Technology implementations are often surrounded by technical specifications, IT infrastructure, source files, interfaces, and all those other tech words that inevitably take precedence over the most important aspect of any system implementation: the business users.

IT projects mainly fail not because of an incorrect installation, lack of features, or bugs in the systems, but because of the lack of support from business users. With the users often relegated to second place, it is of little wonder that a 2004 CHAOS report from the Standish Group finds that 53% percent of IT projects are considered "challenged" and 18% failed, while a 2001 Conference Board survey reports that 40 percent of projects fall short of achieving their business goals within one year of going live.

Involving business users in practically every step of a technology's implementation is essential to the project's success. One way to ensure that they are being involved is to create (either do it yourself or get help from a solution provider) a "solution design," which is a document that outlines the business requirements and clarifies how a certain technology will help the business achieve its goals.

A solution design can be used in any technological implementation. It is a proven tool to involve your users, help you understand your business problems, define goals and requirements, design a solution, and plan the approach in a way that gives you complete control over any project.

Knowledge Management and Collaboration

Perhaps the most ironic area where IT projects fail—and where a company can benefit most from a solution design—is in the field of Knowledge Management and Collaboration (KMC). KMC systems are designed to manage knowledge in organizations, giving users a way to create, capture, store, and disseminate expertise and knowledge. These systems act as central repositories for facts, solutions to problems, and various other forms of information and provide easy ways for departments to collaborate on projects, brainstorm new ideas, and make decisions—even if teams are not physically present.

In these systems, the business users are not only the users of the system, but also the suppliers of the information. By not involving them from the beginning, you remove the very resource you're trying to eventually capture: their knowledge. Excluding the business users from giving their input here is like keeping a carpenter from using his preferred tool to drive in a nail.

Unfortunately, many solution providers are more interested in selling you their technology than designing a solution that fits your needs. That's why I recommend following a seven-step process to create the solution design.

Proven Solution Designs: Seven Steps to a Successful KMC Implementation

The solution design consists of two parts, the business design and the technical design. Both use a proven seven-step methodology to guide you through the process of uncovering problems and discovering opportunities for improvement.

Following this approach in creating your business design guarantees that your users have a voice in the project and ensures that the business, not the technology, is driving the implementation.

Step One: Understanding Your Problems

The first step is to understand the problems your company faces. You must involve key users and departments to gain a sense of what is causing your knowledge-sharing to break down. Why aren't users able to access the information they need? Where is communication breaking down? And why is it difficult to schedule collaboration efforts?

Let's say your research and development department complains about difficulty in collaborating with manufacturing when they are in the planning stages of a new product. The first step is to dig deeper and really uncover what is going on and why it needs to be fixed. Maybe this communication barrier is impacting the speed in which new products are launched. Or maybe the cost for new-product development is escalating. Whatever the case, your business users are the front line in identifying these problems. They know which knowledge-sharing processes are working and which are not. You will have to determine, for example, who in your research and development department and who in the engineering department is involved in the process and get them to talk. You may discover that what was initially perceived as the problem is, in reality, the symptom of something bigger. Listen carefully to what they say and guide them through this process of discovering where the problem is.

A word of caution here is needed. Try to steer the discussion out of the realm of technology. People may start complaining about the network being slow or the database not having what they need, but what you are trying to assess is the business impact. What is preventing people from sharing what they know, and how is this impacting your company's objectives? As long as you keep the problem areas focused on business issues, the remaining steps will be easier to follow.

Step Two: Identify Goals and Requirements

Now that you and your users have identified the problems, translate them into a list of clearly stated goals you and your company wish to accomplish. Examples could be something measurable in the bottom line (e.g., 20 percent growth in business each year) or a method of streamlining a current process (e.g., providing quick and easy access to all knowledge documents).

Involve the users in a discussion of what the ideal scenario should be. What would they want to accomplish? Regardless of what comes out of the brainstorming phase, jot those ideas down and let them flow. Then, go back to what was discussed during step 1 and ask candidly whether being able to do those things would positively impact the company, and then solve the problem they uncovered. This checks-and-balances approach helps keep everyone focused on the target: solving the business problem.

Next, think about what requirements will be related to your goals. The requirements are the details that drive your goals forward. They articulate what the solution needs to do and will later serve as a checklist for the technical implementation. For example, one of your goals might be to reduce product development costs by 40 percent by sharing competitive information in the early stages of research and development. Or a requirement might be the ability to access competitive information from any lab or even remotely. Note: You are not saying how you want to do that (browser, VPN, etc.), but instead, what you need to accomplish. If you keep the business results in the forefront of this process, evaluating the best technology should be a snap.

Step Three: Map the Current Process

What better way to identify problem areas than by taking a step back and dissecting the current process piece by piece?

If the goal of your system is to get information to the right place at the right time, then map the current process of distributing information. You'll be able to see where information is breaking down and where the gaps of knowledge are occurring.

