5 tips for implementing Document Management Software – CSP

Blog|Document Management and Workflow - ECM - CSP |   7 min. |

You may not yet be familiar with the concept of CSP Software as it is a recent name. When storage in shared folders became too small for organisations, Document Management Solutions emerged, which you may be more familiar with. Then, when these tools evolved and started to manage not only documents but also workflows, they came to be called Enterprise Content Management or ECM Software. Finally, with the advent of cloud services and the importance of cross-platform interaction, today we refer to them as Content Services Platforms (CSP). However, in practice, this whole family of tools is still referred to as Document Management Software.

Briefly, we can say that CSPs are platforms that allow the company to manage the information of its business processes (content) through different services, such as repositories or APIs and automate these processes, to reduce manual actions and make available to all users the information they need at all times.

 

I already have my CSP Software, but where do I start?

Before telling you the tips you should follow when implementing CSP Software in your organisation, we recommend that you first analyse which are the platforms that best fit your use case, their features and functionalities. Therefore, if you have not yet taken this preliminary step, we recommend you read the post What is CSP Software? – Content Services Platforms in which we develop all the critical capabilities that a CSP must have.

When you are familiar with the concepts of this type of software, know your use case and verify that the CSP software you have chosen meets all the critical capabilities needed according to Gartner, it is time to discover the keys to implement it in your organisation.

 

1 – Define the necessary requirements and involve the managers in the process.

The first step before implementing your CSP tool is certainly to have clear requirements for your organisation’s content services. In addition, you will not only have to have the agreement of your company’s managers, you need to involve them in the process as you need to design an effective roadmap together.

Recommendations

  • Gather requirements, immediate and future ones, from all departments through surveys.
  • Involving managers is the smartest option, as failure to do so may risk stopping the implementation if it is not approved by your organisation’s leaders. This can be a waste of time and money.
  • Design a roadmap that covers your company’s needs and market demands. To improve processes and workflows, we recommend that you focus on the ultimate goal of the tool (business indicators to be improved), and not only in its functionalities.

 

2 – Choose a CSP Software that fits your use case.

Another step before implementing your CSP software is to evaluate whether it corresponds to your use case. To do this, you must first be clear about which one corresponds to your sector or activity.

The use cases for Content Services Platforms are as follows:

  • Digital business transformation
  • Cloud office content services
  • Content consolidation
  • Information governance
  • Content and process automation

At Docuo we focus our CSP Software on the use case of Content and Process Automation. Through our tool you will be able to automate the creation and management of your company’s documents and workflows. If this is your use case we recommend you to try our Content Services Platform for 30 days for free.

Recommendations

  • Analyse if your use case and business requirements are aligned with those of your CSP.
  • Make a shortlist providers that focus their platform on your specific use case.
  • Evaluate the compatibility of the software APIs with the systems you work with in your company and the capacity for direct integration with other applications such as the office suite (Microsoft 365), the invoicing programme (ERP), the online collaboration tool you use regularly (Teams, Zoom, Slack…) or the documentation consolidation system (SharePoint, etc.).

 

3 – Do the training before implementation.

This is not mandatory and in some scenarios it may be better to do it the other way around, especially when there are short deadlines, but to drive the correct implementation of the CSP in your organisation, it is important to have the necessary training sessions beforehand to learn in depth about all the capabilities of the tool.

Recommendations

  • The resources provided by the CSP provider will be very useful to get the most out of it. You can find interesting content in the product documentation, its website and frequently asked questions.
  • Make a pyramid training. For administrators, we recommend that they have a full training on the tool. They will be the ones who will train the end users and demonstrate how it works.

Docuo offers different training services, including training for Content Services Platforms. We adapt to the customer´s use case, providing fully customised training, with specific examples and practical cases.

 

4 – Develop processes before implementing them in the tool.

Getting your organisation’s workflows into your CSP is perhaps the key point of implementation. Therefore, we recommend you to choose the processes that you want to implement initially in the CSP Software. For each of them you should analyse all information flows, including: creation, storage, distribution, file consolidation, analysis and lifecycle.

Once this step is done, you will be able to establish an order of implementation of all the necessary content and develop a standard metadata framework. This will make the implementation more efficient.

Recommendations

  • Pay attention to the automation features offered by the CSP, do not try to replicate the manual version of the processes exactly.
  • Simplify processes before implementing them. The same workflow can be implemented in many different ways in the CSP Software. The goal should be to reduce manual actions and simplify the process as much as possible. Generally, users tend to implement workflows in a way that is too complex to cover all cases (even the most infrequent ones) thinking that this will save them time, and what is usually achieved is the opposite. Implementing a CSP can be the perfect time to cut waste from all our workflows before automating them.
  • You won’t know everything you need from the tool until you start using it. Therefore, avoid lengthy implementations and aim to start with a working prototype (Minimum Viable Product) as soon as possible. Then make successive improvements as you go along, based on user experience.
  • Make the platform accessible to all departments, so that not only your team, but the whole company, can improve data search results or make more efficient use of content.
  • In the case of giving the entire organisation access to the CSP platform, we recommend you to create a set of permissions and security and data protection profiles for all files in the software. This way, you will have control over the content and the users who can access or manage it.

 

5 – Implement your CSP as a team.

The providers of the CSP are the ones who know the tool best, so the most important thing to do is to implement the software with them to ensure a good result. That’s why Docuo has a team of experts specialised in implementing our customised Content Services Platform.

Recommendations

  • Assemble an internal team within your company to act as a single voice and carry out the implementation of the CSP together with the selected supplier. They will also be responsible for communicating all platform-specific functions to the rest of the organisation.
  • Define responsibilities, roles and permissions between managers, administrators and end users to establish a more efficient use of the tool.
  • Make a contingency plan in line with your company’s business continuity strategy and a recovery plan to prevent information loss.