CONSULTING

When automating a customer’s business processes, an IT company very often faces the need to conduct a pre-project survey. This problem automatically raises a number of interrelated questions.

1. Is it necessary to conduct such an examination at all? What will it give to the customer and the IT company itself?

2. What are the objectives of the pre-project survey?

3. What should be its result?

4. Should I do a pre-project survey for free or charge money for it?

5. How to justify to the customer the effectiveness of such an examination; will it be able to pay off?

Here, each company makes a decision in its own way: someone generally considers such an examination inappropriate (“let’s get involved in a fight, and then we’ll see...”); others, conducting it during implementation, do not highlight this work in a separate article; still others conduct it as an independent stage of work, but do not charge money for it; Still others rightly consider pre-project inspection to be a separate commercial product. My experience as a manager and consultant shows that pre-project examination is a necessary component of the work of almost any IT company related to the implementation of automation systems. And from proper organization and the implementation of this stage sometimes depends on the success of the entire project.

In this article, I will try to answer the questions posed above, based both on my own practice and on the experience of clients with whom I had to communicate, introducing the technology of conducting pre-project surveys from scratch.

The need for pre-project survey

The approach of some IT companies to business automation is well illustrated by this anecdote.

An inventor comes to the commission and offers a new apparatus for shaving on the street.

“How does your device work?” - members of the commission ask him.

“Very simple,” the inventor answers. “You throw a coin into the slot, put your head into the machine, and two blades begin to shave you.”

“Sorry, colleague, but people have different face shapes!” - members of the commission reprimand him.

“Yes,” says the inventor, “but that’s only before the first shave...”

The main task of any automation is to preserve unique competitive advantages automated company. We cannot allow, as in this joke, that after automation all companies become alike. Therefore, if we want to maintain the unique competitive advantages of the customer’s business, then with any modernization of business processes it is necessary to conduct a pre-project survey.

Of course, it is possible to make an in-depth analysis of the reasons that determine this need. These could be the high expected cost of the project, the need to change existing business processes due to automation, the inclusion in the project of work the scope of which cannot be determined in advance, etc. However, remember how in one very instructive story, the commander interrupted the general’s report on the cause of the defeat :

Our defeat was caused by a number of reasons,” the general began. - Firstly, the gunpowder was damp...

Enough,” the commander stopped him.

The situation is similar here, since to conduct a pre-project survey it is enough that the customer has unique business features (and every company should have them, otherwise it would simply not survive in the market and give way to competitors).

So, globally, the question of the need for this kind of work is resolved quite easily - they must be carried out if the company being automated is in a competitive market.

What does a pre-project survey give to the customer and the IT company itself?

As we all know very well, any work or service will be in demand on the market only when it is beneficial to both the customer and the contractor. Therefore, let's briefly look at what, in fact, a pre-project survey gives both.

During the pre-design survey, the customer can:

Get a detailed description of existing business processes in the company and compare real business with your idea of ​​it;

Optimize existing business processes by using practical experience, which consultants from an IT company received during previous implementations in similar companies;

Assess the degree of compliance of the functionality of the proposed system with the customer’s real business processes;

Timely highlight your unique advantages and take them into account at the stage of system implementation, and not after its commissioning;

Clarify the budget and timing of the automation project, taking into account possible improvements systems for the unique features of their business processes;

Assess the resources (both technical and human) that will be needed at the system implementation stage. Timely plan the allocation of these resources to complete the project within the optimal time frame and without exceeding the budget;

Estimate possible risks that may affect the quality of work;

Optimize costs for system deployment by possibly performing part of the work on our own;

Get a more accurate estimate economic effect and return on investment period.

Benefits of pre-project survey for an IT company:

Increasing the level of customer satisfaction by matching his expectations formed at the pre-sales stage (when sellers offer a “dream”) with the real capabilities of the system to support specific business processes;

Clarification of the timing of implementation of the system and the resources required for this, allowing you to plan their allocation in advance;

Timely identification of the customer’s unique advantages in order to take them into account when configuring or modifying the automation system;

Reducing implementation time and reducing the risk of performing free work. Necessary modifications to the system will be carried out before the start of its deployment or in parallel with it, and not after the end of the trial operation stage, at which shortcomings are usually identified. A situation where a discrepancy in functionality is discovered at the project completion stage automatically entails additional unplanned work. At the same time, the customer usually has difficulty financing such work, and in order to successfully complete the project, it often has to be done for free;

Identification of probable risks that may affect the quality and timing of implementation. Timely provision of measures necessary to minimize the impact of these risks on the success of the project;

Obtaining data to justify the number of licenses and project structure;

Recording the current state of affairs in automated units and the main parameters of their work will make it possible to substantiate the effectiveness of using the proposed system;

Establishing personal contacts between consultants and the customer’s main project performers will further simplify their joint work;

Expanding the knowledge base (if any) on the main business processes of customers in this industry.

Of course, not all the arguments in favor of a pre-design survey are listed here, however, as practice shows, this is quite enough to convince the customer of its necessity.

