Electronic Documentation can be a game changer for an agency. The power of bringing your data together electronically opens up new doors for agencies. Gaining efficiencies, minimizing workflows, enhanced compliance, and reduced billing errors are right behind the door, but do you have the key to unlock it? Heres five tips to success.

Allocating Budget

You have probably done your research and know the approximate cost of several software applications that you are considering, but is your agency equiped to handle your purchase? If you have staff running Windows Millenium edition on a Commodore 64, you might be in trouble. Here is a couple of things to consider:

• Is your equipment up to the task? Find out what the software requirements for your equipment will be. You may also want to take a look at the age and speed of the computers that you are using. Are users going to sit and watch there machine time out everytime they enter information? If thet can't even get to Starbuck's website without wait time, you may need to upgrade.
• Do you have solid internet? Not just your office, but anywhere you will need to run the software. If you have several facilities or satelite locations, you will need to make sure that your internet is stable and the download and upload rates are adequate.  Use the following link to test you internet speed. Ookla Speed Test
• If you staff will be out in the community, consider if internet will be available at all. In our neck of the woods staff may need to go "over the river and through the woods" to get to a clients house. Internet may not be available to them. For information on how to document anywhere regardless of internet with Q-Live contact us.
• Who Manages the equipment? Do you have someone on staff that is able to test and problem solve when something goes wrong? You don't necessarily need an IT department for this, but somebody will need to be able to check things out if a computer can't connect or won't start.

Prepare Your Staff for Change

Are your staff aware of the scope to which their jobs will change? If not, you better prepare them. Change is hard, especially for the unprepared. Preparing your staff for change can range from "BRACE FOR IMPACT!!!" to "Change therapy session today followed by group meditation". You should probably strive for somewhere in the middle. For more on change management, check out our article Training, Change and Moving Forward

How Will You Measure Success?

Any vendor offering electronic documentation should have a good idea of what benchmarks for an agency like yours will look like. This is a great place to start, but determining your own measures will reward you with even greater results. Think in terms of what the capabilities of the software are and start there. Check out these example questions to come up with ideas of your own.

• How much time can we save each month with these new efficiencies?
• What kind of reduction in payroll can we expect? 
• What percentage do we expect billing errors to drop by?
• What processes can we streamline?
• How do we want to utilize our data to create new efficiencies in our organization?

Who's Responsible?

Earlier in this article, we discussed having someone capable of troubleshooting equipment. What other tasks will there be with implementation of electronic documentation? Take time to determine how roles will change within your organization. Who will be your key players in implementing the software? Establishing power users earlier on can be beneficial in establishing the software within your culture.  It is also a good idea to make sure people are cross trained. Try to avoid one person being an "end all be all Guru" for your software. If she were to leave your organization, what would the impact be. Probably not pretty. 

Testing 1,2,3...

Have you ever jumped off a cliff without checking how far the drop was first? Yeah, me neither. That would be stupid, dangerous, and hurt a lot. So why jump off that cliff when rolling new software? Every system needs to be tested within the confines of your agency. Always test before going live. When you make a committment to go paperless, you may not see every possibility during your implementation process. Have you thought of every possible scecnario, probably not. Test each area of the application to ensure success before foing live. This will help to eliminate pain points when going live.