SMBs: Solutions for Common Challenges that Will Help Keep Your EDM and Workflow Projects Manageable and On Track

By Ron Prichard, COO, Optical Image Technology, Inc.

Implementing a complex technology solution for business is a process similar to that of individuals buying their first home – after careful planning, evaluation, and purchase, it then requires maintenance, support, and potential upgrades. Many companies recognize the many advantages of implementing technology to gain a competitive edge, but there are real concerns that sometimes impede their implementation of electronic document management (EDM) and automated workflow projects. Sometimes the considerations overwhelm IT staffs in small and midsized businesses, and create obstacles to worthwhile initiatives that could carry their organization forward.

Like a home, the purchase of an EDM solution requires staff time, adequate financial resources, and a variety of expertise to reach its full potential. Proper planning is necessary to ensure that small (defined here as one to ninety-nine employees) and midsized businesses (between one hundred and one thousand employees) gain financial returns that will surpass their initial outlay and guarantee a strong return on investment (ROI).

Investing in a high-quality EDM solution means that you suddenly have a “house” for your corporate information, but that is only the beginning. When utilized to its fullest, an EDM and automated workflow solution integrates with other pieces of technology within your organization and makes your business processes more efficient and cost-effective. By tapping into the collective power of the information stored in your diverse applications, whether they are related to financial, claims, applications, or other processing, you can dramatically improve service both externally and internally.

How can an SMB with limited IT staff and financial resources ensure that the project will not be bigger than what the organization can handle? Since a comprehensive EDM solution is often one of the largest capital expenditures made by an SMB, the implementation must be planned and carried out carefully to ensure there are no delays or failures. Despite the up-front costs, the savings and the increase in services and efficiency of a well-planned project are often recouped in a short period of time.

Many SMBs have smaller IT staffs than large organizations. They tend to have a wide variety of expertise in both IT and non-IT areas, but are often challenged by major projects in terms of the time requirements and expertise that are demanded to ensure their success. Therefore, they frequently search for bundled solutions that are easy to use, have strong security, and are scalable for growth. Unless SMBs have tremendous IT resources and internal custom development provides a real competitive advantage, they are wise to buy and deploy proven solutions rather than building their own. This article is intended to help an SMB sort out some of the most critical pieces to ensure that a technology solution is successful, and to present some solutions for common challenges faced in planning, implementation, maintenance and support.

Planning

Challenge #1: Finding a vendor who will be a partner in your success

SMBs tend to be cautious when buying technology solutions. Criteria for purchasing extend beyond just products with outstanding “bells and whistles” and the promise of increased productivity; SMBs expect products to improve their overall business performance. Products need to be easy to install, configure, use, maintain, and support; offer modularity and be scalable to allow for growth; and must be available at an affordable price point. In order to have the solution reap the expected results, your chosen vendor needs to understand your line of business, what you are trying to achieve, your financial and time constraints, and much more. A state-of-the-art software solution may be enough if you have a large IT staff that can conduct analysis, testing, maintenance, support, and disaster recovery planning with internal resources alone. However, if your resources are like those of many SMBs, the stretch of time and skills may be too great.

When evaluating potential solutions, ask the vendor for clients you can reference. Although vendors may make great promises, peer references will help you determine if they are deliverable. Consider asking the referenced clients the following questions to determine if the vendor will provide the skills needed to ensure your success:

• Do the technology partners have prior experience with SMBs?
• How are the vendor’s support and professional services?
• Are answers given promptly?
• Are the services high quality?
• Is the solution reliable?
• Does the solution leverage the value of your other investments, such as your claims or loan processing software, accounts payable or receivables, or other applications?
• What improvements in business performance have resulted from the implementation of the vendor’s software?

Challenge #2: Determining the total cost of ownership (TCO) for your EDM and/or workflow project

Just as there are fixed costs and additional potential costs when you buy a home, there will probably be variable costs that result from the implementation of your chosen solution, and a realistic accounting of these costs is essential to your overall financial analysis. Although the business needs of an SMB parallel those of a larger organization, SMBs often possess a smaller margin for financial missteps in IT projects. A TCO is an important part of your ROI analysis. It helps a company to forecast the amount of time required to show measurable ROI, and to determine the real value of the solution.

