Sometimes, when an organization bows to the pressure to introduce technology, it holds onto the very procedures the technology was designed to eliminate. I recently looked at the new Website a past employer (who shall remain nameless.) They used a Content Management System (CMS) for the upgrade. A resource library on the site contains about one hundred documents - PDF and Word files!
One particularly strange choice: they maintain an online referral directory of graduates of their certification program. The link for students to update their information in the directory leads to a Word document, which instructs readers to send the new information to an administrator's email address. Updates, we are told, happen monthly. Monthly.
Put simply, the organization spent tens of thousands of dollars to select and install a technological solution that would allow people to enter information, let the system format it, and let an administrator approve it with the touch of a button. Yet they use this the power of this system only to post a Word document while retaining the data entry burden.
Technical fixes work best when accompanied not only by training but also by deliberate attention to operational change management.
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