De-Risking Tool Selection and Implementation
Replacing or adding an enterprise-wide tool is an exciting opportunity and can feel quite daunting. With experience supporting dozens of large-scale tool selections and implementations across various industries, the FlexPoint team has developed the following strategies to set teams up for success at every stage of the journey.
Tool Selection
When you’re ready to explore implementing a new system or replacing an existing tool, don’t get distracted by the fancy technology! We know the “bright and shiny” features are appealing, but try to distinguish wish list items so you can prioritize meeting your core needs and requirements.
Selecting the right implementation partner is just as important, if not more important, than choosing the best tool. We’d all prefer the best doctor in the world using mediocre tools to a mediocre doctor with the best tools. Consider the following criteria when identifying a good-fit implementation partner:
Expertise with the tool itself.
Strong understanding of your industry and use case.
Experienced resources (project managers, technical, and functional).
Aligned working hours and company cultures.
Negotiation and Contracting
Once you’ve selected a new tool, an important part of minimizing your risk exposure is protecting the timeline and budget, especially considering implementations often go over budget by 50-100% (yikes!). Consider the following suggestions when developing a contract:
Start with a brief discovery period where the implementation partner can finalize the initial scope and requirements.
Request a Gantt chart or timeline view of the implementation with explicit assumptions.
Add ‘not to exceed’ language to protect your budget.
Request a pre-production environment matching the production resources in the months before launch.
Align on increased hypercare support from the implementation partner’s project team in the weeks after launch.
Include technical training to equip internal development teams for maintenance and further advancement after the implementation team finishes.
Scoping and Planning
As much as you’ll be chomping at the bit to get the ball rolling, taking the time upfront to scope and plan the work thoroughly will save you time in the long run, help you avoid challenges, and enable you to measure progress accurately. We recommend the following techniques when scoping and planning:
Staff a full-time program manager dedicated to overseeing the whole program and pushing the implementation forward.
Conduct a stakeholder analysis to understand their expectations and the impacts of the transformation.
Build a RACI matrix to clarify roles and identify decision-makers.
Define the project's success metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) to clarify goals and measure success.
Align expectations for project management deliverables, such as project plan updates, weekly status reports, and budget burndown charts/ forecasts, and ensure the whole project team uses the same tools and format for these artifacts.
Develop and stick to a communication plan to ensure all stakeholders are informed about project progress, adjustments, and challenges (a project newsletter with team member highlights is a great option here!).
Create and maintain a risk management plan to identify, assess, and mitigate potential obstacles.
Establish a clear escalation path and build relationships/ communication channels to escalate issues.
Gather the implementation team’s availability for the project's duration and provide a shared calendar for up-to-date PTO and company holidays, then set expectations for delegation of responsibilities and knowledge transfer process when team members are absent.
Define and get alignment from stakeholders on a minimum viable product (MVP) that meets only the essential needs and plan to launch with an MVP.
Developing a Solution
With the proper prep work in place, the main event of building the solution should focus on empowering the team to collaborate and swiftly navigate hurdles. Consider the following suggestions when enabling your team to tackle a large-scale transformation:
Wait to begin implementation until the vendor has ample time to gather requirements and go through solution design.
Make time for intentional, comprehensive team intros to build morale and culture across internal and external teams.
Emphasize the importance of requirements docs (business and technical) for complex and unclear components of the project.
Schedule regular working sessions directly between SMEs to keep things moving and shorten the feedback loop.
Facilitate efficient meetings by preparing agendas, minimizing the number of attendees, and assigning prep work and homework.
Use scrum-style daily stand-ups to remove blockers.
Document and communicate all key decisions to create a paper trail and keep everyone in the loop.
Communicating During Deployment
It’s both critical and challenging to facilitate helpful communication while the team is in development. Consider the following techniques when fostering productive communication:
Establish clear communication channels with owners to share updates for each workstream.
Present updates to executive leadership bi-weekly.
Create a central location and template for user feedback, testing issues, project change requests, and product enhancements.
Clarify expectations for response time for feedback and assignments with different priority levels.
Provide “brave spaces” where anyone can share concerns and challenges.