Kelly Lewis, President of the Technology Council of Pennsylvania and a former State Representative, addresses the cost issue for SMBs, stating, “The decision to deploy a new technology is sometimes one of the largest capital expenditures a company makes, and its implementation and success are often mission critical to a firm and its existence. In other words, a mistake, delay, or failure could end the company. Partnering with strong vendors and business or IT consultants to outsource some of the expertise and services can help to ensure that a company’s EDM implementation will be timely and successful.”

A risk assessment assists in establishing additional costs that could occur in the event of a delay in the implementation or a performance problem, so that all potential costs are considered. If your own IT staff lacks the time or skills for this, remember that business consultants, IT consultants, and some vendors can provide these services, or complement the work of a company’s staff if these skills are needed. When evaluating the costs of your solution beyond the software, ask the following questions:

• Will you need to add hardware, make changes or additions to the infrastructure, or upgrade any of your existing applications?
• What resources (financial and staffing) will be needed for staff training?
• Will you need to budget for outside expertise to do the risk assessment, business process analysis, and overall project planning?
• What will be the impact on the existing solution, as well as on the company and its corporate culture, when the new solution is added?
• Do you need to outsource parts of your business operation while your staff tests the solution before it goes “live”? Ask your vendor to provide you with a realistic estimate of the time that will be required for users to define the new application and to test it, so you can determine whether you will need to outsource parts of their job temporarily during the analysis, ramp-up, and testing periods, and account for this in your cost analysis.
• Have you considered the potential costs associated with unexpected system failures (natural or man-made), power outages, or incidents of diminished performance? Will you need assistance in business continuity or disaster recovery planning, or do you have the resources to handle this internally? Having these plans in place will ultimately cost far less than not having them.

Another important element of cost can be the usage of the system. While some vendors offer solutions that include unlimited usage of the product or service (scanning, forms processing, or Web services, for example), many vendors charge based on usage. Ask your vendor about additional costs once the system is running, and evaluate your potential usage so you can choose your solution with the cost structure in mind.

Implementation

Challenge #1: Evaluating business processes and reviewing your IT infrastructure

A thorough evaluation of your company’s existing business processes is critical to your project’s success. If you fail to take the time to analyze your manual procedures and improve them, the automation will still improve the accessibility to your information (and, in the case of automated workflow, expedite your processing), but you will not take full advantage of the power of your EDM solution. In addition, to encourage optimal performance of the system, you need to have the infrastructure in place to support the EDM solution as well as the other in-house and line of business applications with which you plan to integrate.

What do you need to do to accomplish this? Who can help your stretched IT staff with these processes? After the scope of your project has been defined, your IT staff, IT consultants, and/or vendors should be able to help you evaluate the infrastructure you need to support your software solution. To maximize the solution’s efficiency and improve your business performance, you need to study your processes thoroughly, looking for ways to standardize them and eliminate the unnecessary handling of information by too many people. Business consultants and knowledgeable vendors can help you with this process.

Once the solution has been configured for your needs, a thorough indexing plan should be used to analyze your staff’s needs and to ensure that information is stored in a way that makes it easy for them to find. Like a multi-volume encyclopedia or a large grocery retailer, you need to understand the very different ways in which people organize information and the words that they use to search for materials so that each document, image, voice mail, fax, or email can be indexed thoroughly. If you lack internal expertise in this area, your vendor should be able to give you an indexing plan or other guidelines that will help you in this process.

Challenge #2: Assessing internal IT skills: using your versatility wisely

The business operations of SMBs are similar to larger organizations. However, their resources are fewer, and staff must often fill a variety of roles. IT staff in SMBs require more than broad IT knowledge; they may require management, communications, writing, or other skills as well. Despite their many talents, the specialized skills required for a major technology implementation often challenge SMBs, and may not be diverse enough for a major EDM project, especially if a thorough workflow integration is planned.

What can the IT staff in an SMB do to ensure that the project will be planned properly and carried out successfully? Consider in-house versus outside expertise; evaluate first the skills you have within your organization. Maybe you can rearrange staff responsibilities during the project implementation period to take advantage of staff skills that are currently untapped. Do you have someone with experience in business process analysis, communications, or project planning whose skills can be assigned to the project? Can smaller parts of their job routine be outsourced temporarily to allow for the reassignment? Do you have an internal IT or business consultant who can do some of the process analysis and disaster recovery planning?

