Who do you turn to?

The deadline’s looming and you’ve run out of excuses, so finally you have to get down to working on next year’s budget. As if this wasn’t bad enough, your budget submission must be made using the Company’s bespoke financial system, Aquarius, which was introduced last year. You run into difficulty. For the first time in your life, you have to make a request for a capital budget, to enable you to purchase some new equipment. You haven’t a clue how to go about it. So what do you do?

How about a course? No, that’s no use, because they’re only run once a month at head office. The deadline will be long past before then.

Well, an e-learning course then – the training department’s really pleased with their new online tutorials taking you through the basics of the system. OK, not a bad option, but each tutorial takes an hour and involves a lot of activities and quizzes. I’m not sure I’ve got that long. And anyway, this is a one-off exercise that I’ll probably never repeat – I really don’t need to understand the underlying concepts nor do I need to learn the procedures off-by-heart.

I could ask Frank, he’s a real whiz with Aquarius. But no, that would be the third time I’ve bothered him today – there’s a limit to which I can call on favours.

The help desk? Well, they’re only really interested in the technical side of the system. And anyway, they’re so overworked, it’ll be a while before I get a response.

There’s always the manual as a last resort. Trouble is, they keep sending me out updates and I keep forgetting to update my copy. I’d have to reassemble the whole three volumes before I could look up a thing.

If only there was a resource available online, which would give me the information I need straight away – just enough, not too much – and all in clear English. I’d say we need an Electronic Performance Support System. An EPSS.