Why Document Management Projects Fail

Why do document management projects fail? The answer is simple. Document management projects fail because the wrong plan—or worse, no plan at all—is in place.

But what might cause a plan to go wrong? And how can you prevent it?

How Document Management Plans Go Wrong

There are many ways that document management plans go wrong and cause projects to fail.

 You Go Too Big—and Struggle to Find ROI

Without the right plan, it’s easy to bite off more than you can chew. Grand plans of getting your entire organization up and running with document management are grand indeed—but they’re not always realistic. At least, they’re not realistic simultaneously. (You can achieve them over the long haul, with proper planning.) When you go too big too soon, it puts the project at risk of being abandoned.

Trying to implement document management in one fell swoop sounds great at surface-level. Surely, getting it fully implemented across all departments would be the best path to ROI. Right?

Wrong. At least, wrong unless you have the unlimited resources to get the project completed fast. For most businesses, document management is best implemented gradually. Whether this means one department or one aspect (i.e., scanning documents) of document management, it’s the best way to help your organization realize ROI.

You Don’t Have Clear Benchmarks

Defining your benchmarks for document management is crucial to the success of your project. Lofty goals—like “we want to go paperless”—don’t count. They’re great—and they certainly define the ultimate purpose of your project. But they don’t give you solid benchmarks for measuring success.

The right document management plan should have clear benchmarks. These might include:

Implement a capture process for incoming documents

Scan all paper documents

Standardize the process for documents produced by your ERP (or other business system)

Get one department fully implemented first

Reduce time spent on document management-related tasks

When you set the right benchmarks for your document management project, you’re sure to succeed.

Your Users Aren’t On Board

You did it—you implemented document management at your business. And then you realize…nobody is using the system the way they should be.

User adoption is critical to the success of any document management project. If user adoption isn’t covered by your document management plan, then you have the wrong plan. Your project will fail if your users aren’t on board.

So when you’re planning for document management, take your users into consideration. Make sure your plan includes initiatives for bringing the users on board. These initiatives may include making sure the users know about the document management system, teaching them how to use it, and showing them how it will make their jobs easier.

Your Plan for Success: The Phased Approach

Don’t let your document management project fail. Make sure it’s a success by following the phased approach.

The phased approach takes your goals for document management and breaks them down into manageable chunks. Each phase should be easy to attain, and you should see a clear association between that phase and ROI.

While phases may differ depending on your projects and goals, here are questions to ask when determining the phases for your document management project.

If you would find some detailed guidance on the phased aproach useful, here is a link to Fortra’s whole article on this topic.

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