Change management
Throughout an EDRM project you need to ensure that people are ready for change. EDRM will impact almost all staff and people can feel very insecure and hence antagonistic if you simply tell them you are going to take their paper files away without explaining to them what you are going to provide them with as a replacement, what the benefits are, what training and support will be available and exactly when the change will happen.
Apart from the general awareness training and the communications plan described below, you need to publish the implementation plan and timetable and publicise the project office, the local contact points and the supplier contacts and indicate who staff should contact for information/support. The user group and the project board will agree where the pilots will be run and the preferred roll out order. This should be based on an informed assessment on how ready a department is for EDRM, how keen they are to be an early adopter and how suitable their records are for conversion. Once agreed this should be publicised and explained.
The next important step in the change management plan should be providing staff with a view of the planned solution. Once the preferred supplier has been selected they should be tasked with setting up a model office or a sample configuration of the solution. Staff in key departments including those who have signed up to run the pilots and be early adopters should be invited to use the model office and provide feedback on the user interface, the outline file plan and all aspects of the solution. Facilities should be provided for them to load sample documents and e-mails onto the system including scanning paper documents.
Next the project team and the supplier between them must provide a comprehensive change management or user implementation package for each section/Department starting with a pre-implementation workshop, an assessment of the records to be loaded onto the system; a plan for reducing paper storage; a plan for tidying up and restructuring local drives and e-mail inboxes; agreeing the folders to be set up and any backfile scanning and data migration requirements; setting up a training plan that ensures all staff are trained prior to implementation. It is important that these services are planned and either made a supplier requirement or a project team responsibility. The implementation package should provide a checklist for heads of department to complete to indicate that their department is ready to go live.
Between the supplier, the project team, any consultancy support and local contacts you need a mix of records management, IT and training expertise to provide a full change management package.
Training is a vital part of change management. When implementing a corporate EDRM solution you will need to provide at least four levels of training. Training for end users will ensure they know how to save documents to folders and index them and search for and retrieve them and that they can request new folders and other records services when required. If they are involved in team working it will include training in using the business process management or collaboration tools implemented alongside the EDRM solution.
Training for operators will include how to operate scanners and quality check and index documents into the system. Training for the records manager and the records management contact points will include the user training plus training on how to set up new folders and folder parts and how to review and dispose of folders and documents according to the agreed procedures.
Finally there will be system administrator training for those tasked with managing the system and registering new users, setting access rights and privileges, backing up and archiving data etc.
