Without a doubt the hardest part of deploying software to organizations is internal resistance and culture shock. Many organizations have members that are not familiar with the Internet, and more importantly, are comfortably acclimated to the very paper process that you are trying desperately to eliminate. Ignore these members at your peril – often, these are the members that can rally naysayers to rebel against the new system they perceive you to be forcing on them.
In order to account for this, any software provider must take a strategic approach to our software deployment. Before one line of code is written, a technology vendor must sit down with all of your stakeholders and leadership to understand how your organization works, and your specific concerns. One of the key issues to be discussed is cultural resistance. How are your members likely to respond to this software? What percentage of them will make use of the web-based aspects of your software, as opposed to relying on the old paper methodology? How can you engineer parallel processes to accommodate those that cannot or will not adopt new technology?
The most important question of all is: What are the cultural deal breakers? “When we started using the MAP, we previously had a completely paper process,” remarks Tony Scurry, Membership Manager of the 15,000-member National Society of Black Engineers. Users were used to paying in groups and having chapter treasurers send checks to headquarters. Some members didn’t have checking accounts. We knew whatever solution we chose would have to accommodate this.”
Identifying and acknowledging cultural deal breakers early on can be crucial for any organization adopting new software. Those things which fall into the rubric of the mission critical cannot be comprised, at any cost. “We see a lot of clients who have software packages they don’t like,” reflects Jonathan Falker, Account Executive at ARC Solutions, Inc. “When you talk to the people in the trenches about how they got there, it’s always one of three things: they didn’t think they had a choice because no one researched the competition, they all knew the software was terrible but were forced to adopt it due to pre-established relationships or political pressure, or, most commonly, the software they got was not what they had in mind when they saw the demonstration.”
How can this be avoided? Proper planning. “As an organization of IT managers and professionals, we approached the deployment of a software system with significant project management savvy,” described Valerie M. Thomas, Director of Membership Benefits for Black Data Processing Associates, who uses ARC Solutions, Inc. for Accounting and Payments, Membership, and Events. “[ARC] gave us about 100 pages of documentation, which described how every page was going to work, down to the field. They also printed an addendum for our customized needs, so we knew exactly what we were getting.” Agreeing on features beforehand can mitigate any discrepancy between your dreams and the reality of your vendor’s product, and ensure that your members receive the software you know that they need.
The result of all of this planning, discussion, and writing is a realistic understanding of the way in which new software will be used and received, a process for users that don’t want to do it the new way, and a mechanism by which you can hold your software vendor accountable for their mistakes. And in the end, that’s a lifesaver.
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