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Tag: Selection process

  • How to implement software solutions

    How to implement software solutions

    This is the second part of a series aimed at covering the process of selecting and implementing business software solutions, where this article finishes the selection process and covers the “How to implement software solutions” part, from the customer’s perspective.

    In the last article the selection process was not completed, because the final step is related to implementation aspects that we’re now detailing. Solutions of this dimension require a relevant level of configuration and customization to ensure alignment with business requirements, therefore, how the solution will be implemented, what project methodology will be used, the level of business involvement, and of course the project effort, represent important factors in the choice process.

    At this stage, the functional and business requirements are already identified, the solution is also identified and the selected partners have submitted proposals, therefore is possible to determine the cost and evaluate the proposals.

    “But isn’t the implementation independent of the solution choice? “

    Depends on several factors.

    As mentioned in the previous article, the choice of the implementation partner is as important as the choice of the solution, due to the complexity and scope of the enterprise software solutions. The absence of a qualified implementation partner, inability to respond to key requirements or excessive costs are factors that can define the choice between two competing software solutions.

    Other possibilities to resolve limitations at partner level should not be ruled out, however given the purpose of this article it’s important to highlight the impact of the implementing partner on the project’s financial effort, on the quality of the final solution, as well as on the project’s ROI.

    Proposal evaluation

    In addition to the most prevalent criteria, such as compliance with requirements, effort and cost, there are other relevant criteria that allow to evaluate the received proposals in greater detail. We’ve highlighted the most relevant ones below:

    Level of financial detail

    What is the cost of the base solution, the cost of the initial implementation, annual corrective maintenance effort, license renewals, training, involvement of internal resources. This level of detail is important to ensure that TCO estimations are not defrauded.

    Level of planning detail

    As already mentioned in the first article, overly simplistic proposals often follow a commercial approach, and will almost certainly need revisions throughout the project. Ensure the implementation plan covers all key aspects with a proper level of detail.

    Level of project complexity

    It may happen that some requirements significantly increase the effort of the project, therefore it’s important to understand from the provided requirements, which ones are easy and difficult to accomplish. A common approach when requesting proposals is asking to identify per requirement, which ones are guaranteed natively by the tool, achieved through customization and if customized what is the level of complexity.

    Knowledge management

    If you have important business processes reflected in the new software, it becomes necessary to retain knowledge on the implemented solution. This retention of knowledge must be ensured by the partner through contracted maintenance services or by formal knowledge transmission.

    These and several other criteria are difficult to determine if you don’t have the proper knowledge within your organization. If this is the case, it’s recommended to acquire consultancy services from a partner like Sollogica, to assist in the process of selecting and implementing the software, mitigating knowledge risks and providing the necessary expertise to move towards the intended objective.

    Solution Implementation

    After the selection is made, we then proceed to the implementation process, which despite being under the responsibility of the entity hired for the purpose, must be carefully monitored by the client.

    As the internal requirements assessment phase, resources should be allocated to ensure project monitoring, requirements clarification, operational processes detailing, user experience and other necessary aspects before the acceptance phase. The team constitution must be carried out by defining the necessary roles to be involved, followed by the allocation of resources to each role.

    Within the profiles identified there will always be a project sponsor, typically linked to the top management, with the aim of monitoring the overall progress of the implementation, which leads us to the implementation methodology.

    Project Management

    In terms of project management our preference and advice always goes to methodologies based on Agile principles, where Scrum is the most popular but there are others like Kanban.

    Not all projects can be implemented this way, due to project size, specific characteristics of the business area or implementation requirements, however, of all the Agile principles, we highlight two that we consider fundamental to the process of developing and implementing solutions, regardless methodology:

    Satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software

    This is one of the principles that we consider most important in any implementation, given the greater ease in managing expectations and moving towards the proposed goals.

    Welcome changing requirements, even late in development

    Assume that despite the clients work, there are imponderables that increase according to the size and complexity of the project, therefore the ability to make adjustments without compromising the project should be ensured.

    Even if the implementing partner uses another project management approach, at least these two principles should be ensured to properly follow the implementation work, and to provide the ability to react to changes in the project scope. Having mentioned this, our recommendation will always be in the use of Agile methodologies.