Make sure to map your entire process, not just one task. Every little step must be included, no matter how insignificant it seems. Once your entire process is dissected, and scrutinized, you should be able to see your "problem areas" (or your "opportunity areas").

Then, it all comes back to the users. Identify all personnel involved and involve them. Discover any potential issues they may face. Find out answers to questions like these: Where do they go when they need information? How are they communicating with other departments? Letting the users map their current processes will give you an accurate look at where they feel the weak spots are in the current situation.

Step Four: Design the Solution

Once you have taken a step back and mapped your current process, you can begin to work out how you want your solution to generate and capture knowledge.

You should explore different scenarios to solve your identified problems: Having only one plan won't do any good if the users don't sign off on it. Once you have chosen the scenario that you feel is the best option, run it by those key users and make sure they agree.

To do that, you will want to identify how technology will support your solution. Some people will involve vendors, read the latest trends, or go to a tradeshow to investigate the technology options available.

If access to information is one of the problems you are trying to solve, map it out as it should work. Who will be accessing it and when? Will it be a wiki accessible directly from users' desktops, or will it be an electronic central repository of all knowledge documents that you can search using simple queries? Just be careful you're not buying into the technology just because it's the "latest and greatest."

Find out how the plan chosen will affect your knowledge-sharing processes. Will it make it easier? Will allowing everyone to edit the knowledge be helpful or hurtful? Asking questions like these will go a long way toward ensuring you get the technology that's right for your business.

As you document the new processes, don't forget to discuss exception-handling. Whatever the ideal process you create, there will always be exceptions, and how you handle those can make or break your case.

Step Five: Calculate ROI

What this all boils down to is the bottom line. You have to figure out if it is worth proceeding with this implementation. One of the best ways to fully capture your ROI is by understanding what your current situation is costing you and identifying how much you will save by implementing a new knowledge management solution. To use our previous example of the new-product development process, begin by identifying all costs involved in developing products (Note: Step 3 is a great tool to help). Next, identify what you would save by doing things differently.

Then, do the same with the process you created as your "solution." You'll be amazed how much easier it is to talk about ROI when you can visually understand where the costs are in your process.

There are two areas where savings reside: the hard savings and the soft savings. The hard savings are the tangible dollars and cost-cutting measures: reduction in personnel costs, reduction in business operating costs, or the money you save by not having to fly people across the country to meet with different departments.

However, a KMC system depends more on soft savings, the savings that you can't quite measure but that still make your business run smoother. This may include quicker access to information or faster communications within your company. With quicker knowledge access and communications, development is sped up because problems that have already been faced have been documented, and different departments have access to the solutions.

Once you have calculated your savings, you and your management team can decide whether the system is worth pursuing and whether your bottom line and your business processes will benefit from such a project.

Step Six: Document and Present

Once the business design has been completed, a final meeting should be scheduled to review the overall plan. This helps solidify your ideas, the goals, the analysis, and all other steps you have taken to this point.

Once again, involve all personnel to review the business design as a whole. This ensures everyone is on the same page and everyone's needs are being met.

At this point, you'll especially want to get senior management involved. They must be ready to buy into the project after being presented the proposed solution. You need full support from top to bottom on whatever technology you put into place.

Step Seven: Kick Off Technical Design

Only after the business design has been created and you have clearly stated your business goals can you prepare for creating a technical design. You must make sure that your business goals take precedence over any technology when it comes to your implementation.

A bad technical design results from lack of communication between IT and users, lack of understanding by the vendor on what the problem really is, or resistance from users to changing their way of doing things. Using the business design to guide technology to solve your business problems goes a long way toward ensuring these problems don't happen. The technical design process also employs a seven-step methodology, but that is an entire article unto itself.

Let the Users Drive

Buying the latest technology just for the sake of having it isn't going to help your business at all. You must decide what business goals you wish to accomplish. Get your users involved and find out what problems they want to overcome. A solution design focuses on involving these users and making sure business, not technology, runs the implementation.

The beauty of a solution design is that its principles and seven-step methodology can be applied to any technological implementation, whether it is KMC or document management or any number of other technologies. A solution design will state your goals to your vendor and assure you are going to meet them.

Think about buying a car. The average car salesman is going to do whatever he can to make you buy the latest model, whether it's practical or not. What's the point of buying it if no one is going to drive it? Before you implement anything, create (or have your vendor create) a solution design and involve everyone: your management, your vendor, yourself, but most importantly, your "drivers."

Kurt Wachtendorf is Director of Solution Sales at Quadrant Software. A Certified Document Imaging Architect (CDIA+) with over 15 years of experience in Paperless Process Management (PPM), Kurt has been personally involved in the sales, design, and implementation of turnkey solutions for customers in virtually every industry. Kurt is a frequent speaker on document management, imaging, and related topics, expertly bringing together the application of technology and business issues.

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