5 Tips For Getting Your ECM Implementation Right The First Time

If you’re preparing to implement an enterprise content management (ECM) system, you want to get it right the first time. By following the right process, that’s a reasonable expectation.

The key is to identify your business needs and design the best solution for your company before you get to the implementation stage.

Here are five tips for an ECM implementation that’s successful right off the bat:

1. Define the leadership team: Getting leadership buy-in early in the process helps you push through any hurdles that arise during the planning and implementation.
   
   
2. Create awareness: Make sure that you’re communicating the leadership team’s vision to the rest of the organization. This is an important part of any change management strategy, and helps drive user engagement and adoption when you roll out the new ECM system.
   
   
3. Identify internal champions: Assess your user base to identify people who are enthusiastic about new technology and tend to be early adopters. By bringing them into the implementation process early, they are likely to become valuable internal champions, helping to create more excitement for the project among the rest of your users.
   
   
4. Create a design plan: Make sure you take the time to identify your business needs and think through how the solution is going to work for the organization. This ensures that your current business objectives are at the foundation of your solution design.
   
   
5. Practice makes perfect: You could do everything else right in your ECM implementation but still fail to achieve your goals if you don’t invest enough time and resources for training users. You don’t want users to feel like they’re being left without any support. A good approach is to have users practice various use cases with sample files, making sure they’re comfortable with the system before you start using it full time.

If you’re finding that your implementation is wandering off course, don’t panic! There are a number of ways to get back on track.

Start by assessing feedback from users and directors to figure out why the implementation is running into problems in a certain phase. The solution may be to redefine your initial goals for a phase, or break it into smaller pieces.

Maybe you’ve bitten off more than you can chew. If that’s the case, look for ways to simplify that first rollout so you’re not trying to change too much at once. Or, you may need to redesign aspects of the implementation based on a changing understanding of your business needs.

You can’t throw money and software at a business problem and expect a successful outcome. But when you’ve laid the right groundwork, it’s possible to get your ECM implementation right the first time. The more thought you put into it, the more realistic that goal becomes.

Want to learn more about enterprise content management solutions for your business problems? Contact DocuWare today for a free consultation and your document management roadmap.