    Change Management

    This is one of the most important aspects for the implementation success, since it’s natural to have some resistance to the solution adoption. This resistance will vary depending on the solution scope and areas, the business culture or the level of digital maturity of the organization, however the lack of adoption is a high risk that must be managed.

    To mitigate this risk we highlight the following measures:

    Identify and transmit benefits of change to all affected areas. This transmission can even be done hands-on through preliminary accesses, ensuring that everyone involved can perceive the change benefits.

    Leadership must give the example, assuming the change, getting involved in the process and monitoring the adoption over time to avoid setbacks.

    Key users are not just proactive resources, but should be ambassadors for change within their colleague circles.

    Group culture can generate censorship if an individual who understands the benefits of change is surrounded by non-receptive colleagues. All of the organization networks must be involved to avoid rejection.

    Acceptance and Go-Live

    After the acceptance tests, the go-live can be scheduled according to the defined approach, and while taking advantage of the new features and benefits, the next initiatives can be pursued.

    If there are questions about this article, or you require additional information contact us through the available channels.

  • How to choose the best software solution?

    How to choose the best software solution?

    This article is part of a series aimed to cover the process of selecting and implementing business software solutions and as the title says, this first article is focused on: How to choose the best software solution for my business?

    Enterprise software solutions have the ability to dramatically improve the performance of a business, ensuring greater control and perception of operations in order to produce added value for users, management and customers. However, given the effort and impact on the business, if this process is not properly planned it can result in significant losses.

    And if there’s one thing in common throughout the years I’ve provided business solutions, it’s that no two implementations are the same. The organizational context, human context, business area specifics, the technological context of the organization, the level of maturity of the business processes, are all factors that contribute to the level of specificity of the project.

    Given that these specifics produce a certain level of risk at financial, effort and change levels, from the moment you start assessing an enterprise software solution, it’s necessary to identify which functional and business requirements must be considered, as well as who should be responsible for identifying and validating the requirements, in order to mitigate the process risk.

    What are enterprise software solutions

    Enterprise solutions are large-scale software systems, capable of centralizing and managing the assigned business areas processes. These systems provide a level of automation, monitoring and information collection that allows to reduce operational costs, increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of processes, while producing performance indicators in real time.

    The types of enterprise software solutions and their relevance will vary depending on the size of the organization or business areas, however here are some examples:

    • Marketing automation platforms
    • Customer Relationship Managment, or “CRM”
    • Enterprise Resource Planning, or “ERP”
    • Supply Chain Management systems
    • Human Resource Management, or “HRM”
    • Enterprise Asset Management, or “EAM”
    • Business Intelligence systems

    Who should be involved

    To identify who should be involved in the requirements gathering process, it’s necessary to define the key roles to perform the project tasks.

    Typically the necessary resources fall into the following roles:

    Sponsors

    Profile of the main heads of the organization, the project sponsors must provide the vision and the direction to follow, ensuring the alignment of all involved.

    Deciders

    Management profile usually associated with the impacted processes, such as those responsible for production or finance in the case of an ERP, or the sales person in the case of a CRM.

    SME’s

    Or Subject Matter Experts, are the specialized resources in the target processes, responsible for the collection, evaluation and elaboration of the requirements.

    Support and collaboration

    Other stakeholders, resources of related areas that have relevant information, and operational support.

    Business Requirements

    Business requirements are the elements that the business needs to ensure its operation, such as business processes, business rules or tasks. The distinction to functional requirements relies on the fact that business requirements represent something that the business needs for its operation, without being directly related to what’s intended from the software solution.

    Business processes are for example, employee onboarding, opportunity management or product development. In case of a business rule we have for example, how to determine the discount given to a customer or the criteria for expense approval.

    At this stage, it’s highly important to ensure that all stakeholders are involved in the process, in order to ensure the complete and detailed identification of all business needs.

    A good practice after identifying business requirements is to categorize and define degrees of importance for them. In this way it’s possible to make adjustments more easily, or to evaluate the proposals received with greater precision.

    Functional Requirements

    Functional requirements are the functionalities that the system must perform, from the user’s perspective, in order to suppress identified needs, such as: “When registering a new support request, the system must notify the support team by email, as well as the manager of the person who made the request”.

