How to Get to Enterprise: Engaging the User in Defining Organizational Needs

By Sarah Kellison (@laserfiche) Jun 16, 2011

Last month, Kimberly Samuelson discussed the real definition of enterprise in “Putting the ‘E’ in Enterprise Content Management: What Does ‘Enterprise’ Really Mean?” Her conclusion: “Until ECM is deployed as a foundational component of an organization’s enterprise architecture, it isn’t truly enterprise.”

Remember that enterprise is comprised of complex systems including people, processes, information and technology; therefore, defining the boundary or scope of the enterprise is an important first step in defining organizational needs. An accurate and all-encompassing picture of organizational needs can then drive the shift toward foundational enterprise content management, bringing on the benefits of a foundational deployment.

Arriving at “Enterprise”

Six Sigma’s DMAIC methodology provides a powerful framework for determining organizational needs and improving existing business processes. As you move through the five steps from defining a business problem to controlling results, it’s important to bear in mind three different points of view: business unit, enterprise architecture and perhaps most importantly, the user.

Leaving out the user can have staggering results: According to an Economist Intelligence Unit survey, the two largest causes of reluctance to business process improvements were that employees had little or no say in determining the new process (31%), or that the new process didn’t map to the way employees thought their jobs should be done (28%).

Before you begin to make process improvements, you must first delineate the scope of your enterprise:

What is it?
What does it do?
How do we best communicate our mission internally and externally?

Pose these types of questions to a stakeholder committee to reach a consensus before moving on. This prelude to the five-step feedback loop will provide the underpinnings for your improvements and ensure that you stay focused on the task at hand. DMAIC, with its root cause analysis, is meant to improve your current business, not guide you into a new business altogether. For instance, if you run a software business, do not solve your cash flow problems by entering the hardware market.

Step 1: Define the Problem

Now that you have a clear picture of your enterprise, it’s time to start getting a grip on the problems you face and general areas for improvement. Keeping in mind the business side and the enterprise architecture side, consider questions like:

What business problems do we want to solve?
What business technologies are being under-utilized?

The stakeholder committee who helped define the overall mission of the enterprise should be involved at this stage of determining and prioritizing current business problems. But your employees at large may also have valuable contributions in this area.

Present the issue to your employees through an internal survey or wiki — you may find that crowdsourced answers provide some of your most valuable insights. Frame the questions with a user-focused explanation of why they’re being asked to contribute. For example, “We want to simplify your day” rather than “We want to save $20 in overhead per transaction.” Involving employees from the beginning will go a long way in getting them more invested in the process, and thus make them more willing to accept the changes.

Step 2: Measure the State of Current Processes

Once you have considered stakeholder and end-user feedback to define and prioritize business problems, you need to measure the current state of the enterprise in those areas. This includes answering questions like:

How are current processes structured?
Where are the obvious bottlenecks occurring?
Which departments currently use technology as part of their business processes?

The information gathered during this stage will set the baseline and illustrate where the organization stands today. But determining a starting point is not enough; at this stage, you should also determine the rule by which you’ll measure progress. Whether you gather information from similar organizations or through third party research from firms like Gartner, aim for a yardstick that offers an effective and reasonable way to measure progress as time goes on.