Baby Boomer Segmentation:

Employee
Empowerment:
The Key to Capturing Productivity
by: Russell Evans
Business Technology Solutions
ACNielsen
No discussion of productivity would be complete without a
reference to employee empowerment and the policies and
tools that make it possible. Any number of factors play into
empowerment—for example:
• whether it has been embraced as a corporate value and
validated from the CEO office on down;
• whether policies and procedures exist to define and shape
empowered behaviors;
• whether review systems capture, measure and mete out
rewards for taking action;
• whether support mechanisms are in place to initialize or
enable field decisions;
• whether information technology facilitates ready access to
needed data, be it about product, pricing, distribution or
other issues.
For each employee to serve as a self-actualized unit, there
must be organic, seamless connectivity to all parts of the
organization.
Get connected
In the knowledge economy, everything revolves around the
concept of connectivity, and Metcalf’s Law serves as the
behavioral guideline.
Metcalf’s Law:
The value of a computer is
proportional to the square of the
number of connections it makes.
Few jobs require as much independent thinking and employee
empowerment as sales. Empowered salespeople represent
the forward line, the guardians of differentiation, the customer
touchpoint in every marketing equation. They are
the ultimate players in the so-called knowledge economy.
Unlike employees in silo or niche areas, salespeople need to
reach out and connect disparate information from diverse
sources in quick time to effectively address customer needs.
Their knowledge base reaches across the enterprise from an
understanding of customers to products and services,
processes and systems, the competitive set, and the arcane
combination of psychological and social skills necessary to
close a deal.
Technology to the rescue
Ask any successful salesperson, and they’ll tell you that
timely, accurate information represents the best armor
they’ve got in the profit wars. The bulletproof concept
resonates with every salesperson who has ever had to
sell-in a new product, argue a price increase or stave off a
competitive threat. To be effective in today’s hyper-charged,
customized, store-level–focused retail environment, salespeople
need a virtual arsenal of presentations capable of
being refreshed with current data at the touch of a button.
That need spawned the fast-track development of
ACNielsen Answers ® Presentation Builder, a best practices
solution that automates and standardizes the development
of data-driven presentation decks. Custom-designed to your
unique specifications by ACNielsen consultants, the application
automatically populates templates using the data calculations
and benchmark metrics you choose. The look, feel,
reporting style and approach are exclusive to your company
28 Fall/Winter 2006