Main tasks of pre-project survey

Each company has its own view on the priority of tasks related to pre-project inspection, but the most important of them, in my opinion, is studying the customer’s basic business processes and finding out the main problems that he would like to solve using an automation system. The most effective tool for this purpose, there is usually a specially compiled questionnaire based on the actual practice of conducting pre-project surveys. It allows the consultant to ask the customer’s employees all the necessary questions regarding the main activities of the automated units, without forgetting anything. I strongly recommend interviewing employees of different ranks for each item - from executives to senior management. I very often had to deal with a situation where senior management believed that specific business processes were going as they were originally intended, but in reality the work in the company was carried out completely differently. At the same time, middle managers had their own opinion about the functioning of the process, which differed both from the ideas of senior managers and from the actual activities of specific performers participating in these works. This state of affairs usually evokes a lot of emotions when reading the pre-project survey report. Finding out the true situation and stating it in the form of a clear document helps to strengthen confidence in external consultants and establish trusting relationships with both the customer’s management and ordinary employees.

Obviously, the next most important task of the pre-project survey is to identify the unique competitive advantages of the customer. As practice shows, about 75% of the business processes used by the customer coincide with the processes in similar companies in the same industry, 10% realize its unique competitive advantages, and the remaining 15% are the result of the second law of thermodynamics:) (a consequence of the “natural growth of chaos ”) and must be resolved during the course of the project. But those competitive 10%, which are so important for business, simply need to be preserved with any automation (naturally, provided that these advantages can be formalized). Most often, this issue is resolved by configuring the system for the customer, but sometimes the services of programmers are required to take into account the unique features of the business. Let me note that here we are not talking about custom development, but about the implementation of production automation systems.

Understanding how the customer's competitive advantages will be supported, the IT company will be able to assess the need and cost of product improvements, as well as understand what additional resources may be required for this.

An important goal of the pre-project survey is to diagnose the state of the customer’s IT environment, that is, to assess the computer equipment he uses, software, communications, level of qualifications of IT specialists, etc. At this stage, it is necessary to understand whether the customer has enough resources to successfully implement the automation system. Here we approach another task of the pre-project survey - analyzing the potential risks of the project and describing their likely consequences. At the same time, consultants must not only document all possible risks, but also offer the customer ways to reduce each of them.

Any CIS involves the accumulation of information about the operational activities of departments, so the next topic of the pre-project survey should be the collection of requirements for the automated departments.

The information accumulated in the system will remain dead weight if there is no opportunity to analyze it, so it is very important during the pre-project survey to find out what types and forms of reporting the customer needs. Typically, automation tools already include a standard set of reports, but each customer rightly considers his business unique, and therefore requires a unique system of this kind, implemented, as a rule, using a special report generator.

The urgent task of the pre-project survey is to clarify the final budget of the project and the timing of its implementation, taking into account all the data received. These deadlines can be influenced by a variety of factors, such as the readiness of the client’s management staff to participate in the project, the motivation of representatives of the customer and the contractor, the likelihood of sabotage from employees of automated units, possible dismissal(or, conversely, hiring) a key manager some time after the start of the project, the insufficiency of the existing computer fleet and technological base to achieve all automation goals, lack of a procurement budget necessary equipment and much more. Therefore, the consultant must find out in detail all these circumstances and reflect them in the report, including for internal use. Drawing up a second - internal - report will allow you to reflect in detail all the nuances of the relationship and recommendations for specialists in the implementation and integration department.

Another important issue that needs to be resolved at the pre-project survey stage is the development of recommendations on the choice of methods for project implementation. Here it is important to clearly record which of the problems previously formulated by the customer cannot be solved using the proposed automation system, and to propose organizational or other ways out of this situation.

Each company can easily add a dozen more tasks that it would like to solve at the survey stage, but, as real practice shows, obtaining answers to the questions listed above already makes the pre-project survey quite effective.

What is usually the result of a pre-project survey?

The main result is the final report on the work performed, agreed upon and signed by the customer and the contractor. Let's look at the necessary sections of such a report. If you do not dwell on the standard sections devoted to introductory words, a list of abbreviations, acronyms and abbreviations, then the following basic components can be distinguished in the report:

- description of the customer’s existing business processes;

- a list of the main tasks that need to be solved using the automation system;

- assessment of the customer’s business processes and recommendations for changing or optimizing the work of departments, taking into account the advantages provided by the IS;

- unique competitive advantages of the customer, which should be taken into account when implementing the system;

- analysis of the existing IT environment for compliance with system requirements corporate governance, recommendations for changing it;

- assessment of work on integrating CIS into the customer’s existing IT infrastructure;

- description of automation units and requirements for analytics;

- assessment of possible risks during project implementation and identification of measures necessary to minimize their impact;

- a description of the customer’s wishes that cannot be implemented in the proposed control system and will require modification, an estimate of the time and cost of such modification;

- a proposal for the implementation of the project with justification for the proposed option, specifying the number of automated workstations required for the customer and clarifying the project budget.

