After weeks of preparation today the 31 Days to Improve your IWMS Implementation Challenge will finally start and I am looking forward to it. In 31 days you will improve your IWMS implementation and benefit more from it than you have ever done before.
As I already mentioned on July 17th, 2009 when I announced the project, The 31 Days to Improve your IWMS Implementation Project is about maximizing the contribution of the IWMS to your organization by a 31 daily tasks and teachings.
Before I’ll start with today’s task and teaching I want to thank all of our readers for their continued support and ideas improving our website day by day.
Off we go!
Day 1: Gather information about your current implementation
Welcome to Day #1 of the 31 Days to Improve your IWMS Implementation Challenge. Today’s teaching and tasks have to do with gathering information about your current implementation.
Today’s Teaching
At the moment you are probably sitting behind your computer feeling equally excited as I am to improve your IWMS implementation.
And you are right!
Integrated Workplace Management Systems can be extremely useful in improving all kinds of processes within organizational portfolio impacting your bottom line more than you can imagine but only when your implementation has been done right…
Today’s task is to gather all information about your current implementation. Let me explain why it’s so important.
Knowledge is power (But only if you know how to acquire it)
Knowledge is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as (i) expertise, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject, (ii) what is known in a particular field or in total; facts and information or (iii) awareness or familiarity gained by experience of a fact or situation. Wikipedia.
In 1597 Sir Francis Bacon, an English author, courtier, & philosopher (1561 – 1626) wrote the famous words about empowerment of the knowledgeable. If you know how to acquire knowledge you will have power. In this case the power to improve your IWMS implementation for the better.
Why gather information?
You can only improve your IWMS implementation if you know what to improve and therefore you need to gather information that will clarify the path to choose. You have to know the ins and outs before you jump into action.
In addition that, Integrated Workplace Management Systems are Enterprise Systems which implicates that they are embedded deeply within the organization, making centralized information gathering even more important.
Useful information
I would encourage you to retrieve as much information as you can about your current implementation however, since IWMS implementations produce a substantial amount of information today you will only focus on the organizational aspects of your implementation.
Information to be gathered includes:
- Organizational Vision on FM & RE. Most organizations have created a vision for their Facilities Management and Real Estate Processes. It is important to retrieve the current vision to compare it with the vision when the project started. Differences in vision might lead to inefficient IWMS implementations.
- Organizational Structure. You need to have a clear picture of the organization at the start of the project. Who was the sponsor of the project and which employees had significant impact on the decisions made. Microsoft Visio is extremely helpful in creating an Organizational Chart. What really helps is to include contact data as well. If you have questions about a particular area, you can instantly lookup the persons contact details.
- Project Team. This is extremely important. You have to know who has been involved in the project. Those people have knowledge you need to collect as they are valuable assets for improving your implementation. Collect manuals, meeting minutes and project descriptions. Again I would suggest to use a visualizing program such as Microsoft Visio, etc.
Tip: As project members (and employees) change jobs frequently I also include their successors and corresponding contact details. This gives me a clear picture whom to contact. - Meeting Minutes. Try to gather as much meeting minutes and notes. In a lot of those meetings decisions are made which play an important role in the success of your IWMS implementation.
- Business Rules. In every IWMS process some business rules apply. E.g. leases are not to exceed need to cost no more than $3 / sq ft, catering can only be ordered until 10.00 AM or the Churn rate cannot exceed 6% per cost center. These business rules represent the organizational effectiveness and will give you a clear indication what can be improved. Try to gather as many of those rules as possible.
Task
Create a new folder in your documents folder called “IWMS Implementation”. In the coming month you are going to build a repository of information that will empower you. In the folder IWMS Implementation create a subfolder called “Organizational” and under that the following subfolders:
- Vision
- Structure
- Project Team
- Meeting Minutes
- Business Rules
When you have that information stored in the folders you start working on the flowcharts of the structure and the Project Team. Store the flowcharts in the corresponding folders. Good luck with finding the information. And remember, Knowledge is power.
