Data Storage™ Blog, a discussion of practical records management.

Electronic Records Training and EDM Implementation Part 1

  

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Information Overload 

There is a lot of information available about transitioning hardcopy paper storage to electronic document management (EDM).  If you've taken the cdia+(Certified Document Imaging Architect ) you've been made sick with this information and probably struggle to figure out how to apply these practices in the real world.  

Unfortunately most small businesses don't have the resources available to faithfully & fully follow those best practice implementation guidelines.  They don't have the human resources to create committees, have full time project managers, to name a few.  Moreover, they just want to get the job done, period.  

In the face of that reality we have created a quick reference guideline that maximizes adoption rates by utilizing the resources that are actually available to small businesses.  

They are.........Drum Roll Please.

 Training Training Training 

You truly can’t over emphasize the importance of training you’re employees in this area.  They’ve been doing their work using the same process for years and years.  When we implement a paperless office solution, we need to train users enough that we start to replace their ingrained work habits.  For accounting personnel using a new EDM,  I recommend small group training for up to four hours on day one, four hours on day three, one hour refreshers once per week for the next two weeks then one hour refreshers on a quarterly basis thereafter.  The two four hour sessions should be in person, the refreshers work just fine with webinars. It’s also helpful if your software vendor can provide you with YouTube videos for your user’s reference. 

Put EDM on job description 

If a user is supposed to be using EDM in the course of their work then incorporate that into their job description.  Make adoption and efficient use of the document system part of the employee review process; as a consequence, management has the opportunity to sit down with the employee on a quarterly basis and discuss their proficiency. 

Develop a strategy for integrating the old backlog 

It’s crucial to develop a seamless strategy for incorporating the backlog of old analog/paper documents into the EDM.  After all, the day before the roll out date all of the work was being done on paper.  Implementations can get messy when a user was working with a paper contract on Friday, go live the following Monday, and continue to work with paper.  There is no clean break there. 

We’ve developed a program for backlog conversion of in house file rooms and working documents.  This isn’t a task that can be taken lightly.  We recommend a scan-on-demand approach, this way you scan only what you need.  There are a lot of moving parts and we’ve figured it out for you.  You can learn from our experience (mistakes) by hitting the button below to check out our backlog scanning procedure.