Regardless of whether your Print MIS system was implemented 1 month, 1 year or 5 years ago, governance and compliance is key to successful longevity and adoption of the system.  Governance and compliance is often overlooked which leads to erosion of the system over time and companies find themselves drowning in a sea of workarounds, quick fixes and band-aids. This leads to a data integrity issue which is the result of a breakdown of processes within the Print MIS ecosystem. 

Here are some symptoms of a Print MIS system running without governance and compliance:

• Print MIS tasks are bleeding out of the system into other tools that users have grabbed to support their day-to-day needs. This can be Excel, email, free cloud based systems etc. 
• If you ask three different people to enter the same job, you will get three job tickets that look different and yield different products
• The Print MIS system has really become a system to capture notes. Specifications aren't properly captured. Data capture has become unstructured because there is confusion and inconsistency of how to record information.
• New staff have to ask people how to complete Print MIS tasks. There is no documentation or online training to support new users or help existing users learn new process. 
• Users cannot find the information they need about orders, customers, contacts and so on within the Print MIS system. They have to seek out human capital to get their questions answered ("I have to talk to Sally because only she knows how to enter this customer's order"). 
• Your Print MIS system is behind multiple versions and/or point releases
• New workflows or processes aren't tested before they are put in to production
• Adjustments to the system are made without discussion. There are no approval levels to any chances and Print MIS Administrators simply make changes when requested to do so. 
• Security access is not defined and has roles outside of system administration making key configuration changes.

Your system is lacking governance and compliance, so where do you go from here? While it may seem daunting to overcome, you don't have to wait to have governance and compliance for every aspect of the system before you release it to your team. You can pick away at is and simultaneously stop the ongoing erosion.

Here are some ways to inject governance and compliance:

• Write standard operating procedures (SOP's) for all functions within the system. Keep these simple, use screenshots to give users a step-by-step guideline on how to do each task. Be sure to have version control and update any time a process changes BEFORE it goes live. 
• When possible, develop online tools to help users learn how to do key tasks. Videos are very powerful "cheat sheets" on how to perform various tasks.
• Have SOP's readily accessible by ALL users of the Print MIS where they can access them online.
• Communicate with all users that you want them to alert you to issues that they have with the Print MIS and give them a tool to capture these. Encourage them to take screenshots and send samples of issues. Whatever tool you use (ie Google Sheets), let all users have access to it. There will be a combination of quick win fixes and bigger ticket items, keep users abreast of which ones you are addressing and which ones will be tabled until further notice. If you get your users engaged by encouraging them to report issues, you will get more compliance.
• Claw back band-aids and workarounds by fixing the issues that created them in the first place.
• Communicate a policy that users cannot go rogue and create workarounds outside of the system. Sometimes there is a legitimate need to use additional tools, but there must be structure and guidelines to adding them. There needs to be an approval policy for workflow changes.
• Define roles and responsibilities for who can change what within the Print MIS system. Your Print MIS administrator will most likely be the one to execute all changes, but they cannot be the one to have full control to decide on all changes.  
• Define security policies for roles within the Print MIS system. Most systems will come with predefined security groups. If these are tailored be sure to have defined tasks for what each role has permission to do. 
• Have an upgrade policy and develop a cadence for deciding on when you will take upgrades, how bugs will be handled, and what your upgrade testing protocol is.

Governance and compliance can feel daunting but the time and energy spent on it can spare you a lot of headaches and major issues in the long term. After all, data integrity is the pinnacle of a well-established Print MIS system.