Users tell their stories at KMExpo

Tired of walking around the show floor? Looking to take a load off? Why not sit in at one of the vertical market case study user presentations being offered in the user pavilion right on the Knowledge Management Expo show floor?

The goal of these 30-minute presentations-actually 20 minutes of presentation and 10 minutes of Q & A-is to provide attendees with detailed descriptions of how the user speakers from a variety of vertical markets selected, implemented and benefited from their imaging/workflow/document management systems.

Financial services, healthcare and government are just a few of the industries that will be represented at KMExpo. The case studies will include detailed descriptions of all phases of the system life cycle, starting with the evaluation process that kicks it all off. Speakers will describe how they evaluated their old systems-which usually means they were in some kind of pain-and how that led to the next step.

In many cases, that next step was to get top-down approval to form a companywide task force that could fully evaluate what kind of resources were required to replace the old pain with newfound productivity. These companywide task forces bring together everybody with a stake in the new system, most notably users and IT personnel.

Once the blueprint for a new system is developed, RFPs have to be drawn up and sent out. There is an art to writing a good RFP, and attendees at these sessions will learn that art from veterans. When the RFPs are sent back, they must be evaluated and the right vendor or vendors chosen. Another big decision: Hire an integrator or try to do it yourself with in-house resources. There are a lot of pros and cons to discuss here, and some valuable lessons about how to handle integrators and other third parties will be given.

Now that the system has been selected, will it be implemented in pilot mode initially? Many companies have found that this is the best way to ease into the many changes that accompany radical technology shifts. Pilots can also be done in user departments where the need is the greatest and, therefore, the chances for success are also the greatest.A lot of smart companies have eased the impact of change by having luncheon seminars to describe the new system and how it will impact the organization. They put out new machines for examination and use so that future users can comfortably and gradually accept them.

Once that first application is up and running, the fun really begins, and presentations will fully detail the implementation process and the vendor support that goes along with it. If the system is a success, there should be a near-term ROI. Along those lines, speakers will talk about how systems are paying themselves off and how long that process takes. They also will list the benefits and competitive advantages that they have realized.

Everybody is invited to drop by and learn how their colleagues are dealing with the same issues that confront them.