Last week, I bought an iPad for my wife and spent most of the day “setting it up for her”. It came ready to use, which meant, despite a full calendar or appointments and tasks, I spent the rest of the day playing with it and testing its capabilities…I have to say that I love it!!! 

Now I recognize I’m late to the iWhatever game, and by that I mean I haven’t personally owned an iPod or iPhone, so this new found fascination might be “old news” for some out there. What impressed me the most about the iPad was Apple’s accomplishment in making a complex technology straightforward for the end user. From the moment you take it out of the box and turn it on, you realize that you are holding something that has a lot of power and functionality but it was so simple to access.  The iPad gives you the ability to do so much without even opening up a user guide. Need to take notes during a conference…there is a built in notepad with a handy keyboard; want to quietly read the paper at a coffee shop…you can do so with ease and without the hassle of flimsy pages; you-tube videos (or any video) – you can watch easily and clearly on the big screen; need to make changes to the presentation that was just emailed to you – you can do it without logging on to a computer. Apple was able to take many different features and literally put them right at your fingertips, giving me and any other iPad user a simple power that is hard to describe. 

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With the cost of stamps going up and the postal service talking about halting Saturday delivery, it is a wonder that any money-conscientious business would regularly use the postal service to deliver monthly items such as bills or invoices when those items could be handled more efficiently and securely through on-line services. Whether you are mailing out invoices or mailing in a payment, there are options that will allow your business to handle these things electronically, saving both time and money.

The USPS is planning to raise rates, meaning the costs associated with mailing paper invoices and bills are going to increase.  Add to that the cost of paper to print the invoices and people to handle and mail the invoice or bill; what you are left with are a lot of unnecessary costs that increase your bottom line. On the flip-side, if you and your suppliers have a way to submit invoices and receive payments electronically, rising USPS rates will not effect to your bottom line, cost of paper will decrease, and the employees that once spent time handling and mailing invoices and bills can use their time more efficiently elsewhere.

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I was having a conversation with some of the team the other day talking about the keys to a successful implementation.  Things had been going smoothly so we wanted to capture what had been going “right”.  People were suggesting things like “active, engaged business sponsor” and “supportive, engaged technical staff” as well as a number of others.

The conversation went on around the group and a lot of good points and ideas were suggested.  The conversation came around to me and the question was asked – “what do you think is the key to a successful implementation?”.  I thought for a minute and said simply “communication”

Let me elaborate (just like the rest of group asked me to do) – all aspects of any implementation require successful collaboration, coordination and execution.  This requires communication.  Whether we are defining requirements, planning the deployment or implementing a configuration, communication is the key.  If subject matter experts do not clearly communicate their requirements, if IT resources do not clearly communicate the details of their technical environment, if project mangers do not clearly communicate plans, expectations, activities etc…. well, you can see where I would say communication is key.

I am not suggesting that all the other ideas put forward were not valid or insightful, just for me it boils down to communication.  As long as open, honest, two-way communication is happening and happening consistently, I believe every implementation will be successful.

I was talking to Phil, a former colleague of mine, last week and he was expressing his frustration over trying to build a contracts management software application on top of SharePoint. (Lucky me, just in time for a blog entry.) The way he told the story was hilarious, one of those Dilbert-type experiences that makes for a good laugh for anyone who has worked in an office for more than a week.

But underneath the laughter was a good amount of despair and Phil was feeling his position might be on the line. Most of his issues were around people not knowing what they really wanted the application to do and a failure on everyone’s part to understand the content management solution’s strengths and weaknesses.

No one really owned the process from the business side but lots of people had opinions – some very strong opinions and for very good reasons. Some were worried about the process of creating a new contract, some about missing legal obligations, some deeply concerned about risk mitigation, version control and compliance. These issues had been brewing through several corporate near-misses and one outright crisis that I won’t document here. One of the executives demanded the problems around contract creation and management be solved once and for all.

A manager had the idea of using SharePoint since they had it “lying around” and gave that idea to my friend and expected him to work some magic. Everyone on the team seemed to believe this was a viable option and faster than trying to buy a product or design a custom solution. After all, there was business pain that had to be fixed fast.

Weeks of research and many months of design iterations later and they were no closer to consensus, much less a working application.

After listening to this for a few minutes, I couldn’t help but chime in. The issue comes down to not having a complete understanding of the problem to be solved and the supporting belief that throwing technology at a process will automatically improve it. The solution hinged on people being able to effectively collaborate on a process with quite a few steps and the problem was different based on the role of the person looking at it. The initial creator of the document had one mission. The next person who had to validate information and sign off had a different goal. And so on, and so on, from start to finish. A big issue was that the workflow wasn’t static, there were many possible variations and exceptions based on a whole host of conditions.

The entire team was deeply concerned about creating reminders and escalations since a big part of the problem they were trying to solve involved issues falling through the cracks. Many attempts to diagram and customize the process had not resulted in a workable solution.

Finally, after several frustrating months and many arguments, he called me looking for some advice. The whitepaper we posted here, is our attempt to help Phil and others like him, get business value from their enterprise content management platforms. We decided to share with all of you with the hopes it spares you from Phil’s long hours and frustrations.

Prodagio A/P now allows the Business Administrator to configure both the invoice’s header and line-item information in the same window.
To configure Prodagio A/P and its Actions menu for editing headers and line-items in the same window using the Edit Invoice option, follow this procedure:

1. Login in with Business Administrator permissions.
2. Click the Administrator tab, then Menu Options, then Modify.
3. Select the User Role from the drop-down list.
4. In the Available Menu Options column, select Edit Invoice.
5. Move Edit Invoice to the Current Menu Options column.
6. Select Edit Invoice and move it up or down to the required position with the Up or Down buttons.
7. Click Save.
8. Repeat the above steps for each User Role needing the combined header and line-item window, saving after each.