A separate document of the pre-project survey should be a preliminary work schedule, which includes, among other things, an agreed list of responsible persons (both from the customer and the contractor), their areas of responsibility and basic regulations for the interaction between them. For effective implementation of the system, it is recommended to draw up regulations for information exchange between the customer’s employees and specialists of the IT company conducting the survey, and also, importantly, stipulate the timing and procedure for monitoring the completion of work.

Some companies (most often those engaged in custom development) provide the customer with a project upon completion of the pre-design survey terms of reference.

Do a pre-project survey for free or charge money for it?

The answer to this question depends greatly on the purpose of the survey. If the purpose is a quick survey to “lure” a client (usually by having the customer fill out some kind of questionnaire), then it seems reasonable to do it for free.

If the purpose of the survey corresponds to the tasks described above, then it will require the diversion of significant company resources and must necessarily be paid. This pre-project survey is a full-fledged consulting service that allows you not only to assess the need, timing and budget for automation, but also to optimize the customer’s existing business processes.

As practice has shown, pre-project survey services are not difficult to sell if the company has implemented the appropriate technology and the sellers clearly know (and can clearly explain to the client) the purpose of the survey and what benefits the customer will receive from it.

How to justify for the customer the effectiveness of pre-project inspection

The issue of assessing the effectiveness of a pre-project survey, as well as any other service, is one of the most difficult in business, since its result is not always obvious to the customer and is often perceived very subjectively. To justify the economic effect of consulting services - and pre-project survey, as mentioned above, is precisely a consulting service - each business segment has its own unique algorithms and methods. However, here we will look at other, simpler and more universal methods that allow the customer to roughly assess the effectiveness of the pre-project survey.

Let's consider potential savings channels, taking into account which can help justify the need for a pre-project survey.

1. Saving human resources and time:

When modifying the system to suit the customer’s unique competitive advantages at the initial stage of implementation, and not after putting it into commercial operation;

At the stage of integrating the system into the customer’s IT infrastructure, due to the fact that all information about the state of the enterprise’s IT environment and the nuances of integration is clarified before the start, and not during implementation;

Thanks to the timely allocation of material and human resources from both the contractor and the customer;

Through early assessment of possible risks that could affect the process of system implementation, and the development of measures necessary to minimize their negative consequences.

Any delay in the progress of the project results in serious additional costs for the customer, which can be quite easily calculated in each specific case.

2. Possible reduction in implementation costs:

By identifying services and work that the customer can perform on their own;

By adjusting the deadlines for completing some work after clarifying their actual labor intensity.

3. Increasing the efficiency of corporate information systems and employee productivity by optimizing business processes taking into account the unique characteristics of the customer.

4. Refusal to use automated system, if at the stage of pre-project inspection it turns out that it will not solve the customer’s problems or its modification will be too expensive.

In my practice, there was a case when a client with very specific business processes, based on the results of a pre-project survey, was recommended not to deploy a CIS, but to carry out organizational changes and optimize the technology for working with their customers, since the effect of implementing the system (which required expensive modifications) would not recoup the costs. As a result, the client saved tens of thousands of dollars, and the pre-project survey paid off only by increasing the efficiency of the department, which, on the recommendation of the consultants, changed the employee’s work technology.

The absence of a pre-project survey stage in most cases leads to a significant delay in the implementation of projects and an increase in their cost due to both organizational and technical problems that arise during implementation. Often such projects end in complete failure. According to a Standish Group study, almost a third of the 2.5 thousand IT projects they analyzed were not just unsuccessful*1, but were not completed at all. In Russia, such data is much more difficult to obtain, but I am sure that the share of unsuccessful implementations will be no less.

*1 Projects are considered unsuccessful if the deadlines were missed, the budget was violated, or the expected results were not obtained.

Therefore, if a consulting company does not want to have unrealized projects on its track record, then it simply needs to conduct a pre-project survey of the customers’ business. It is better to refuse the contract at the initial stage than to get bogged down in work and end up with a stain on your reputation.

1. Is such an examination necessary at all? What will it give to the customer and the IT company itself?
2. What are the objectives of the pre-project survey?
3. What should be its result?
4. Should I do a pre-project survey for free or charge money for it?
5. How to justify the effectiveness of such an examination to the customer, will it be able to pay off?

Here, each company makes a decision in its own way: someone generally considers such an examination inappropriate (“we’ll get involved in a fight, and then we’ll see...”); others, conducting it during implementation, do not highlight this work in a separate article; still others conduct it as an independent stage of work, but do not charge money for it; Still others rightly consider pre-project inspection to be a separate commercial product. My experience as a manager and consultant shows that pre-project examination is a necessary component of the work of almost any IT company related to the implementation of automation systems. And the success of the entire project sometimes depends on the correct organization and implementation of this stage.

In this article, I will try to answer the questions posed above, based both on my own practice and on the experience of clients with whom I had to communicate, introducing the technology of conducting pre-project surveys from scratch.

The need for pre-project survey

An inventor comes to the commission and offers a new apparatus for shaving on the street.
“How does your device work?” - members of the commission ask him.
“Very simple,” the inventor answers. “You throw a coin into the slot, put your head into the machine, and two blades begin to shave you.”
“Sorry, colleague, but people have different face shapes!” - members of the commission reprimand him.
“Yes,” says the inventor, “but that’s only before the first shave...”

