Gaining user trust is a special skill, and sometimes the project managers from software companies just don’t have it.
Software companies love bean counters as project managers because they keep track of billable hours. It’s always good to get paid. It’s better to gain the users’ trust, have a successful rollout with some aftercare, and get paid more. Some software companies’ solution to this is to insist on a person from the provider’s staff as an internal person to do the touchy-feely work with the users.
Sometimes the separation of implementation resources in to “us” (provider) and “them” (software vendor) causes problems.
Recently, a CFO friend’s boss has been getting testy about the EMR not being on line a few years after buying an expensive enterprise software system that’s expensive to maintain. Not his fault. Not even the vendor’s fault or the software’s fault. Some people simply have trouble relating to humans on a human level when it comes to business, and I think that’s what’s happened in their implementation.
The thing that strikes me as the most important thing to do is gain the trust of the users and get it up and running before they have a chance to think about it. There are always Negative Nelly’s around, and if given a chance, they will unwittingly sabotage the effort with negative rumors. Once you quietly design the software, move fast to implement. Having elements of the EMR, like progress notes, successfully operational creates a fabulously positive buzz in the organization, so be ready to roll something else out, quick!
There are a ton of experts out there who tout Rapid Cycle Implementation and other systems for making your software work. Mostly, they’re good and embody the ideas we pioneers had about getting software up and running years ago. They also add a bundle of good ideas every project manager should steal.
That said, gaining trust of the users is the one foundation that deserves more attention than it gets. Is that because there’s no line item in the budget for that?
I’m available at info@ehrsio.com
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