initiative ownership

Initiatives can be manually re-assigned from within Initiatives by selecting the Point of contact drop-down and selecting a new point of contact. Once the point of contact is changed, all communication regarding the Initiative is sent to the newly assigned point of contact.

Before a member is removed from the platform, the platform prompts you to choose a new point of contact for any Initiatives they were the assigned point of contact.

Working with Initiative templates

When you have created an initiative, the details may not be the right fit you desire for the initiative, you may be unsure of what you should input into the fields, or you remember that you made a custom template for the type of initiative you are creating. At this point, you may want to choose a different template to overwrite the initiative or create a custom template.

To maximize the time you spend taking action to improve your clients' IT environments, templates automatically add best-practices content to your Initiative details.

Translating the benefits of investing in IT into simple language that your clients can understand can be challenging. The templates are designed to assist with communicating 'the why' behind your recommendations.

Create a new custom initiative template

To manually recreate an initiative for every client or make the same adjustments to the ScalePad templates every time would be inconvenient and time-consuming. When taking the same action with different clients, you will likely want to create very similar initiatives.

You can create new customized templates in one of two ways: 1) Using an existing template as a baseline to customize or 2) creating an initiative with no template and start customizing from scratch.

To create a customized template:

1. Navigate to your client's dashboard

2. Click the Initiatives tab

3. Click the New Initiative button

4. Select from the list of existing templates or choose No template (a template can be manually added later).

5. Once the desired template is selected, click Finish.

6. Make custom changes to either the:

   1. Initiative title

   2. Executive summary

   3. Budget line items

7. Click the Save template button

8. In the Save template dialog, the new template (updated initiative title) is indicated under the Save a new template subheading.

9. Once selected, click Save template.

To apply a template to an existing initiative:

1. Within an open initiative

2. From the Templates section, click the Apply template button.

3. From the Apply a new template dialog, choose a template.

4. Once the template is selected, click Apply template.

How to use budgeting in an initiative

Financials can be a barrier for clients agreeing to take action on replacements, renewals, etc. Initiatives can communicate costs upfront in order for clients to understand the capital requirements.

Budget line items can be manually added for the infrastructure investment and for any additional costs associated with the Initiative.

To manually add budget line items:

• Enter the relevant details of the line item and the estimated cost of the line item

• Toggle between the Per asset fee or Flat fee

• Repeat process as necessary

Hardware replacement budget automation

For initiatives that deal with asset replacement through Insights, members do not have to manually calculate and enter the estimated budget amount for the initiative.

Budget automation rules

ScalePad calculates an approximate replacement cost for the included assets to reduce the time required to provide cost estimates and propose action.

• A budget line item for X new workstations or X new servers is provided given the chosen action

• A budget line item for "Professional services" is also added and auto-calculated

Asset cost calculation

• Cost = asset cost (hardware replacement value) * # of assets

Professional services calculation

• For a server replacement, the Professional services calculation cost is set at 50% of the cost of the new server(s)

  • For 3 servers to be replaced at a cost of $3,000 each, the professional services cost is calculated at $1,500 per asset. $13,500 total for the 3 assets.

• For a workstation replacement, the default professional services cost is $250 per workstation.

  • For 12 workstations to be replaced at a cost of $1,500 each, the professional services cost is calculated at $250 per asset. $3,000 professional services total for the 12 assets. $21,000 total for the 12 assets.

Manually adding assets

When creating an initiative from an insight, all assets in that insight are, by default, included in the Initiative. You can further customize the Initiative by adding or removing assets from the Initiative. See Adding supplemental assets to initiatives for further information.

Additional articles to read

• Creating initiatives

• Adding supplemental assets to initiatives

• Approving and sharing initiatives