The main task of any automation is to maintain the unique competitive advantages of the automated company. We cannot allow, as in this joke, that after automation all companies become “the same person.” Therefore, if we want to maintain the unique competitive advantages of the customer’s business, then with any modernization of business processes it is necessary to conduct a pre-project survey.

Of course, it is possible to make an in-depth analysis of the reasons that determine this need. These could be the high expected cost of the project, the need to change existing business processes due to automation, the inclusion in the project of work the scope of which cannot be determined in advance, etc. However, remember how in one very instructive story, the commander interrupted the general’s report on the cause of the defeat :

“Our defeat was caused by a number of reasons,” the general began. - Firstly, the gunpowder was damp...
“That’s enough,” the commander stopped him.

The situation is similar here, since to conduct a pre-project survey it is enough that the customer has unique business features (and every company should have them, otherwise it would simply not survive in the market and give way to competitors).

So, globally, the question of the need for this kind of work is resolved quite easily - they must be carried out if the company being automated is in a competitive market.

What does a pre-project survey give to the customer and the IT company itself?

During the pre-design survey, the customer can:

• get a detailed description of the business processes existing in the company and compare the real business with your idea of ​​it;
• optimize existing business processes by using the practical experience that consultants from an IT company gained during previous implementations in similar companies;
• assess the degree of compliance of the functionality of the proposed system with the customer’s real business processes;
• timely highlight your unique advantages and take them into account at the stage of system implementation, and not after its commissioning;
• clarify the budget and timing of the automation project, taking into account possible modifications of the system to suit the unique features of your business processes;
• assess the resources (both technical and human) that will be needed at the stage of system implementation. Timely plan the allocation of these resources to complete the project within the optimal time frame and without exceeding the budget;
• assess possible risks that may affect the quality of work;
• optimize the costs of system deployment by possibly performing some of the work on your own;
• obtain a more accurate assessment of the economic effect and return on investment.

Benefits of pre-project survey for an IT company:

• increasing the level of customer satisfaction by matching his expectations formed at the pre-sales stage (when sellers offer a “dream”) with the real capabilities of the system to support specific business processes;
• clarification of the timing of system implementation and the resources required for this, allowing for advance planning of their allocation;
• timely identification of the customer’s unique advantages in order to take them into account when configuring or modifying the automation system;
• reducing implementation time and reducing the risk of performing free work. Necessary modifications to the system will be carried out before the start of its deployment or in parallel with it, and not after the end of the trial operation stage, at which shortcomings are usually identified. A situation where a discrepancy in functionality is discovered at the project completion stage automatically entails additional unplanned work. At the same time, the customer usually has difficulty financing such work, and in order to successfully complete the project, it often has to be done for free;
• identification of probable risks that may affect the quality and timing of implementation. Timely provision of measures necessary to minimize the impact of these risks on the success of the project;
• obtaining data to justify the number of licenses and project structure;
• recording the current state of affairs in automated units and the main parameters of their work will make it possible to substantiate the effectiveness of using the proposed system;
• establishing personal contacts between consultants and the customer’s main project performers will simplify their collaboration in the future;
• expansion of the knowledge base (if any) on the main business processes of customers in this industry.

Of course, not all the arguments in favor of a pre-design survey are listed here, however, as practice shows, this is quite enough to convince the customer of its necessity.

Main tasks of pre-project survey

Obviously, the next most important task of the pre-project survey is to identify the customer’s unique competitive advantages. As practice shows, about 75% of the business processes used by the customer coincide with the processes in similar companies in the same industry, 10% realize its unique competitive advantages, and the remaining 15% are the result of the second law of thermodynamics:) (a consequence of the “natural growth of chaos ") and must be resolved during the course of the project. But those competitive 10%, which are so important for business, simply need to be preserved with any automation (naturally, provided that these advantages can be formalized). Most often, this issue is resolved by configuring the system for the customer, but sometimes the services of programmers are required to take into account the unique features of the business. Let me note that here we are not talking about custom development, but about the implementation of production automation systems.

Understanding how the customer's competitive advantages will be supported, the IT company will be able to assess the need and cost of product improvements, as well as understand what additional resources may be required for this.

An important goal of the pre-project survey is to diagnose the state of the customer’s IT environment, that is, to assess the computer equipment, software, communications, qualification level of IT specialists, etc., used by him. At this stage, it is necessary to understand whether the customer has enough resources for successful implementation of the system automation. Here we come to another task of the pre-project survey - analyzing the potential risks of the project and describing their likely consequences. At the same time, consultants must not only document all possible risks, but also offer the customer ways to reduce each of them.

Any CIS involves the accumulation of information about the operational activities of departments, so the next topic of the pre-project survey should be the collection of requirements for the document flow of automated departments.

The information accumulated in the system will remain dead weight if there is no opportunity to analyze it, so it is very important during the pre-project survey to find out what types and forms of reporting the customer needs. Typically, automation tools already include a standard set of reports, but each customer rightly considers his business unique, and therefore requires a unique system of this kind, implemented, as a rule, using a special report generator.