Testing
Form a strong team of testers familiar with the legacy tool, new tool, and user requirements. This often looks like the immediate project team conducting Quality Assurance (QA) testing in lower environments during the late stages of development. Change champions or other testers often align with the team conducting User Acceptance Testing (UAT) in a dedicated UAT environment after development is complete. Consider the following approaches when testing a new solution:
Define clear testing objectives upfront to ensure everyone knows what is being tested and why.
Develop specific test cases that cover all the main functionalities of the tool or process.
Establish a clear feedback loop to quickly address any issues or concerns that arise during testing.
Ensure the testing team is representative of all end users to capture diverse needs and use cases.
Use real-world scenarios for testing to ensure the tool or process works as expected in actual use cases.
Allocate sufficient time for testing to ensure no aspect of the tool or process is overlooked.
Document the results of all tests, including any issues or bugs, and ensure they are addressed before moving forward.
Distinguish rounds of testing and clarify which environments users should test.
Migration & Data Conversion
Migration and data conversion are often overly simplified in large-scale transformation efforts. No matter how comprehensive the preparations have been, we’ve learned to expect migration to be a complex and challenging process. To ensure success, it’s critical to designate a specific team to own migration and prioritize the following items:
Specify the migration requirements by considering questions like the following:
Which documents will be migrated?
Which fields will be migrated?
What fields, processes, and development are needed to validate the migrated data? (Insist on granular, value-by-value comparison)?
What extract format works best for the import?
Begin extracting documents and data from the legacy system as soon as requirements are finalized.
Begin developing the transformation and import tool as soon as a small batch of extracted documents is ready.
Validate at multiple stages of the migration and aim for granular, value-by-value confirmation where possible.
Use an agile/ iterative approach by breaking large datasets into bite-size chunks.
Rehearse or test the import and validation process in lower environments.
Test accuracy of field mapping.
Test accuracy of field transformation.
Test error reporting with planted errors.
Test the speed of the import with large batches.
Training and User Adoption
As all change management enthusiasts know, user adoption is a tricky yet critical part of lasting change in any organization. Extensive user training and support will help ensure all users are comfortable with the new system(s). Consider the following strategies when training and promoting adoption:
Introduce change in a positive light by emphasizing benefits to the user’s experience and temper expectations to prepare for shortcomings.
Encourage feedback from users to improve the system and the training materials continuously.
Include a mix of training methods, such as in-person sessions, online tutorials, and hands-on practice, to accommodate different learning styles.
Provide comprehensive training sessions and materials like user manuals and quick reference guides.
Leverage change champions within each department or team who can provide peer support and promote the new system.
Implement a robust support system to address user queries and issues promptly.
Regularly communicate updates and changes to the users to keep them informed and involved.
Go-Live
Launching a new initiative after a lengthy implementation is often a complex procedure with many steps and involved parties. Consider the following recommendations to help the team get on the same page for a successful deployment:
Use go/ no-go decision checkpoints to confirm implementation progress and the team’s confidence with success criteria.
Plan and execute a comprehensive communication strategy to keep all stakeholders informed throughout go-live.
Identify which activities can be done beforehand to simplify go-live.
Build an hour-by-hour schedule with ample buffer based on each owner’s estimated timeline.
Specify the owner, sequence, and any dependencies for each launch activity.
Communicate the detailed go-live plan to everyone involved and consider sharing a live dashboard for updates.
Rehearse essential test cases so testers can efficiently and confidently confirm a successful deployment.
Expect complications and long hours.
Prepare a contingency or rollback plan for the worst-case scenario where you must walk back the launch.
After going live, monitor the system closely to address any issues promptly and provide additional support as needed.
Collect feedback from users after the go-live and use it to make any necessary adjustments and improvements.
Celebrate the Win!
After crossing the finish line of a marathon, it’s hard to think of anything else besides a long nap. While we may lack experience running marathons, we know rest is much needed after an intense implementation and can imagine the same after 26.2 miles. After the team has recovered, consider these fun ways to celebrate their hard work:
Write handwritten notes to demonstrate your appreciation.
Recognize all-star team members with personalized recommendations on their LinkedIn profiles.
Award comp time to recognize the team’s undoubtedly long hours, even if it’s just sending the team home early one Friday afternoon.
Host a celebratory happy hour or dinner with the team, potentially including +1s.
Allow team members to expense a meal during late-night or weekend working sessions.
Create fun awards to highlight inside jokes and unique personalities.
Encourage the team to show off their work during company or department all-hands meetings.
