10 Things I Wish I’d Have Known When We Were First Going Paperless

Sometimes we are so rushed to implement a new project that we don’t sit down and think of all the processes that need to take place to do the job right. In some cases, we can get away with that, but when implementing technology solutions, the majority of the time we can’t.

Over the past few years, I have been gathering some “What I wish I would have known’s” from customers and friends when it comes to implementing document management software. Here are the top 10 reasons …

1. Spending more time on planning out the process
2. Wish we would have not bit off more than we could chew at first
3. The importance of documenting our processes when we used paper and after
4. We should have picked someone to champion the project instead of having too many decision makers
5. Explained what the process of going paperless meant and that everyone understood the benefits
6. Wish we would have invested in the training and consulting of the product instead of just trying to wing it ourselves
7. We shouldn’t have put EVERYTHING into our document management program
8. That we didn’t have to be perfect right out of the gate. Instead of prolonging the start of the project, we should have gotten started and then optimized our processes after a period of time
9. Scheduled more time to do lunch and learns for our staff to better understand the process
10. That we should have written down clearly defined business goals and objectives for implementing the document management solution and why we wanted to achieve them and not let the vendor dictate what they thought we needed

Do you find that these ring a bell with your office too? What are some of the things you wish you knew before implementing a document management program in your office?