The beginning of the year is a great time to revisit your plan and strategy for Laserfiche. And if you don't have one, there is no better time than the present to create one!
ARMA defines a content strategy as "It is the process and technology that supports the creation and capture, accessibility, publishing and collaboration, version control, retention and storage, disposal, search, and protection of content (unstructured information)."
Your content management strategy is critical to your organization's ability to manage your information, assist clients or residents and succeed with future initiatives.
Building a content management strategy is such a helpful exercise as it forces you to walk in the footsteps of your users. Your users will save time not having to search for documents. New hires can be pointed to Laserfiche as the repository to find all the organization's new hire and training documentation. Additionally, with some assistance from CPS, you can envision process improvements that will save you time and enhance how you use your information assets.
If you don't have a content management strategy, fair warning, it's not something you can create in minutes. It's something that takes careful planning. And that's not all, because your strategy should be revisited and evolve with the goals and initiatives of your organization.
Interested in learning more? Here are some tips to get you started:
Consider building a business case for Laserfiche. What problems would you like it to solve? What will the desired outcomes be? Think about what success will look like. If you are new to Laserfiche, check out our information resources, where you'll find videos, case studies, and other ideas.
Determine the scope of your initial deployment of Laserfiche or the new iteration. Since you've previously identified your business case, you can work back from the ideal state to map out all the steps. If your organization has project managers, they will be quite helpful with this process.
When undergoing any organizational change, it's critical to integrate stakeholders into the process. Stakeholders have different and valuable insight into the whys of the processes you are rethinking. Building consensus around the content management strategy is crucial as stakeholders can help you refine the scope, gut-check the timelines and decide on priorities. If you are leading a content strategy project and want some change management help, we recommend this book: Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard.
Based on the stakeholder feedback and other information, you should be developing your implementation roadmap. Set regular meetings for updates with stakeholders and standups for the project team. Then (teamed with IT, legal, and compliance groups) and put together the action plan with deadlines, involvement of stakeholders, and milestones for the project.
Determine how and when to communicate the changes and projects to the organization. Different organizations require different types of communication. Some would appreciate a calendar in tandem with monthly meetings or calls. Other organizations use wikis or newsletters and FAQs. Be sure to highlight the benefits of the content management strategy for the employees and made sure to include information on what would change in their day-to-day tasks.
