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Choosing Interdepartmental Applications: Give Them What They Need

I changed firms on Memorial Day this year and with that change in firms came a change in job description. I am no longer the trainer who recommends products, I am now the Applications Specialist who researches, demos, purchases and trains on products. OK, so there is still some training involved.

The Task

I was given the task of working with our Operations Manager to select and implement a technology solution for managing our four conference centers. In all 91 years the firm has been open we have only ever used a paper calendar to manage this function.

Where to begin?

Taking a tip from my Process Improvement and Legal Project Management class from Suffolk Law’s Legal Innovation and Technology Certification program, I began with a conversation – an interview of sorts. The questions went a little something like this:

• Debbie, what are you using now?
• Please show me.
• Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?
• What does the perfect solution look like in your mind?
• What are the specific pain points you want to alleviate?
• When is your Go Live goal?

It would be inappropriate for me to march in with that attitude we all know and despise: “Well at my last firm/company/unrelated experience we did it this way so let’s do that here.” The purpose is not the claim a current departmental process is bad. My purpose is to update and make it more efficient for those who use it. I need the team to be excited about what comes out of my mouth, not cringe from it. By asking about pain points and vision, I learned not only what is on the “wish list” of capabilities for the new solution, but also what the team of users cannot tolerate. When I contact vendors without a high-level formal RFP, I can at least include details that matter to the team who will eventually use whatever tools we put in place.  Think of those details as your short list. Any solution you consider must have X and must not have Y. Everything else is nice to have. Our list looked like this:

• Must work with Windows 10 and Office 2016
• Must allow location receptionists to maintain control
• Must allow for IT requests
• Must allow for catering requests
• Must not allow lawyers to bump other lawyers out of rooms.

The Search

Off I went in search of digital solutions that would meet our criteria. The ILTA egroups are always my first stop when searching for recommendations. I search past discussions before posting to ask our fantastic community. If you’ve never posted a question like this, include your network details. This helps folks with the same or very similar set up to yours be your key respondents. It can be very frustrating to get exciting about a reply only to learn the discussed solution is only available for 32 bit and oh yeah, your firm converted everything to 64 bit last month. Googling came next, checking the websites for all the recommendations, checking out product info, doing an extra search to see if any cool new tools haven’t crossed over to legal yet. It takes time. Keep track of what you’ve looked at, note similarities and differences and share that information with your department contact. Maybe a tool offers something she had not thought about until you point it out and she adds that to her “must have” list. As tech people we have the joy of spending hours and hours viewing demos. Leaders from other departments are not used to that and rarely want to give up time for it often,

so be careful as you set up the products demos. I recommend keeping the options as few as two but not more than four. It respects the other manager’s time and gives options without being overwhelming.

The Selection

During the selection process, I kept in mind who the main users of the solution will be. What looked easy and obvious as a software trainer was sometimes clear as mud to the team watching the demonstration. If the user team had a bad reaction to a demo, I crossed the product off my list. There is no point in forcing something on a group of users, no matter how great a deal the salesperson promises you. If it won’t get used after installation, don’t waste anyone’s time. Debbie selected Asure Scheduler so we received a fantastic packaged deal and it checks every box Debbie asked for.

The Setup

My role did not end with signing the agreement. I participated in every setup phone call and web meeting our Asure project manager had with Debbie. I translated some tech jargon that came up, I offered suggestions and I learned details of Debbie’s departmental processes that had not come up before. She also appreciated that I could keep up with the PM in our new scheduling interface when she was feeling overwhelmed by it. I met with Debbie while she filled in every spreadsheet form Asure needed to help us get started. I did this not because I had the answers but because my presence offered moral support. Who doesn’t like feeling supported?

I also coordinated between our IT team and our Asure team. Even though this is SaaS, we still needed to make sure we had Azure AD configured properly for seamless access.

The Go Live

We will be going live during the first week of January.  Debbie and I met earlier this week to review a few last minute details and she will be setting up the final training session with the team and Asure. I will be there of course, to get trained, to document and prepare material for future training sessions. I am confident this will be a successful implementation after the final box is checked.