Too Busy to Succeed

If you are trying to expand your ECM system to new areas of your company, here are some of the push back challenges you will experience:

We don’t have the time

Any department that doesn’t have the time is probably spinning its wheels with inefficient processes. They are at the tipping point of productivity, but any change feels like it would be too much to go forward with it. Showing a prototype may only confuse them and make them more anxious. It takes a little gumption and risk taking to push the ECM solution into new areas. You will recognize the “don’t have time” folks by their techniques of not showing for meetings or leaving before the meeting ends.

We don’t have the in-house expertise

This is a common circular reference usually in conjunction with we don’t have a budget for this. More than likely, management didn’t think through the finer details. The expertise was probably in-house and then left to green pastures (I’m not cynical really). So, the team is left with outsourcing any technical work for applications that to integrate with your ECM system.

Do you have a budget for this?

Most departments will not have the appropriate knowledge as to the benefits of the end state of implementing an ECM solution. Whether it’s scanning, workflow, or electronic forms, etc., they will need to have a hands-on type of demo which serves as a reference point to understand what they will get out of the solution. You will be asked if you have a budget, but that’s not the point. The business has to drive the requirements and budget not the IT department. I’ve seen too many solutions fizzle because IT was trying too hard to promote what they thought the masses would like, AKA who’s using Sharepoint?

Our manual process works fine

This is a big hurdle to jump over. If faxing works, why spend $50k for scanning, licensing, etc.? In many cases, you have to expand the scope of a solution to include integration possibilities to be able to convince the business that their manual processing could be drastically streamlined and their expenses cut in half. Process automation for order tracking and billing pays for itself in a year – depending on the size of the implementation, but you get my point. When the cost savings are explained it’s usually a no brainer to get the solution implemented asap.