The world is full of great ideas.
Your ideas for an e-project may look strong on paper, but many e-solutions never get past the idea phase. What’s holding them back? Not having the most critical components in place.
1. The executive team must believe the e-solution will support and attain the company’s strategic business goals.
2. There must be a framework of technology and enabled personnel to support the initiative.
3. The employees must understand the e-solution and how it can help them attain their personal business objectives so they will embrace the proposed change.
A successful e-project is about people. If you don’t get the critical decision-makers to buy into an e-project, the chance of it making it past the idea phase is zero. And most projects usually involve multiple departments, such as IT, accounting, customer support and vendors or suppliers.
One of the major hurdles to moving past the idea phase is finding a sponsor who is dedicated to the e-project. Without that sponsor, it’s easy for a project to stall. The first step is to review how the e-project meets business goals. If it merely improves the quality of business for one department, but requires a lot of company resources, it is unlikely to gain much support.
However, when a project is shown to improve a core business goal such as customer retention or increased peripheral sales, gaining support becomes easier. To gain support, you must uncover the needs, goals and objectives of your target audiences. You can then craft your solution to their business needs.
Next, realize that you gain more buy-in for your initiative throughout the organization when you show departmental managers what the project will do specifically for them. The initial focus is on direct benefits, as they are the easiest to identify. Once you have listed the departments that are the most important from which to gain support, associate the direct expense, add to the list and identify savings and benefits. Take the time to meet with department managers and explain who the sponsor of the project is and why it is important to the company and to the department.
Direct benefits might include less time to process an order, fewer people to process an order, a higher level of customer service, a higher quality deliverable from an improved process, lower travel expenses or utilization of underleveraged resources such as vendors or suppliers. Ask managers to review and identify items you have overlooked.
When you enlist the help of department managers, you greatly improve the chances of success for your proposals, establish yourself as a full business partner and are recognized for the value you deliver to your organization.
Finally, you have navigated through months of negotiations with department managers, executive team buy-ins and team meetings. The rollout date is set; the employees most affected by the e-project were identified many months prior.
Now how will you gain their support? After all, this change affects 10 percent of their daily duties. Even when the e-project team has properly established the project, it is still possible for it to fail. Why? Simply because the value of the project is not properly conveyed to the employees who must make it happen — and not just the employees handling the work today, but the employees who will be hired in the future.
How do you avoid this trap? Training.
Creating training for the e-project during the development phase:
- Greatly reduces the cost of training development as you can leverage much of the documentation created to describe the features of the solution;
- Ensures the training is ready when the solution is ready; and
- Permits time for pilot or beta testing prior to the rollout. A beta or pilot test greatly reduces obvious errors by skilled end users, enhancing a quality solution on the initial rollout
With appropriate documentation and training, an e-project is likely to enjoy long-term viability and bring the e-project team positive results.
Darla Root ([email protected]) is the president of BeanDance, an e-Learning solution provider based in Cleveland. The company has more than 200 online courses and customizes skill development solutions. Reach her at (440) 257-8687 or online at www.beandance.com.
