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I'm currently interning at a small company of around 50 people right now. The company itself is fine and full of good people. The problem I have right now is with their systems. Almost everything that involves a computer, from data storage to task management, uses an Excel database. In fact, my current task is to make an automatic reminder system that sends emails before a task is due in Excel.

The company also uses Skype for communication, which wouldn't be so bad if they actually used it to communicate. The entire system is so decentralized that few people see the point of forming a group just to send an image, when printing it out and gathering the people together to see it is so much faster.

I'd really like to get the company to start using programs like Trello or Slack. However, I'm not really sure how I should try to sell these programs to them. I've tried simply telling them that, for example, Excel is not a good place to build automatic reminder systems, but usually I'm told that the current systems work fine, or that it would take too much time to integrate these programs. Is it even my place to be suggesting stuff like this?

hagamablabla
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Something worth noting here (I was told a very similar thing when I was in a similar situation) is that the company was running fine before you started interning. They will continue to do so until the leadership decides there needs to be a change.

Additionally, in a company of 50+ people, it's unlikely none of them have heard of Slack or Trello. They may have considered it, but decided the transition would be too much work.

There is a cost associated with bringing new technologies into the fold, and it's more than just the cost of the license. You or I might pick up Slack pretty easily, but it took the current IT admin at least 8 weeks to teach 87 year old Wanda in accounting how to send a message in Skype, do you really think he wants to do that again? What about productivity lost due to people making mistakes with the new software?

If you really want to try to enact change, suggest Slack to your supervisor, and if he doesn't escalate it, don't push it. Leave the excel thing alone for now -- Communication can be routed through other channels, but task tracking is mission critical. Additionally, they probably have lots of processes and procedures in place for how to use excel, and I'm certain less than half of those could be easily adapted to Trello. If they find excel no longer works for them at some point, you can suggest it. Alternatively, if you become a person of authority in the company, then you can also suggest it.

Edit: It might help you to read a question I asked and at least the accepted answer to it. A word of warning, I didn't take O. Jones' answer to heart at the job I was at when I asked that question. While I can't say my eagerness to implement change was the only problem with that job, it certainly didn't foster a healthy relationship between me and the owner. Now I have a nice ugly "do not contact" on my resume because of Feelings about how I left the place.

Sidney
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  • In my experience, even when there's a critical need for some software, if "The Intern" recommends that software, there's an immediate push-back based on the org chart more than the recommendation. (We needed a specific tool to remove a virus that our AV couldn't remove. I said "this tool does that!" and was shot down. So we had a virus on our network for a month thanks to that anti-intern attitude.) – CaM Aug 11 '17 at 19:39
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    @CM_Dayton Sounds like a good reason to not apply at the end of the internship to me. ¯\(ツ)/¯ – Sidney Aug 11 '17 at 19:41
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    Yeah. I didn't. No regrets at all on that front. – CaM Aug 11 '17 at 19:45
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    I'll do as you suggested and bring it up with my manager. I guess you're right though, this change would probably take a lot of effort to go through, and I was being blinded by all the shiny potential the programs had. – hagamablabla Aug 11 '17 at 20:07