Aligning document management across lines of business

We implemented a company-wide DCM solution for this financial services enterprise and created a PMO for ensuring a successful rollout.

At a glance:

When an international financial services company needed a company-wide solution for document collaboration and management (DCM) — and a program management office (PMO) for rolling it out to the entire organization — they contacted us.

Customer challenge

Our client was facing significant productivity drains due to a decentralized approach to document management. Many lines of business (LOBs) and individual users had developed their own procedures for handling shared documents, resulting in scattered storage across file servers, desktop PCs, and personal clouds (Dropbox, Google Docs, etc). Locating a document was often a time-consuming, frustrating task, and users frequently re-created documents from scratch because they could not find or access the existing files. This waste of time and effort arose on a daily basis across the organization, resulting in massive productivity losses.

Our client knew they needed to implement a company-wide DCM solution, and that a PMO could help ensure a successful rollout. The PMO would be responsible for

• Managing an ongoing portfolio of projects being brought on to the DCM platform
• Prioritizing potential projects
• Evaluating projects against DCM business objectives
• Assessing technology and personnel resourcing
• Creating the concept of a team that could quickly ramp up and ramp down as the project flow demanded

Why they chose us

We had previously completed many successful business, technology, and program management projects for our client. Given our successful track record and our familiarity with their business processes, they knew we were the right choice for building and implementing their DCM solution.

Approach and solution

We began the project by reviewing our client’s technical systems and business processes for handling shared documents. We then interviewed users to gather requirements and understand how LOBs wanted to work together — how they wanted to access, share, and collaborate on documents, manage approval processes, automate workflows, etc.

We built a robust DCM solution that meets our client’s requirements and delivers on the requests we heard from the LOBs. We also developed improved processes and workflows and implemented a company-wide standard for document management. After a successful pilot program involving several LOBs, we created a PMO to roll the solution out to the rest of the organization.

In laying the PMO’s groundwork, we wrote the office’s charter document and gained buy-in from key stakeholders. We then created a DCM project management methodology and developed a number of templates to help project teams get up to speed quickly.

To help ensure our client has the right team for executing the office’s duties and could carry on after we finished our work, we defined recruiting requirements and assisted in hiring their PMO director. We also created an effective governance infrastructure for communicating at all levels of the organization to ensure unified progress towards the goal of a successful DCM program.

Value and benefits – “The Wins”

Our client now has a robust company-wide DCM solution and a PMO capable of ensuring that all projects are consistent with their strategic objectives. New DCM projects can be spun up quickly and easily using the templates we created, and the office has the mandate and the authority to govern and guide all efforts in the area of document collaboration.