Eight Steps Before Buying an Information Management Tool

1. Prepare for Change

Implementing any kind of information management tool means that change will happen within your organisation. Change will occur around people, procedures and technology. Taking adequate steps to prepare for change will ensure that you will achieve the results desired from buying and implementing an information management tool.

There are a small number of key things an organisation must do to prepare for, and manage, change.

Have clear expectations about the results the change is intended to achieve. Why is the change necessary and how will it improve your organisation?

It is also vital to ask if your organisation can cope with change. Do you have the capacity and skills to work through the actions required to make the change happen? How will you know that the change has been successful? What will it look like? What will be different?

Getting your people ready for the change is critical to the success of the implementation. Involve them as soon as possible in the project. Their input is crucial and the more information they get about the reason for the change, as well as the steps required to achieve the change, the better.  This information should be given as early as possible.

It is essential to make it as easy as possible for your people to adopt the change, so keep the change strategies relevant to each individual or group. While everyone needs to know the strategic reasons for the change, managers also need to know the impact of the change on the overall operations of their division, while workers at the coal face need to know the direct impact on their daily work.

Prepare a change management plan and update it as the project planning progresses. During the implementation it is essential to follow through on the plan and monitor the outcomes. If something is going wrong, find out why and attend to it by tweaking the actions outlined in the plan.

There is a wealth of information available on preparing for and managing change. Some useful sites are listed below.
http://www.change-management.com/tutorial-2007prep-strategy.htm
http://www.businessballs.com/changemanagement.htm
http://www.brighthub.com/office/project-management/articles/15306.aspx
http://ezinearticles.com/?ADKAR-Change-Model---An-Evaluation-of-Its-Strengths-and-Weaknesses&id=3164961


2. Understand the work process

Its sounds obvious: an information management tool is going to manage information. However, what is not usually appreciated is that information is generated by a work process. That work process determines what, and how, that information is created.

You can’t change something if you don’t know what it actually is, or does, in the first place.

So, in order to implement an information management tool, you have to start with understanding the work process. Begin with getting the people who do the work to describe what that work is, and how it is done. Give them the opportunity to tell you what they like and dislike about the current work process.

Discussions with the people doing the work are a key part of any change management strategy. These discussions are opportunities to respect the value of the worker’s efforts, to hear their grumbles, and to give them an opportunity to let off steam about the upcoming change. They are also opportunities to get your people to think outside the box of what currently “is”, as well. And it is also a brilliant opportunity to start getting them thinking about what changes would make their life easier.


3. Decide whether you are ‘paving over cow paths’ or aiming for significant improvement

Having developed an understanding of the work processes and the information which is going to be affected by the new information management tool, you now have an important decision to make: will you ‘pave over cow paths’, or will you go for significant improvement of current work practices?

Because work practices gradually build up over time, ‘the way we do it here’ can be based on reasons that are no longer relevant. So, take the next step and ask the naive question: “Why is it that way?” This will reveal the difference between realistic, practical business rules and the ones that are “because the manager 3 years ago said so. We actually don’t know why he wanted it done that way.”

‘Paving over cow paths’ is basically just computerising what is already in place. It will make what happens now go faster, but not necessarily better. Be careful that you are not simply planning to make an existing mess happen more quickly!! On the other hand, if you have a good existing system which could do with just going faster, then ‘paving’ is a good way to go. Nevertheless, take the time to review current work practices and identify opportunities for improvement.

Significant improvements require looking at what happens now with new eyes. What would it look like if we aimed for radical change to achieve a remarkably different result? Of course, significant improvements will take significant time and effort, and require focussed commitment. However, this commitment can bring substantial benefits.

Identify the results you want and then make your choice about which approach will bring those results. Document the desired results. Check that everyone is on board with the desired results and understands, in broad terms, what is anticipated to change because of the project.


4. Ensure your ‘soft’ infrastructure supports your requirements

‘Soft’ infrastructure is the background configuration that is needed within the new information management tool to enable the content being managed to be meaningful. For instance:

• Security framework – who can access what
• Metadata structures – what are ‘field’ names going to be called and what is the definition of what goes into each field
• Retention and Disposal schedules – how long are you going to keep documents and records before they are destroyed

Your ‘soft’ infrastructure requirements will depend on the content that you are planning to manage, such as, data (e.g. contact or geographic information), websites, digital assets, library holdings, documents and or records.

Whatever the content, the ‘soft’ infrastructure needs to be

• Comprehensive – covering all aspects of the content
• Thorough – containing a sufficiently deep level of detail for your organisational requirements

5. Check out the market place offerings

You are not at this point aiming to select the tool. Rather, you are taking another step in refining your requirements.

No matter how sophisticated the market place offerings are, a perfect match to your identified (and hopefully improved) operational practices is highly unlikely. So you will have to, as some point, decide which of your desired practices you are willing to give up or alternatively, which existing practices you will have to live with unchanged.

At the same time, looking at market place offerings gives you another opportunity to think outside the box and identify different, more effective ways of doing work because the technology can enable these new ways.

Part of this check will also focus on identifying how people will work within the new environment. You will be able to identify upcoming changes that you had not previously identified.

You don’t have to do checking this in detail. Just enough to ensure that you have given you and your organisation the opportunity to allow new technology some input into your desired results before finalising your requirements.


6. Understand your current IT infrastructure

Identify the potential impact of new technology on your existing IT infrastructure.

Do you have any out-dated hardware or software that may make implementation of a new tool problematic? What ball park costs are you likely to up for if you need to change your existing IT? When is the best time for making these changes – before implementation of the new tool or as part of the implementation?

You will have some idea of the answers to these questions, given your preliminary check of market place offerings. Now is the time to flesh out these issues and put them into the planning mix.


7. Know what you want your new software to do

You now have sufficient information to document your final requirements. Depending on the degree and complexity of your needs, the requirements document may be very simple or very detailed.

Indicate in your final requirements document which are your essential requirements and which are your desirable or optional requirements. When everything is equally important it often results in vendors not being able to meet your needs, because in a realistic world it is impossible to meet every requirement. However, if a vendor can meet your essential requirements better than their competitors, then you are likely to get a better outcome, even if your desirable requirements are not met.

Keep the language in your document as jargon-free as possible. Your organisation may use terms that have no meaning to vendors. So either provide an explanation for your special terms or use terms that are widely used outside your organisation.

Keep in mind the kind of support you want. Are you going to insist on ‘local’ support or are you willing to live with remote support delivered by phone or over the net?

Set up a “buying committee” which includes a range of people in your organisation, especially some people to represent those who will be using the software daily and those who will be affected by the output of the software, such as managers (recipients of reports).

The following site offers detailed Request for Price / Quote Tender templates for sale for a range of software products.
http://www.infotivity.com/rfp_template_db-gen.html

The following link takes you an excellent list of information that would be useful to include in your requirements document for document management software.
http://www.filehold.com/business/rfp-template.htm


8. Go to the market place with your formal requirements

Ask your network for recommendations for other potential suppliers. Search the web.

Send out your requirements.

Have clear criteria for the selection of the tool and vendor. Ensure that everyone on your Buying Committee understands the criteria.

Assess and summarise the responses to help you identify for which vendors are hitting the spot and which aren’t.

Arrange the live demonstrations with your top respondents. Discuss concerns with them. Look for frank responses. You are likely to have a long relationship with the vendor, so you need to begin to see how trustworthy they are. Note if they keep their word on small things, and if they respond openly to difficult questions.

Facilitate the Committee’s discussion on the good and not-so-good aspects of each response. Encourage open exchange of assessments within your Buying Committee while discouraging shouting matches and pre-emptive dismissive comments on valid observations. There is nothing worse than being told by a committee member two months after the purchase that they had noted something avoidable in the selection phase but were too intimated to mention it at meetings at that time.

And finally, make your decision.

You have now taken 8 steps on the road to better information management for your organisation.