The urgent task of the pre-project survey is to clarify the final budget of the project and the timing of its implementation, taking into account all the data received. These deadlines can be influenced by a variety of factors, such as the readiness of the client’s management staff to participate in the project, the motivation of representatives of the customer and the contractor, the likelihood of sabotage on the part of employees of automated units, the possible dismissal (or, conversely, hiring) of a key manager after some time. time after the start of the project, insufficiency of the existing computer fleet and technological base to achieve all automation goals, lack of budget for the purchase of necessary equipment and much more. Therefore, the consultant must find out in detail all these circumstances and reflect them in the report, including for internal use. Drawing up a second - internal - report will allow you to reflect in detail all the nuances of the relationship and recommendations for specialists in the implementation and integration department.

Another important issue that needs to be resolved at the pre-project survey stage is the development of recommendations on the choice of methods for project implementation. Here it is important to clearly record which of the problems previously formulated by the customer cannot be solved using the proposed automation system, and to propose organizational or other ways out of this situation.

Each company can easily add a dozen more tasks that it would like to solve at the survey stage, but, as real practice shows, obtaining answers to the questions listed above already makes the pre-project survey quite effective.

What is usually the result of a pre-project survey?

• description of the customer’s existing business processes;
• a list of the main tasks that need to be solved using the automation system;
• assessment of the customer’s business processes and recommendations for changing or optimizing the work of departments, taking into account the advantages provided by the information system;
• unique competitive advantages of the customer, which must be taken into account when implementing the system;
• analysis of the existing IT environment for compliance with the requirements of the corporate governance system, recommendations for changing it;
• assessment of work on integrating CIS into the customer’s existing IT infrastructure;
• description of document flow in automated departments and requirements for analytics;
• assessment of possible risks during project implementation and identification of measures necessary to minimize their impact;
• a description of the customer’s wishes that cannot be implemented in the proposed control system and will require modification, an estimate of the time and cost of such modification;
• proposal for the implementation of the project with justification for the proposed option, specifying the number of automated workstations required for the customer and clarifying the project budget.

A separate document of the pre-project survey should be a preliminary work schedule, which includes, among other things, an agreed list of responsible persons (both from the customer and the contractor), their areas of responsibility and basic regulations for the interaction between them. For effective implementation of the system, it is recommended to draw up regulations for information exchange between the customer’s employees and specialists of the IT company conducting the survey, and also, importantly, stipulate the timing and procedure for monitoring the completion of work.

Some companies (most often those engaged in custom development) provide the customer with a draft technical specification upon completion of the pre-project examination.

Do a pre-project survey for free or charge money for it?

If the purpose of the survey corresponds to the tasks described above, then it will require the diversion of significant company resources and must necessarily be paid. This pre-project survey is a full-fledged consulting service that allows you not only to assess the need, timing and budget for automation, but also to optimize the customer’s existing business processes.

As practice has shown, pre-project survey services are not difficult to sell if the company has implemented the appropriate technology and the sellers clearly know (and can clearly explain to the client) the purpose of the survey and what benefits the customer will receive from it.

How to justify for the customer the effectiveness of pre-project inspection

Let's consider potential savings channels, taking into account which can help justify the need for a pre-project survey.

1. Saving human resources and time:
   • when modifying the system to suit the customer’s unique competitive advantages at the initial stage of implementation, and not after putting it into commercial operation;
   • at the stage of integrating the system into the customer’s IT infrastructure due to the fact that all information about the state of the enterprise’s IT environment and the nuances of integration is clarified before the start, and not during implementation;
   • thanks to the timely allocation of material and human resources from both the contractor and the customer;
   • through early assessment of possible risks that could affect the process of system implementation, and the development of measures necessary to minimize their negative consequences.
     Any delay in the progress of the project results in serious additional costs for the customer, which can be quite easily calculated in each specific case.
2. Possible reduction in implementation costs:
   • by identifying services and work that the customer can perform on its own;
   • by adjusting the deadlines for completing some work after clarifying their real labor intensity.
3. Increasing the efficiency of corporate information systems and employee productivity by optimizing business processes taking into account the unique characteristics of the customer.
4. Refusal to use an automated system if at the stage of pre-design inspection it turns out that it will not solve the customer’s problems or its modification will be too expensive.
   In my practice, there was a case when a client with very specific business processes, based on the results of a pre-project survey, was recommended not to deploy a CIS, but to make organizational changes and optimize the technology for working with their customers, since the effect of implementing the system (there was an expensive modification required) did not pay off would be costs. As a result, the client saved tens of thousands of dollars, and the pre-project survey paid off only by increasing the efficiency of the department, which, on the recommendation of the consultants, changed the employee’s work technology.

The absence of a pre-project survey stage in most cases leads to a significant delay in the implementation of projects and an increase in their cost due to both organizational and technical problems that arise during implementation. Often such projects end in complete failure. According to a Standish Group study, almost a third of the 2.5 thousand IT projects they analyzed were not only unsuccessful, but were not completed at all. In Russia, such data is much more difficult to obtain, but I am sure that the share of unsuccessful implementations will be no less.

