5-Step Printing Assessment, Step 3: Validate Your Findings
Posted on Thu, Mar 03, 2011 @ 08:34 AM
In previous posts, I discussed how to perform a current-state analysis by gathering data and crunching the numbers. If you’ve completed those steps, congratulations — you have successfully worked your way through the hardest part of your Imaging & Printing Assessment.
Your next step is to validate your findings with your project stakeholders — essentially, anyone who has the authority to either implement or veto your project. They are your allies and will help you guide your organization to a future-state plan that reduces printing costs. Debrief with each of them, some in a group and others one-on-one as you see fit, to share your current-state analysis findings. It’s important that your stakeholders are pleased with your progress and are armed with the information they need to help you move the project forward.
Review Critical Success Factors
Your Imaging & Printing Assessment project must line up with your organization’s overall business objectives. At this point in the process, it’s important to work with project stakeholders to tie your current-state findings back to your critical success factors.
For example, if a critical success factor is to reduce lease expenses by 20 percent, but your current-state analysis shows that your leases don’t expire for two years, you are not in an immediate position to act on it. Conversely, if a critical success factor is to reduce the cost of color, and your assessment finds that you print and copy a lot of color, you have an opportunity to over deliver.
My suggestion is to create a one-page summary that describes the project, the critical success factors, your assessment findings, and a matrix mapping the critical success factors to the assessment findings. Draw some initial surface-level conclusions that are logical and easy to understand. Keep complex topics out of your summary document, and use it to gain additional buy-in for your project, which will be helpful when you are ready to implement your future-state recommendations.
Seek Out and Encourage Feedback
Once you’ve packaged your current-state analysis in a digestible format, make your findings widely known and solicit feedback. Encourage people to punch holes in your findings. Ask non-stakeholders to review your summary document and share their thoughts, especially department managers and others who are responsible for budgets.
Point out areas you’ve identified for improvement, as well as the potential cost savings you have in mind. By encouraging feedback, you will gain additional stakeholders without specifically asking for support. And, after all, reducing spend is ultimately the responsibility of everyone in your organization.
Incorporate Feedback and Address Questions
As you work toward building your final deliverable, be sure to incorporate the feedback into your future-state design. It’s likely that someone is going to ask a question you didn’t consider. Make sure to document all questions and provide detailed, documented feedback that answers them. By incorporating this information into your recommendations, you’ll have automatic buy-in from those departments that will be affected by the project.
Company-wide feedback is critical to the success of your assessment. Don’t fall into the trap of creating future-state recommendations without the appropriate amount of buy-in. One sign that you don’t have enough information is if you continue to revise your future-state recommendations because of missed feedback. In that case, continue to solicit responses until you’re confident in your recommendations.
By taking this inclusive approach to the findings-validation stage of your printing assessment, you will strengthen both the facts behind your analysis and your stakeholder support. This will make it infinitely easier to build out your final assessment deliverable and implement your recommended changes — the final two steps of the assessment process.
5-Step Printing Assessment Series:
1. Gather the Data
2. Crunch the Numbers
3. Validate Your Findings
4. Build Final Deliverables
5. Implementation
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Jeffrey Goldstein is Senior Consultant at MCPc and is responsible for the delivery of hardcopy and value-added services within the Lifecycle Management Group. Connect with Jeff on LinkedIn.
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