More than just implementation services 1. Structure the implementation in manageable and visible steps. 5. Treat it as your business change program, not just a technology project.
Our consultants are experts not just in the technology, but also in the business processes of product development and project portfolio management. We therefore provide advice during an implementation on how best to leverage software capabilities to meet the needs of your organization and establish world-class practices.
Our implementation methodology is based on five vital principles:
The era of marathon 'big bang' software implementations is over. Instead, implementations should be delivered in incremental steps with tangible benefits. With the IFT approach, each phase delivers measurable and visible value building towards the overall objectives. Our consultants will help you define the most appropriate phasing of your implementation according to the most urgent and important issues to solve.
2. Implement each phase quickly.
With IFT a scope for each phase is clearly defined with the sponsor and the key stakeholders with a target of 90 days or less. Our experience shows that beyond this timeframe, momentum is lost and management begins to question the added value of the project for the organization. This ensures a better visibility on the health of the implementation, faster user adoption, reduced risk and quicker benefits delivery.3. Use collaborative workshops to maximize productivity & knowledge transfer.
Each phase is structured as a series of standard workshops and deliverables, conducted with your business and technical experts and our consultants. We use rapid prototyping during these workshops to help select the right design and configuration options. Our approach makes the best use of your people's time, ensures good design decisions are made by the right stakeholders. Very often, your participants go on to become formal trainers of the system and champions of the new processes. The ultimate result is quicker user adoption, long term viability of the system, and greatly reduced implementation and support costs.
4. Avoid customizing to 'pave the cow path'.
All software solutions including ours can be customized almost without limits. Customers often request these customizations simply to support an existing, well-trodden business practice, even though it may not represent the most effective approach. This always results in escalating implementation and support costs, and automates an inefficient process, potentially locking it in to the organization for years to come. Our solution is the most configurable software available, so avoids many of these problems, and enables you to build your competitive advantage without going down the customization route. Our consultants will advise you when a low-value customization is being requested, and offer better ways to meet the business requirement. Our implementation focus will clearly be on the 20% of effort that delivers 80% of the benefits.
Customers get the most benefits from implementing our solution when they use it to drive change throughout their organization. That means they take responsibility for managing the project as a change program, with senior executive support and ownership. Our consultants and workshops will assist and advise your team in planning and managing the program, and help you adress the technical, organizational and cultural aspects of attaining your targeted objectives. We will also help you identify and adress major risks to program success. 