Therefore, if a consulting company does not want to have unrealized projects on its track record, then it simply needs to conduct a pre-project survey of the customers’ business. It is better to refuse the contract at the initial stage than to get bogged down in work and end up with a stain on your reputation.

Any IT company faces the need to conduct a pre-project survey when automating the Client’s business processes.
Usually, this raises a number of interrelated questions for the latter:

1. What will be the result?
2. Cost of the examination?

Our experience shows that pre-project inspection is a necessary component of the work of almost any IT company related to the implementation of automation systems. The success of the entire project depends on the correct organization and implementation of this stage.

Is it necessary to conduct an examination? What will it give the Client?

There are many reasons why testing is necessary. These may be the high expected cost of the project, the need to change existing business processes during automation, the inclusion in the project of work the scope of which cannot be determined in advance, etc. Simply put, a survey must be carried out if the company being automated is in a competitive market.

What are the goals and objectives of the pre-project survey?

During the pre-design survey, the customer can:

Get a detailed description of the business processes existing in the company and compare the real picture with the presented one

Optimize existing business processes by using the practical experience that consultants from an IT company gained during previous implementations in similar companies

Assess the degree of compliance of the functionality of the proposed system with the customer’s real business processes

Highlight your unique advantages in a timely manner and take them into account at the stage of system implementation, and not after its commissioning

Clarify the budget and timing of the automation project, taking into account possible system modifications to suit the unique features of your business processes

Assess the technical and human resources that will be needed at the system implementation stage. Plan to allocate these resources to complete the project within the optimal time frame and within budget

Assess possible risks that may affect the quality of work

Optimize system deployment costs by possibly performing some of the work in-house

Get a more accurate estimate of economic impact and return on investment

The main tasks of the pre-project survey:

Studying the customer’s business processes and finding out the main problems that he wants to solve using an automation system

Identification of the customer’s unique competitive advantages that need to be preserved during automation

Calculation of the final budget of the project and the timing of its implementation, taking into account the received data

Each company will be able to add tasks that it would like to solve during the survey stage, but obtaining answers to the questions above makes the pre-project survey already quite effective.

What will be the result?

The main result is the final report on the work performed, agreed upon and signed by the customer and the contractor.

Structure of the final report:

Organizational structure of the enterprise

Description of the existing automated system

Extended description of business processes and document flow of the enterprise

Goals and objectives new system automation

Choices software product

Implementation options

Determining the procedure for carrying out automation work

Schedule works

Estimated cost of implementation

Cost of the examination?

The answer to this question depends on the purpose of the survey. If the purpose is an express examination by filling it out by the customer questionnaire, then it's free.

If the purpose of the survey corresponds to the tasks described above, then the use of significant resources of the IT company will be required and the cost will be calculated individually. This pre-project survey allows not only to assess the need, timing and budget for automation, but also to optimize the Client’s existing business processes.

What is the effectiveness of such an examination and will it pay off?

The issue of assessing the effectiveness of a pre-project survey is one of the most difficult in business, since its result is not always obvious to the customer and is often perceived very subjectively. To justify the economic effect of the service, consider potential savings channels:

1. Saving human resources and time:

When modifying the system to suit the customer’s unique competitive advantages at the initial stage of implementation, and not after putting it into commercial operation

At the stage of integrating the system into the customer’s IT infrastructure due to the fact that all information about the state of the enterprise’s IT environment and the nuances of integration is clarified before the start, and not during implementation

Thanks to the timely allocation of material and human resources from both the contractor and the customer

Due to preliminary assessment possible risks that could affect the process of system implementation, and the development of measures necessary to minimize the consequences

Any delay in the progress of the project results in serious additional costs for the customer, which can be quite easily calculated in each specific case.

2. Possible reduction in implementation costs:

By identifying services and work that the customer can perform

By adjusting the deadlines for completing some work after clarifying their real labor intensity

3. Increasing the efficiency of corporate information systems and employee productivity by optimizing business processes taking into account the unique characteristics of the customer

4. Refusal to use an automated system if at the stage of pre-project inspection it turns out that it will not solve the customer’s problems or its modification will be too expensive

Let's sum it up

The absence of a pre-project survey stage in most cases leads to a significant delay in the implementation of projects and an increase in their cost due to organizational and technical problems that arise during implementation. Often such projects end in failure. According to recent studies, almost 1/3 of 2,500 IT projects were not only unsuccessful, but were not completed at all.

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Currently there is rapid development and implementation information technologies not only in government agencies, but also in many Russian enterprises, and the success of the implementation itself depends on what the approach to the implementation of EDMS will be, how well it will be planned.

As business grows, the volume of paper documentation also increases. And when the number of documents being processed exceeds a threshold value, the processes of working with documents get out of control, cease to be manageable and, as a result, begin to slow down the development of the enterprise, then the importance of implementing an EDMS comes to light. At this point, many businesses are faced with a problem called “where to start.”

