Mindjet, the developer of MindManager 7, has developed a framework to help businesses to understand the value that its mind mapping software can provide, both in terms of direct and indirect benefits. In the process, it has illuminated some interesting facts and figures that should be of interest to anyone considering investing in any brand of mind mapping software, or trying to convince their bosses to equip their team or department with these visual mapping tools.
Mindjet is communicating its findings via a marketing campaign called "The Value of an Hour." As part of their research, the Mindjet folks have identified five key challenges that corporations face today, areas where mind mapping software can help. They are:
1. Employee shortages: Due to the retirement of baby boomers and a lack of young people to fill their positions, nearly every industry is forecast to have a significant shortage of skilled workers in the years ahead. Mind mapping software can help organizations to get more productive work out of their existing employees, and may reduce the need to hire additional full-time employees.
2. Employee retention: Most knowledge workers today are overworked, with too many projects and not enough time to get everything done. The key challenge is to enable employees to achieve their individual work goals, while reducing stress. Mind mapping software can help, by enabling workers to be more efficient at gathering, distilling and communicating information, and by helping them to work their way through common tasks (such as meeting planning) faster.
3. Information overload: One study cited by Mindjet says that the average knowledge worker spends up to one-third of their work time searching for and retrieving information. Mind mapping software can help, by enabling employees to use knowledge dashboards to automate the process of gathering and manipulating the key information they need to do their jobs.
4. Time poverty: One study cited by Mindjet showed that over 90% of respondents felt an overwhelming sense of "time poverty" – not enough time to complete their work. Mind mapping software can make a difference by helping employees to be more productive and contribute to the company at a higher level.
5. Innovative and creative thinking: Companies today depend on all workers to help them continually improve and develop new ideas and breakthroughs. But with time poverty being such an extreme problem today, workers don’t have time to think creatively. By helping them to complete common work tasks faster, mind mapping software can free up time for creative problem solving and innovative thinking. On average, Mindjet estimates that workers who are properly trained on its MindManager software can gain 3 to 5 hours a week.
Sounds like a pretty compelling case to me! If you want to learn more, Mindjet offers a free webcast, as well as a Value of an Hour web page that includes a productivity self-assessment calculator.
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