www.ecao.org 22 T SIX FAILURE POINTS By Claudia Mamros, President, iCi info The Canadian construction industry is going strong. However, with an aging and shrinking workforce, companies need to look for innovative ways to optimize resources and control costs. Information management systems (IMS) make it easier for workers to create, store and retrieve documents. They standardize and can automate the process of creating, approving, reporting, filing and tracking documents and progress, managing revisions, and making decisions. They can also trigger alerts, provide notifications and audit trails. This buys time, reduces errors and redundancy, imposes checks and balances, and helps manage risk. They control who has access to information, when and under what circumstances the information can be accessed, and what, when and where changes can be made. This means higher productivity and better business decisions. Verified backups of important records support business continuity. Finally, digital assets are protected. They won’t blow away in the wind, get lost or be destroyed by fire or water damage. Businesses are turning to various information management technologies to become more competitive. Even though this movement exists, Corp Magazine and PriceWaterhouseCoopers suggest that there is room for improvement. A 2017 Gartner research survey indicated more than 50 per cent of information technology implementations fail. The top reasons for failure include lack of senior management involvement, lack of vendor transparency, and breakdown in communication. Companies of all sizes also struggle to adapt to new technologies. In fact, the Gartner Forecast for 2018 highlights the top six reasons why 98 per cent of technology implementation projects will fail. 1.  Don’t think things through – Companies take on IMSs without considering how well these solutions will align with their business strategies. They may solve a number of issues with a particular software but, they SIX FAILURE POINTS IN SOFTWARE IMPLEMENTATIONS