At first glance, you might think that a bank, especially a 140 billion super-regional was chocked full of process and you are correct.  The problem I encountered was a consistent and repeatable process that worked across all groups and throughout the organization.

As I set about this task, I looked around to find a process that existed that may work for us.  There were paper processes, excel (the scourge of progress) processes, automated lotus notes processes, executive processes from the 1800′s and so many more.  I needed one that worked for me and my group.

Let me explain the need and I will use the website content change control process as an example.

After determining the lay of the land and realizing that changing the bank would be like turning the Titanic we isolated our pain points.  Those are as follows:

• Line of business partners that fed us the content.
• Our group was responsible for the integrity of the content.
• Audit and compliance required that we be able to document change on the site in 2 places.
• High volume of change with limited resources.

So now we know the requirements.  Once these are established, now you can create the solution with a goal of being repeatable and consistent.

After weeks of the concept, review, revision process, we finally came up with a plan that worked for us.  Now my goal of implementing the process across the entire organization never happened but for us, the process we instituted worked and is still working today at Regions.

Briefly, the process was this.  We defined our content “Champions” in each line of business that owned the content.  They submitted the change through an online tool called “Ontime” (great tool). Once submitted, the request came into a queue and was reviewed and given one of 4 change “level”. These levels were correlated to the amount of work and time it would take to complete.  Level 1&2 communication were handled through the “Ontime” tool and all others were treated as a full-on project with a project manager assigned.

It was consistent and repeatable and everyone knew what was going on.  And audit and compliance were happy.

This was the benefit of working toward the solution of a defined goal with requirements and what any good leader will do.  They do not take the easy way out and try to institute one process for all but take the time and find a solution that is consistent and repeatable.

Shall I repeat myself…. Consistent and Repeatable.

We have been working on interactive projects since essentially its popular birth (around 1995) and the one constant has been change. I like to tell stories about the first time I sliced an image or not having layers in Photoshop, it blows the newbie’s away but I tell it over and over to reinforce the concept of change because it never ends. You have to keep up.

Change is frustrating and tiresome, so they come to someone like us and ask the general question “How do we make it better?”

I always counter with this question in return, “What is your goal?”

They are often taken aback because they haven’t thought about a goal. Most think of a website as a two dimensional product like a brochure or a printed ad but the beauty of the web is that it has many layers, many facets and the goal can be so different for each client.

I have often said that with enough time and money anything can happen on the web but unless there is a goal and that goal is met, nothing was accomplished.

My advice is that before you ask the question, set the goal and make sure you measure the success toward that goal. A good partner will help with all this, our team will have done their job and that is to make you happy.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us and hopefully this was helpful.