The 3D Effect: Successfully Implementing AP Document Technologies
Posted on Tue, Oct 25, 2011 @ 12:43 PM
The 3D Effect: How to Successfully Implement Document Imaging and Invoice Scanning Workflow Software in Your AP Department
Assessing new technology for AP is a difficult yet fascinating project. Listening to a vendor’s sales staff extol the virtues of their software and watching the demos sometimes leaves us gasping in disbelief and delight! What cool stuff this software does! How great it would be if my AP department could do THAT?
Then, the software is purchased, implementation is suffered through, and oops, it doesn’t exactly do THAT! At least not without a costly and time-consuming modification or two. We’ve all heard stories like this one. They are so common that there is actually a term that describes this problem – The 3D Effect. The 3D Effect says, first, you will be dazzled by the technology, second, you will deploy it, and third, you will be disappointed.
What to do:
We need to focus on two other “Ds” – Due and Diligence, before the decision to buy is made. Too often we are caught up in the excitement of what the technology does and hop on board. It is critically important that we carefully evaluate how the software fits with our other software and processes and then we need a solid understanding of what the technology will do for OUR business process.
We need to be sure that we are managing the project, not the coolness of what’s happening during the demo. So when you are sitting in that conference room listening to the vendor and watching the spectacular demo, make sure you question what you see and hear. We need to be clear about what we need to accomplish with this solution and ask them to show you how their solution will do it. Ask how it interacts with existing software. Be sure that what you are seeing is available now and not in a “coming release.” Remember, cool product features are everywhere and the development tools today are so good that it’s relatively easy to replicate features fairly quickly. It’s much more important to understand what features need to be deployed and how users will benefit from those features. It’s more important that the provider is able to clearly articulate how this particular solution is going to accomplish the goals established for this project and when. Having a great product implemented badly (happens all the time) will lead to a failed project, which will cost us a lot more to correct than it will to do it right the first time.
Tallega’s 3 P’s: