How To Implement A Cloud-Based Document Management System (And Get Your People To Like It) – Forbes
Vice President at Bayer Properties, overseeing financial services for the commercial real estate portfolio.
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Cloud-based systems for document management have been in high demand since the pandemic began. But implementation can be intimidating. One of the up-front criteria that makes a difference is the conversion support offered by your provider. For our organization’s conversion, we had a dedicated team that worked directly with us on the project. The provider’s level of support determines how painful and how successful the project is. Make sure you check it out thoroughly during your selection process.
The ROI is another point of consideration when approaching new software implementation. One of our most significant gains was an increase in accessibility that drove productivity. We structured in such a way that there was a “Published Documents” folder that contained all the final financials, contracts, leases and other legal documents for a one-stop shop for information needs. No more lost documents or waiting on someone to send a copy of a requested item. The system we chose had built-in workflows and electronic signature capabilities, so no more time spent routing documents, scanning and filing.
Our provider has robust security, data backups and the ability to create custom retention policies. We eliminated those individual services (and their cost) since the capability was rolled into the licensing fee for the web-based software. We were able to eliminate the hardware costs for onsite server storage, which were due for replacement in the year we converted at an estimated cost of $68,000. And, due to the evolving nature of web-based systems, the ROI continues to grow. Do yourself a favor and get some quotes to compare against your company’s costs.
Internally, the team you assemble for the project is critical. You need executive-level support (a sponsor) who is promoting the change. Their role is to remove roadblocks. You need a strong project manager who will put together the team and keep all the pieces moving forward. This person will spend a lot of time on the project, so some of the challenge is freeing up their time from daily tasks. Finally, you need a strong technical manager who understands your current setup and can partner with the project manager to ensure everything works as a cohesive whole with your current IT structure.
I was the project manager for our conversion. If you lead one of these teams, do not fall into the trap of working in a vacuum because it’s “faster.” Ours was a highly collaborative effort. The team members who participated took back their knowledge and enthusiasm to their departments and shared it with co-workers. If you are wondering how to create this environment, I can only tell you what worked for me. As the project manager, the two most productive things I did were being tenacious and being relentlessly cheerful.
Based on what helped our transition be successful, here’s a list of key activities that may help yours, too:
• Select key team members based on knowledge, intelligence and adaptability. You don’t want an associate who has tons of knowledge but doesn’t deal well with change. You are actually better off with less experience and more enthusiasm.
• Let each team member work with their departments to figure out what they need and their preliminary ideas of structure. Project managers should be careful not to impose their own ideas at this point. You want the creativity flowing. I recommend the project manager not being the team member for your area of expertise. I’m an accountant, but I had a senior associate from our department participate. It kept me from bogging down in our department details.
• Have meetings with your software conversion team (the vendor’s team). They can provide great insight into best practices you need your teams to incorporate.
• If you’re the project manager, attend as many of the department meetings as you can possibly squeeze in. You won’t make them all, but you need to hear the ideas evolving and be able to remind people of best practices.
• Our group discussion of the global structure included the software conversion specialist, our internal team and a few of the department heads who had specific needs and/or strong opinions. Just because someone isn’t part of the conversion team doesn’t mean you can’t drag them into a meeting if you need their input. Project managers steer this conversation and keep it from getting hung up.
• Once you have agreed upon your structure, it’s time for the departments to work on polishing how their original ideas work within the framework. This will probably lead to a few more breakout sessions where problems are hammered out between conflicting needs and ideas. If you’ve done a good job of selecting your team, a lot of these will resolve without your input. For the ones that don’t, you will have to pull people together for brainstorming and collaboration. This is where being tenacious and relentlessly cheerful really pays off.
• When you go live, the software implementation team should have good training material and spend time with you understanding your structure and how to incorporate key points you want made. You may need more than one training session depending on the size of your organization. Record them all so you can pick and choose which one is the best to turn into a training video for future onboarding of new associates.
• The project manager can make a big difference in the weeks after training to aid in acceptance and use of the new system. I sent out weekly “tips and tricks” offerings and encouraged others to send me their favorites. I also used the reporting function built into the system to monitor weekly use and publish a top 10 list for different categories, such as most logins and most file uploads/downloads. I even included a section where I called out the overall most active executive who used the program. People loved it, and the competition was stiff to be on those lists. You can’t compete unless you are using the system. Mission accomplished.
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