Neal Castles, President of Castles Technology Consulting, LLC and a former VP of the Centre County Chamber of Business and Industry, states, “SMBs are different from big businesses in that they have fewer people wearing just as many hats. Small businesses may not be able to afford enough IT staff or be able to manage simple technology investments without help. Partnering with technology consultants, IT vendors and business consultants can help them to develop technology plans, realistic budgets and business processes that can help them achieve technology coordination, efficiency and growth.”

If you need to outsource business process analysis, risk assessment, business continuity or disaster recovery planning, or communications planning, consider these options and tap into your chosen vendor’s resources. A strong vendor should have an understanding of your market and your business needs, and their involvement will help ensure that they have a firm understanding of your unique business operations and objectives. The clearer the vendor’s understanding of your business goals, the greater the chance that the project will meet your highest expectations. Your expectations may even be surpassed.

Challenge #3: Maximizing your ROI by leveraging your existing technology investments

Just as your IT department will want to capitalize on the diverse talents of your IT staff, your company should leverage the value of your EDM and workflow solution to maximize the value of your existing line of business (LOB) applications. Many businesses have software that handles a specific need, such as claims or loan processing, policy administration, customer service, accounting, admissions, or other business applications. EDM and workflow should integrate thoroughly with these applications and enable you to do more by capturing the information within these applications and allowing you to store and access the data for use in other applications. By integrating EDM and automated workflow into your email, voice mail, or fax system, you can centralize your data and maximize the value of your corporate information to provide better and quicker services to your customers. As you evaluate all of this, make sure you balance the capabilities of the solution with the utility and the cost of the features.

How can a small IT staff take advantage of such opportunities? When evaluating potential integrations, the most important discussions your company can have internally start with “What if we could….” IT management should work closely with business managers to learn what would help them improve their business processes. Wish list discussions can lead to a better understanding of integrations that could help your company work faster and smarter.

Questions to pose internally might sound like this:

• “What if we could store the content of our phone calls in our EDM system so that we would have a more complete record of our interaction with customers?”
• “What if we could use the data stored about our policyholders to generate customized letters to customers whose information needs to be updated?”
• “What if we could use the important deadlines in contracts to automatically inform people in our company of the tasks they need to complete so we never miss a deadline?”
• “What if we could read all of the bar codes on our returned mail and have the returns generate automatic calls to customers who need to give us a more current address?”

Vendors and IT consultants can help you with the follow-up questions about the infrastructure and skills needed to perform the integration, and how to configure the software to do what you need. The key is to encourage your business team to think about what could be done if money and time were not obstacles, and then to see if some of these objectives can be met cost-effectively through the integration process.

Ask your business managers to dream big. The integration of your software may mean a larger investment of time and resources at the beginning, but you increase the value of your EDM addition many times more if you configure it to take advantage of the information within these systems. Talk with your vendor’s customers to learn how they have raised the value of their LOB and in-house applications with their EDM solution. Ask both your IT consultant and your vendor to brainstorm with you about additional ideas that could bring your organization’s service and performance to new levels. The limitations of a comprehensive solution are defined for the most part not by the capabilities of the technology, but by the creativity surrounding it!

Challenge #4: Change Management

During the vendor evaluation and selection process as well as the planning phase, change management is often a major concern for SMBs. Even when automated processing is intended to reflect the existing manual processes in a business, there are bound to be changes. Change is inevitable when an organization converts from manual to automated processing, and the time and skills needed to prepare for changes in corporate culture and end-user acceptance can be overwhelming for a small IT staff.

Business processes need to be analyzed, streamlined and improved, or the automation will simply make poorly conceived processes faster. There are several major components of change management; by planning, you can prepare for a smooth transition. Staff skills and time will be needed to:

• Prepare the staff for the changes and elicit their buy-in. If end-users are aware of the business reasons for the implementation and the ways the technology will make them more successful and efficient in their work, they are more likely to embrace the changes rather than to fight them or even undermine their success.
• Analyze the existing business processes. Changes will inevitably need to be made to regulate the collection of information and standardize the processes. If end-users are asked to participate in this process, there is greater buy-in and less resistance to change.
• Conduct a taxonomy. A taxonomy is a comprehensive analysis of your corporate documents and how different groups of people need to find them or the information within them. If you want to maximize the value of data for every type of user, you should consider interviewing representatives from the different departments and types of user who will need to access the information, and make sure the information is searchable for all types of users. In most cases, this can be done exclusively with internal resources. An indexing plan from the vendor, or guidelines from an IT or technologically savvy business consultant can help in this process.
• Plan for thorough training of management and end-users. Thorough training is one of the most effective tools in ensuring that the users of the technology will reap the full business benefits of the solution. Complete training will also help the individual users feel more confident and successful. Yet the time and skills needed to conduct a solid training program may be beyond the scope or resources of your IT staff. Work with your vendor’s professional services or training department to establish additional training you may need well before the solution is implemented.

