Let’s face it – change happens. It is one of the few certainties in life. Even though we face it constantly, we are not always great at facing it or adapting to it. Sometimes we don’t even recognize change or grasp how it is affecting us, until we find ourselves struggling with doing things the same way we’ve always done them.
policyIQ and the changes that impact the way your company uses the application should NOT be among the most stressful changes that you face in your life. In fact, updating the way you use policyIQ to meet the changing needs of your organization should simple – and a process that you undertake regularly to keep things running smoothly. The following five steps are a simple path that you can follow on an annual basis to make sure that your getting the most efficiency out of the application.
1. Gather feedback
If you are the policyIQ site administrator, you probably hear from users when they have a question, a problem, or they just aren’t happy with how the process is running. It’s important to be open to feedback constantly – to address major issues as they are happening – but it’s also important to take a step back and gather your users together to solicit their feedback when they’ve had a little distance from the urgency of their daily work.
It’s often not possible to gather every user – if you have hundreds of people across the world using the application, this just isn’t practical. But try to bring together a sample of users that addresses every level and location. Their issues are different, and they may come to find that something that one group of users finds unnecessary is actually a critical step in the overall process.
2. Create a preliminary list of improvements
After speaking with the users, determine which recommendations make sense for the overall group. Do this objectively, thinking about the process only – not what is “possible” to do in policyIQ.
3. Talk to a policyIQ team member
After pulling this list together, you are likely to have a few things on that list that you don’t know how to implement in policyIQ. You may not even think that some of the ideas are possible in the application. You might be right – but then again, there are always new features being added to policyIQ. Talking with a team member will allow us to discuss your overall goals, and help you to think about all of the features available and how they can help you reach those goals.
4. Create a plan
Taking all of your feedback from the policyIQ team, you can now put together a plan for what you can adjust in policyIQ to make the process more efficient. Prioritize those improvements. What will make the most impact with the least amount of effort? Put those items near the top. If something will require a great deal of effort, but doesn’t have a significant impact on your larger group of users, that won’t be as high of a priority.
After you’ve prioritized, determine how many of those improvements you are able to take on given the resources at your disposal. Most of the improvements will be extremely simple to implement, taking hardly any time at all. However, you might find that you’d like to make a more significant change that requires some investment of time or money. If you don’t have time internally to complete the updates, consider engaging the policyIQ support team or a Resources consultant to make the updates.
5. Implement the plan
Once you’ve decided what updates you want to take on, get started. Consider the order in which you are going to make updates, as there may be impacts on other areas of the application. If you have questions about which you should do first, reach back out to the policyIQ team and we’ll help you gauge the impacts.
These five steps should really be considered a cycle. You’ll implement your adjustments, but with the new process or features in place, you’ll want to gather feedback again to make sure that you’ve accomplished what you set out to accomplish.
We’d love to help! Reach out to the policyIQ support team so that we can help you kick this cycle into gear.