Where do you start when your organization decides to go paperless? You may be inclined to start building something right away, or your company may prefer to find a commercial off-the-shelf product. There are even some organizations that choose to hire a consultant to build it for them. But the best place to start is by asking the right questions about your processes and the documents they require. And if you don’t have the time or internal fortitude to take these steps independently, talk with a professional ECM provider and leverage their insights and suggestions.
The successful implementation of an ECM solution very much depends on the time and effort you (or an ECM provider) put into the process at the outset. Our best advice is to not rush into building or buying an ECM solution before laying the proper groundwork.
Start Where Your Feet Are: Assess Your Readiness
Assess the readiness of your department, technical infrastructure, business processes, and the documents necessary to maintain day-to-day operations. You can’t start the climb if your feet are bound in red tape and internal confusion.
Conduct internal discussions with all key stakeholders and consider the following questions:
What is your ECM goal?
- How would an ECM solution align with your core values and business strategy?
- Do you have the resources to complete this initiative?
- If your project achieves all its objectives, will the improvements justify the cost? What if it only achieves 50% of its objectives?
- How will the organizational improvements impact customers, vendors, employees, and your ability to compete in your markets?
Clearly answering these questions puts you in position to evaluate possible ECM partners and narrow down the field. Once you find a suitable partner, they will initiate a process to help you prepare for an ECM system implementation.
Time out! We understand that asking the questions listed above actually happens in only about 10% of all ECM implementations. However, we can’t stress enough that preparedness before implementing an ECM solution leads to more long-term success.
Five Steps to ECM Success
There are recognized Business Process Analysis (BPA) procedures that support the successful implementation of Electronic Content Management solutions. Any qualified ECM partner will adhere to this five-step process:
Step 1: Determine the Content Associated with Key Processes
Your ECM provider should first gain a clear understanding of your key business drivers and processes that determine the success of the department, division, team, organization, etc.
Identify and document the key business processes at a macro level, along with the necessary metrics to measure performance and assumptions about future business growth. The objective of this step is to define your company’s paper processes that inhibit the accomplishment of these key business drivers.
Deliverable
In Step 1, you should come out with a detailed project plan describing the scope of engagement with your content management partner. This plan includes specific activities and dates for the transition to paperless.
Step 2: Delve Into Your Business Processes; Understand Your Needs
The second step is to perform a detailed requirements analysis for each key business process. Together, you and your ECM partner should be able to identify and understand the activities your business performs, the roles involved in each activity, and all inputs and outputs of your business processes.
It’s important to pay particular attention to content‐specific areas that can have a significant impact on the success of your business process, including:
- Inefficient paper processes – lost files, redundant work, fraud, etc.
- The volume of paper being generated and stored – filing cabinets, paper routing, etc.
- Regulatory storage requirements – legal, local and federal government, etc.
- Physical logistics of paper document storage, retrieval and reproduction.
Deliverable
The output of the requirements analysis is to visually depict a view of your systems, equipment, content, users, and reports involved in the processes you evaluated together. This is key information to gather before proceeding to Step 3.
Step 3: Evaluate Business Processes And Outline the Most Beneficial Modifications
Next, evaluate all business processes to determine how profoundly they contribute to your organization.
Your ECM provider will use this information to develop a high‐level ROI analysis, revealing the modifications to business processes that would have the greatest positive impact on your business drivers and overall performance.
Deliverable
The business process analysis reveals anticipated labor and/or time savings, hard cost savings, and process improvement benefits. The ROI evaluation informs your organization how to prioritize business process improvement initiatives.
Step 4: Before And After: Create A Detailed Checklist Of Your Needs
The primary objective of Step 4 is to provide a before-and-after perspective of the activities you perform and the functionality your key business process provides.
Your ECM consultant will take a good look at your “as is” format and compare it to your potential format, illustrating the business process as it will be after applying the process automation changes.
Deliverable
At the end of this stage you should have a clear checklist of the features and functionalities of every technology solution your organization is considering, which you can then use to improve the business process or to generate an RFP to send to vendors.
Step 5: Analyze Findings and Modify Key Business Processes
The final step is to build an organizational review of the ROI and functional design deliverables from Steps 3 and 4. This involves bringing together executives, managing directors, process users, and business process consultants to analyze and discuss the findings and to clarify any assumptions made during the evaluations.
At the completion of this step, you will be ready to implement changes and modify key business processes. Because of all the preparation, you can be confident in your decision to move forward with the solutions identified.
Final Deliverable And Recommendation
At the end of the process, your ECM consultant provides an overview of your key business processes and the steps you need to take to improve each one. They will help you understand the ROI potential for each improvement and how it will affect your organization.
The Biggest Benefit?
After working with a Document Management consultant, your organization will be more than ready to implement an ECM solution. Perhaps the biggest benefit of undergoing a comprehensive business process analysis is the peace of mind knowing your organizational has strategically chosen the best ECM solutions and how to make the project successful.