Maintenance and Support

Challenge #1: Communicating Effectively with Your Vendor to Keep Costs Under Control

Poor communication can delay a project or cause a project to fail, even after it has been running smoothly and is producing the desired results. One of the most effective ways to address concerns is to communicate with your vendor before minor issues become major problems. Like preventive maintenance on a house, IT management should communicate with the solution provider if there are any concerns at any time during the entire project lifecycle, including planning, implementation, maintenance, and support periods for the project. A sudden error message on a screen or a malfunctioning executable might be easy to solve with the vendor’s support services. Left untended, or improperly addressed by the IT staff’s “workaround” solution, it might eventually cause additional problems that grow in number and complexity, cause the IT team to need outside services to fix the problem, and increase the costs to the business. If you have a house and suspect a leak, you will check it out, read the information about the roof, and ask questions so rot won’t set in. Your “data house” needs to be treated with the same care as your home.

Cost concerns often drive an SMB’s staff to try to solve all problems internally, but this can compound problems. If you considered support services carefully when you chose your vendor and their solution, you will understand the scope of your vendor’s customer support services. Your company and your chosen solution provider should have a strong relationship, so that your IT staff never waits to ask a question for fear of being charged. The support team should always be able to isolate the problem and identify if professional services will be needed, without your company being charged for this advice. Problems should not bloom like a garden; communicate with your support team so they can help you solve any minor issues before they become real problems.

Challenge #2: Managing, Upgrading and Supporting Your EDM Implementation

When is it important to upgrade? If you are integrating several solutions to enable the sum of the parts to do more than each can on its own, or adding a module to an existing solution, upgrades may be important to ensure optimal performance. How do you know when upgrades are truly essential? How can you proceed if you do not have the time or skills to perform the upgrades?

If you have a system that is supported by your vendor and is not causing you any headaches, an upgrade with the latest “bells and whistles” may not be necessary for you yet. As the vendor’s technology advances, however, you may not only be missing key opportunities to further improve your business; you may also encounter difficulties if you add other modules or upgrade one area of the solution without considering the others. Ask your IT consultant, conduct some research, review your vendor’s information about product support and integration, and ask your vendor (or multiple vendors, if you have an integrated solution with many players) what the impact will be of not upgrading before you make a decision that could have a negative impact on your existing project. Professional services should be available through your vendor or IT consultant to help you through the process.

Summary

• Ask questions of IT and business consultants to whom your organization has access, and find out who can provide valuable services you may need for your EDM and/or workflow project.
• Ask your chosen vendor for customer references who can talk with you about their relationship with the vendor and their use of the technology to solve their business problems.
• Ask your vendor about the types of information and services the company can provide in the areas of technical support and professional services, including business process analysis, assistance in developing a thorough taxonomy or indexing plan, end-user training, integration and upgrades, business continuity planning, and disaster recovery planning.
• Tap into IT and business consultants or a vendor’s professional services team for advice and specialized IT expertise.
• Engage in thorough project and communications planning long before you start the implementation process, regardless of whether you create your project plan internally or hire outside expertise.
• Explore integration with your LOB applications to maximize the value of each of your technology investments.

Finally, and most importantly, don’t forget to communicate regularly with your solution provider during every step of your project. Good vendors want to make sure that you succeed and that their technology has helped you reach the objectives to which you agreed. A vendor’s success depends on sales, but it relies far more on your genuine satisfaction.

About the author: Ron Prichard is the COO of Optical Image Technology, Inc. (OIT), creator of the DocFinity suite of electronic document management (EDM) and workflow software. He had ownership in and managed a small business for more than a decade prior to joining OIT.

For more information about Optical Image Technology and our DocFinity suite of integrated document management and workflow solutions, please visit our website at www.docfinity.com, contact our staff at info@docfinity.com, or call our offices at 814-238-0038.

 

©2006 Optical Image Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. DocFinity, IntraVIEWER, and XML FormFLOW are trademarks or registered trademarks of Optical Image Technology, Inc.