Tips for Building an Executive Summary for Your Presentation to Sell a Content Management System to Your Management Team

As a presenter or a corporate trainer you’d have come across several articles and blogs showcasing the incentives of using a Content Management System or a Presentation Management System. If you have had a first-hand experience of using one, you’d surely know how they help in improving productivity and also the learning outcomes. From helping you with the preparation of content to presenting it in the most articulate way, a Presentation Management System is such a wonderful tool for any educator or presenter. It helps in making the sessions more engaging and of course improves the learning outcome for the students.

Though you are convinced about the benefits that a Presentation Management System would offer, it can be tough to convince the management team in your organization or institution to buy into your idea. A good PMS doesn’t come free and hence you will need to present convincing arguments showcasing the incentives to the decision makers in your organization. This is where you need to come up with an executive summary that highlights all the advantages of the Presentation Management System and how it can be a game changer.

Like in an investment proposal or any other business report,you have to prepare a good executive summary that sells your proposal to the management team. Without a good executive summary all the hard work that you have done in research and analysis can go complete waste. The summary should only include brief points on the problem areas you have identified and the solutions that the Content Management System offers. You can leave all the charts, analysis and numbers for the inner pages of the report or the latter slides of your presentation. Here are some tips that will help you prepare an executive summary for your presentation to sell a Content Management System to your management team -

Explain The Report Briefly
Why have you come up with the report or presentation? What problems are you proposing to solve with your presentation? You need to briefly explain this at the top of the summary or in the first slide. Don’t bore the management team writing long paragraphs. Ideally the summary report should be in a single page or two slides at the maximum and you should be clear and precise on what you are planning to propose. Refrain from using unfamiliar concepts and ideas. It should be something that the management team should be able to grasp in a single breath.

Talk about the Challenges and The Loopholes              
It is extremely difficult to convince people to switch from a work process they are used to unless you are able to showcase the downsides of the existing system. The old order will give it to the new when you are able to pinpoint massive drawbacks in how the present training or classes are conducted. You need to run a thorough evaluation of the existing process and specify the drawbacks in terms of knowledge retention, class engagement etc. You need to share deals of the methodology you have used to identify the problem areas in the existing process. In simple words there should be no drawbacks in your research and analysis when you are pinpointing on drawbacks of an existing system.

Show the Downsides         
Your management team would surely not be investing in a new presentationmanagement system if you are don’t show them the detrimental side of maintaining the status quo. How is the existing system preventing your organization’s growth? How is it affecting your organization in a competitive market? How will carrying with the downsides of the existing training process hurt your organization in the long run? You will need to highlight these as a part of your executive summary.

Show The Opportunities   
In the world of marketing it is never a good idea to end your arguments by highlighting the problems and the drawbacks. You surely wouldn’t want the intended listeners to come up with questions such as – What then? How can the new presentation management system help the organization? You need to have ready answers for these questions in your executive summary. The idea is not just to highlight the downsides and the challenges with the existing process but also to show the positive outcome of the system. Don’t forget to show the ROI for the new system. Since the management team will have to take a call on investing on a new presentation management system they need to be assured about the return on investment.

To sum up you need to make sure you have clearly stated the objectives of your presentation, highlighted the challenges and enlightened the management team on the benefits of the Content Management System in your summary report. We have stated above and reiterate it again – the summary report/presentation should be short and concise. If you are able to grab their attention you can trust them to read through your report in detail.

Summary – In this write-up we share some tips that will help you in preparing an executive summary to sell a content management system to your management team.