In July of last year, Eugene Deen and Brandt Linkowski were involved with the Animal Care SOP project which created a connect site to replace the legacy SharePoint/Excel Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) document database for Animal Care Services. Some of the key successes from the project include:
- The client received a great solution without having to break the bank. The use of Connect (SharePoint) allowed for a simple site creation at a lower cost than other alternatives.
- The solution leveraged built in SharePoint functionality to significantly automate and simplify the document management requirements for the SOPs and facilitate ease of access for users accessing the documents.
- Animal Care Services is self-supporting. With a little bit of training on how to use the site, the department is able to manage their documentation with no extra assistance.
This workflow improvement has made a large impact on the work load experienced by the staff. Megan Will, Animal Ethics Liaison, had the following to say about the new system:
“The SOP database has significantly decreased the time required to ‘manage the management system’. It has increased ownership/engagement with the staff in our department as they can see the whole database, including what is coming due and who is working on what. This has led to more efficient review and revision time frames on all documents. The database has made it much easier to track upcoming due and expired documents, which helps us to adhere to our regulatory body requirements for timely reviewing of documents. It has also facilitated client use of the documents, thus refining animal use. And finally I would like to note that it was recently presented at an international conference, and raised interest from institutions in the Caribbean, Harvard and in Washington.”
As great as a highly detailed system may be, complicated solutions have a higher tendency to break when needing updating and often require extra training with each update. This project just goes to show that a relatively complex problem can be solved with a straightforward, simple solution.
