Making Pilgrim’s Progress
May 19th, 2009 Comment on this article
Albany, OR, Network Administrator Allen Pilgrim
“For businesses that are all about numbers, you can forget about having the kind of success we’ve had at the City of Albany,” says Network Administrator (and Laserfiche Luminary) Allen Pilgrim. “The IT Director gives me as much space as I need to work on the relational aspects of my job.”
That freedom’s paid off, because as we saw in the May GME, Pilgrim’s not only inspired city-wide deployment of Laserfiche, but has been able to quantify significant savings as a result, most recently from last year’s implementation of Quick Fields. “We reached ROI with Quick Fields in our first year,” Pilgrim says, citing as just one example the “dozens upon dozens” of hours saved in the Ambulance Billing office.
Pilgrim’s progress shows not only how skillfully he’s nurtured inter-office communication to get things approved and budgeted, but also how to make sure his users are satisfied.
Pilgrim offered to become Laserfiche administrator in 1999 when a week’s worth of scanning data seemed lost. He worked with the City’s reseller VPCI, located in Coburg, OR, to restore it, but not before making sure it was all right with everyone involved. “To be clear I spoke to the person who was in charge of the project and she was more than happy to give it up,” he offers.
Then, he only approached other departments about using Laserfiche after getting the okay from his users in Finance first. When he did approach other departments, he deftly pointed out that as the Laserfiche annual maintenance had been moved to the IT budget, Finance’s resources were not being usurped.
Even then, being a change agent isn’t easy, he says, but it can be sweet. “Most people were fearful of losing their precious paper. I sat down in meetings with people and just one on one, I made it clear that I was committed to ensuring the safety of their data. As we progressed people saw the evidence that I was serious,” he says. “Another way I show people that they are important is to bring them chocolate. Most people really like the Pearson’s Mint Patties,” which, he adds, are 66% Cacao and he buys with his own money.
His meticulous but people-friendly style of IT administration paid off in the city’s acquisition of Quick Fields last year.
First, he arranged for Michael Dane from the city’s reseller, VPCI, to demo the four modules he thought the city would most benefit from. Pilgrim asked staff if any stood out, and the clear favorite was Quick Fields. “My job is not to push something on people, but rather to find what the needs are and then meet those needs,” he says. “Based on what people were telling me —that this will be a huge benefit for our department —I decided to pursue it.”
Then with his list of four departments that would benefit the most from Quick Fields, Pilgrim went to his Finance Director. “He knew that he could trust me when I said the benefits would be substantial,” says Pilgrim. “He knew I wasn’t hyping the product just to get it through.” The next day the Finance Director was able to get other department directors to pay their share of the bill. “It was approved and we immediately started the process.”
The rest, they say, is history – both Allen’s and Albany’s. “Having a reseller like VPCI be so responsive throughout our process has been instrumental to things working out like they have,” Pilgrim says.
“And honestly, if it wasn’t for the good people in the various departments then I could not have done this,” he adds. The Pearson’s Mint Patties didn’t hurt either.
(Besides Chocolate)
- Integrity. People must be able to trust you.
- Commitment. If you’re not dedicated to ensuring the success of Laserfiche then people will not want to follow you.
- Relationships. Simply asking how a person’s day is going and then listening to them without interrupting is sometimes all that is needed.
- Skill. People need to know you’re capable of meeting their technical needs. Often times you will need to rely on an outside source; I rely on our reseller VPCI to help us through difficult projects.
- Focus on others’ needs. Some organizations attempt to tell people “here’s what we’re going to do.” The success we experienced was a result of me spending time listening to the needs that the various departments had and then finding ways to fulfill them.
- Managed expectations. Make sure you give the customer an idea of when you will be working on their request.
- Humility. For people interested in getting that pat on the back it will be difficult to build the kind of team needed to be successful. I tend to emphasize what others have done. Building trust comes from all of these ingredients. Then when you make a recommendation people are more likely to follow.
Laserfiche recently worked with the Economist Intelligence Unit on a study that supported exactly what Allen Pilgrim has discovered – that the best technology solutions enable both central control and local flexibility. Download your copy from the Laserfiche Rio Website.
Tags: Quick Fields