Macroergonomics in the Context of Vendor-Customer Technology Transfer

TLDR: In this article, a macroergonomic approach was used to analyze the transfer of an image-based check processing system to customer sites and identify opportunities to improve the transfer process, identifying a lack of knowledge of the organizational, administrative and managerial changes that would be introduced by the new technology as a potential risk to the project implementation schedule.

Abstract: The transfer of a system-level product from vendor to customer typically requires that the customer change both business processes and organizational structures as part of the system implementation process. A macroergonomic approach was used to analyze the transfer of an image based check processing system to customer sites and identify opportunities to improve the transfer process. The analysis identified a lack of knowledge of the organizational, administrative and managerial changes that would be introduced by the new technology as a potential risk to the project implementation schedule. The analysis indicated that establishing a knowledge base covering five non-technical areas (general system familiarity, worksite preparation, human resources, operations and system support) and transferring that knowledge base to the customer's implementation team would minimize the potential schedule risk. A specialized consulting role was created to transfer the knowledge base to the customer's implementation team t...