The process of implementing EDMS in successful global and domestic practice includes the following stages:

1. Information survey.
   1. Interviewing.
   2. Questioning.
2. Analysis of collected data.
3. Formation of technical and functional requirements for EDMS.
4. Monitoring the EDMS market and holding a tender.
5. Testing the demo version.
6. Conclusion of an agreement.
7. Development of regulations for EDMS.
8. Software installation and configuration.
9. Training of EDMS users.
10. Testing software with users.
11. Elimination of errors identified during system testing.
12. Industrial operation.

Why not do without an information survey?

Why is it so important to conduct an information survey? It is believed that a high-quality pre-project survey guarantees 80% success of EDMS implementation. After all, it allows:

• get a clearer “portrait” of the organization: its mission, areas of activity; Company structure; functions of divisions (and their interaction) laid down in the provisions on structural divisions; main business processes;
• determine the general state of the organization of office work at the enterprise;
• determine information and documentation flows (including types of documents used);
• identify and take into account risks and ways to overcome them when implementing the system;
• determine the purpose of implementation;
• determine the tasks and functions that the EDMS will subsequently have to perform;
• identify EDMS users;
• learn and describe existing business processes (to be automated), etc.

You can get answers to the above questions by independent study of general information about the object of EDMS implementation. This helps prepare for interviewing management and key specialists. And analysis of the interview results will help you develop questionnaire with more detailed questions for a wider range of people. Thus, each stage of the examination allows you to dive deeper into the problem and obtain as a result an increasingly detailed description of the problem.

Only by understanding the real needs of the enterprise can one determine what functions the EDMS should perform. Then its appearance will be able to optimize people’s work and they will not perceive it as the fifth wheel of a cart.

By the time the survey began, our meat processing plant had a group of geographically distributed offices, a complex enterprise structure and a large volume of paper document flow, which led to scattered uncontrolled document flow, violation of approval and execution deadlines, as well as loss of documents.

With the growth of production volumes and the increase in tasks solved by our enterprise, the amount of management and other documentation developed, received and sent only grew, and the role of performance discipline. In connection with the entry of the meat processing plant into new level the management of the enterprise decided to implement the system electronic document management(EDMS), which allows you to automate not only work with organizational and administrative documents (orders, correspondence, etc.), but also some business processes accompanied by the processing and execution of documents.

For this purpose, a team of key specialists was formed structural divisions enterprises. The deputy director for preschool education, the author of this article, was appointed head of this project.

Interviewing

We decided to implement the EDMS in stages. The first stage of the information survey, “visible” for the team, was to conduct - survey of the first line of managers and key participants in business processes who will work in the EDMS, i.e. will be its users. This survey must necessarily include managers and subject matter experts of interested structural units, who will be able to express their wishes and comments.

Before the start of this stage, the deputy director for preschool education was questions prepared, the answers to which could give an idea of ​​the problems in organizing work with documents.

A list of future respondents was compiled, which included about 30 people (this heads of departments, their deputies and specialists responsible for creating documents, signing, signing and approving them). A separate meeting was agreed upon with each person, during which the purpose of the personal conversation was first outlined, and then there was a dialogue, the “program” of which was a pre-prepared list of theses and questions (see Example 1). For the convenience of conducting and analyzing interviews, you can record the conversation on a voice recorder. But it is better for the survey participant not to know that a recording is taking place, because most people get lost when they see a voice recorder.

Example 1

Preparation for conducting interviews as part of a survey of a meat processing plant for the implementation of EDS

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When meeting with each respondent, the deputy for the preschool educational institution at the beginning of the conversation outlined in detail:

1. Purpose of the survey:

“Inspection of the state of office work and document flow, understanding of existing business processes that should be automated and whose activities are accompanied by the processing and execution of documents.”

2. Why does our company need to implement an EDMS:

“The purpose of the EDMS is to qualitatively improve the process of working with documents for managers and subject matter specialists at all levels, and to reduce the time of routine work with documents.”

3. What advantages does the EDMS provide, for example:

“The system allows you to reduce search time the required document, allows you to have access to common base documents with differentiation of user rights, you can work in the system remotely, work with one document jointly by several users, approve documents quickly and easily, automate the registration and distribution of documents, organize control over the execution of orders and documents ( management activities becomes transparent), it is possible to sign documents in the system using electronic signature, organize work with contracts, integrate the EDMS with other programs used by the organization, reduce the cost of maintaining the archive.”

1. What problems do you encounter when working with documents?
2. What would you like to improve, improve, change in the organization of work with documents?
3. How quickly and efficiently are documents delivered?
4. Where, in your opinion, are the weak areas that cause problems in working with documents?
5. Are the existing document forms convenient to use?
6. How much time does it take to process one document? This question should be asked in relation to each type of document that is widely present in the organization’s business processes.
7. What is the volume of document flow in your area of ​​work?

The interview process was affected by the busyness of the survey participants, which affected the timing of the survey, and also demonstrated that employees underestimated the importance of the project.

As a result of the analysis of the information collected during the interview, a table was formed, shown in Example 2. It helped to structure the information received and draw the necessary conclusions, which are well reflected in it.

