For Whoever Decides
What It Would Take
To run this for real: what the tool needs, what it leaves alone, and what a pilot with one team would look like.
What It Needs
- Read-only access to the document system
- Three things only: find the folder for an engagement code; list the documents in it by name, type, folder, version, date and author; look a document up again by its reference.
- The list of engagements
- Each engagement code with its manager, partner and team, from wherever codes are opened. Once a night is enough.
- The organisation’s own sign-in
- So that a certification is made by the person it names. The demo’s pick-a-person front page is replaced, and nothing else changes.
- A way to send email
- For the reminders and the partners’ weekly digest. Today they are worked out and shown, not sent.
- A checklist the quality team agrees
- It is data, not code: the quality lead edits and publishes it, and every certification remembers the version it was made against.
What It Leaves Alone
- No document is copied, moved, renamed or deleted. The tool keeps a reference and reads a name.
- It does not read what is inside a document.
- It does not judge the work – only whether the proof is on file.
- Acceptance, conflict checks, time recording and billing stay in their own systems. What they produce is a file in the folder, and that is all the tool looks at.
- It holds no client material beyond an engagement’s name and its client’s name.
A Pilot With One Team
1practice team, with a partner behind it
20–30engagements closing in the period
8weeks: 2 to connect and agree the checklist, 6 running
10minutes a file, as the aim
What Is Measured
- The share of files closed out in time, before the pilot and during it.
- Minutes to close out a file. The aim is 10; the pilot is how we find out.
- Gaps found by the team before a quality review, rather than by the review.
- What the team says: was it less work than the way it is done now?
At the end, one decision: stop, extend to more teams, or roll out. The shape and the numbers here are a proposal to start the conversation, not a commitment.
What Is Already Built
Everything in this demonstration works as shown, on invented data.
- The checklist as versioned data, with an admin side to change it.
- Answers that point at files, manager certification and partner confirmation.
- A deadline counted from a target end date the team can move, with every move recorded.
- Suggested files and automatic checks.
- Reminders, the partners’ weekly digest, dashboards and trends.
- A review sample drawn by lot.
- One seam for the document system and one for sign-in, so the real ones replace the stand-ins without touching the rest.
What Is Not
- The connection to the real document system – the demo runs on a stand-in with invented folders.
- Real sign-in, and sending real email.
- A security and data-protection review.
- Hosting inside the organisation. The code is written to move: nothing in it depends on where it runs today.
4 Questions to Settle First
- Who owns the checklist, and who may change it?
- Which engagements are in scope – every one, or above a size?
- Where is it hosted, and who looks after it?
- How long are certifications and their history kept?
ecm Engagement Compliance Monitoring is a proof of concept, shown here for Doe & Roe LLC, a fictitious firm.