Example 2

Systematization of information obtained during the interview

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Based on the interview results, the following business processes were identified that require automation by EDMS in the first place:

• contract management;
• coordination of invoices for payment;
• coordination of organizational and administrative documents:
• control over the execution of instructions (resolutions).

Interviewing made it possible to prepare the ground for questioning, which requires greater accuracy in providing answers to questions.

Questionnaire

The purpose of the survey was to obtain more detailed (accurate) information about the current state of document flow and office work at the enterprise. The survey participants were heads of structural units and subject matter experts, who would then become users of the EDMS. The survey was conducted in absentia, which meant filling out the questionnaire in the absence of the researcher.

The questionnaire consisted of three parts (see Example 4):

1. The introductory part - its main task was to encourage the respondent to give answers to the questions posed. The purpose and objectives of the study, the significance of the respondent’s role were described; instructions for filling out the questionnaire.
2. The main part contains questions with simple wording, and their completeness and quantity depend on the desired goal (the questions in the sample questionnaire from Example 4 are advisory and may differ from the optimal questions for surveying your enterprise; you can use them as a starting sample for developing your own questionnaire ).
3. The final part - here the respondent was given a guarantee of confidentiality of the opinion he expressed; gratitude was expressed for participation in the study.

At the request of the respondent, the questionnaire was printed and handed to him personally or sent to his email. The form of the questionnaire was designed so that it would be convenient for the respondent to fill it out directly in a word file.

If the questionnaire was sent in the form of a word file, then in the body email the recipient first saw the accompanying text (all contact details in the example are fictitious):

Example 3

Accompanying text and subject of the email when sending the questionnaire as an attached file by email

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Example 4

Questionnaire for conducting a survey of an enterprise before implementing an EDMS

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The collected data was entered into a MS Excel table, which made it possible to automatically generate diagrams of the distribution of opinions on each issue. Those. the results were presented to management in the most visible way possible (see Example 6). The number of selected answer options for each question was reflected on one sheet of the file, and diagrams based on this data were built on another sheet:

In the future, we are going to take into account all identified risks so that as soon as possible go to work in EDMS:

• the risk of absence or incorrect definition of the tasks and functions of the EDMS;
• the risk of underestimating the necessary resources (monetary, time);
• the risk of delays in the implementation of project stages;
• the risk of insufficient information to employees of the enterprise about the progress of work, as well as the risk of neglect, passivity, resistance of employees, and poor involvement of managers in the project;
• risk of poor technological equipment;
• risk of lack of regulatory framework.

In general, the survey showed a positive attitude towards the introduction of electronic document management, but there were also a number of employees who had a negative attitude towards the implementation of EDS, because they perceived this project as just another innovation that would only add more work to them.

Subsequently, based on the analysis of the results of the interviews and questionnaires, the goal was determined and requirements for the EDMS were drawn up, but this is another and no less important stage of the implementation work. Currently, our company is conducting a comparative analysis of the EDMS market.

Footnotes

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The creation of a project for a new building, structure or reconstruction of an object is necessarily preceded by a number of preparatory measures that make it possible to take into account all the features and initial data of the design, land plot and engineering communications. The starting stage of the preliminary design stage is a pre-design survey, which allows, in the process of further development of design and technical solutions, to fully comply with the requirements of the current SNiP and regulations, all the conditions of the Customer and his wishes. It will depend on the preliminary activities compound preliminary design , timing of preparation of design and technical documentation and complexity of work.

Characteristics of the procedure and its features

Pre-project inspection - complex specialized work on the collection, processing and system analysis of objects for various purposes. Based on the collected data, a comprehensive justification of construction or reconstruction, its feasibility, and the occurrence of possible difficulties and problems is made. To achieve the most reliable and effective results during the examination, we use different kinds high-tech tools and equipment.

Specialists performing research papers must have specialized education, have official permits from government agencies and structures of the SRO system.

Why is a pre-project survey carried out:

1. To assess the real condition of the facility before its reconstruction, expansion, addition or modernization.
2. In case of loss of design and technical documentation.
3. When making mistakes in drafting a project.
4. When adjustments are made during the construction process that were not reflected in the drawings and actual work.
5. When assessing the physical and moral wear and tear of structures and utility networks.

Often ordered today pre-project documentation at the pre-investment phase in order to provide a reasoned justification for financial investments, their feasibility and systematic implementation of the project.

Main stages of work:

• Preparatory stage: studying the Customer’s wishes, collecting necessary documentation and other data.
• Familiarization with the object, coordination of terms and costs of services, development of a program of activities and drawing up technical specifications (detailed technical specifications).
• Comprehensive visual and instrumental examination of the object.
• Analyze the results obtained and perform the necessary calculations.
• Drawing up a conclusion about the condition of the object.

Where can I order a pre-project survey?

The multidisciplinary company "Region" provides individuals, construction and contracting organizations, investment and development companies with a full range of services for preliminary inspection of objects, construction sites, unfinished construction and engineering systems. Time for pre-design work and cost of preliminary design depends on the structural complexity of the object, the volume of work to be done and its composition, location construction site and the availability of reliable data on the actual condition of soils, utility lines and communications.