    In this stage, all the desired functionalities must be identified, so it’s important to ensure that all relevant stakeholders are involved. In addition, some resources assigned to this stage must have the necessary background to validate the requirements and assess their feasibility.

    On this stage the general characteristics of the tool start to be identified, such as Cloud or On-Premise, multi-language, multi-currency capabilities, extensibility of the tool, export and integration capabilities and overall user experience.

    Cost

    Financial effort will always be a decisive criteria in choosing the right solution, given the solutions broad scope and the potential longevity of the implementation process.

    In order to anticipate the financial effort for the investment, the main indicator to consider is the Total Cost of Ownership, or TCO. This KPI identifies all costs associated with the implementation and availability of the solution, including product acquisition or licensing, customization and configuration, corrective and evolutionary maintenance.

    The importance of this indicator comes from the fact that, in solutions of this dimension, the effort of customization and maintenance of the tool can become superior to the acquisition or licensing of the product. On the other hand, it’s a common practice to attract the customer through a low initial investment and overly simplistic implementation models, revealing the real cost and complexity only when the customer is already deep inside the project and it’s too late to go back, therefore estimating the TCO as soon as possible in the project is a way to avoid unforeseen costs that can lead to complications.

    One of the relevant points in estimating the TCO is the correct identification of business requirements. The way the organization intends to reflect its business processes in the new solution can cause radical variations in the effort and cost of the project, therefore the identification and application of the requirements is a key part in the TCO estimation.

    Common misconceptions

    After describing some key steps in this process, it’s also relevant to demystify some ideas and issues that often occur during enterprise software implementations.

    No Out-of-the-box solution does what you need

    Out-of-the-box or OOB is the way to describe the solution as just acquired, and there are no configurations or customization’s made. Due to the broad scope of this type of solutions as well as the diversity and complexity of different processes and business areas, the software will hardly be ready when you receive it.

    Even in an extreme approach of aligning business processes to the way they are reflected in the base solution, something that I do not recommend any business to do, there will always be a need to configure the solution.

    Na aquisição de soluções empresariais de grande dimensão, deve sempre assegurar um parceiro de implementação que possua o expertise necessário para implementar os requisitos identificados, garantindo que a ferramenta irá atingir os When purchasing large business solutions, you must always ensure an implementation partner that has the necessary expertise to implement the identified requirements, ensuring that the tool will achieve the proposed objectives.

    If you don’t know in detail what the solution needs to do, then the solution can become part of the problem

    The pun is intended, because unfortunately, the incorrect or missing identification of business requirements is something that occurs with some frequency. It is also one of the main reasons for implementation costs to start escalating, either through additional effort on the project to suppress information needs or through evolutionary maintenance to correct something that should have been done right from the start.

    Properly identified business processes are a premise for successful implementation.

    Process and technology need to be aligned

    Even with well-identified requirements, situations almost always emerge where the solution cannot fully answer one or other requirement, or else the effort to fulfill them is exaggerated, or else some solution fulfills the most important requirements as no other can, but has some limitations in another area.

    Ensuring an exact match in everything the business needs will always be a daunting exercise, so the safest way to approach the subject is to be able to perceive, in each alignment case between processes and technology, which side can be aligned more easily. This is a basic case of the importance in having knowledge and experience on your side, which leads to the next topic.

    Choosing the implementation partner is just as important as choosing the tool

    Due to the complexity and scope of business software solutions, one of the key aspects to ensure is the choice of the implementation partner. In addition to the common choice criteria such as experience and cost, the implementation partner must ensure the alignment between technology and business, extracting the maximum potential from the solution in a transparent, integrated and effective way.

    Sollogica fulfills these requirements with distinction, having the expertise to intervene in requirements gathering or solution implementation stages, ensuring the success of the proposed initiatives.

    Process Steps

    After reviewing the main topics of the subject, it’s possible to summarize the first steps of the selection process:

    1. Define project team

    Assign a team to the process, identifying the target resources for the defined profiles.

    2. Identify business and functional requirements

    It emerges from the inventory and mapping of business processes, as well as the requirements analysis.

    3. Formalize requirements

    Through specifications, RFP or other desired model, in order to present to selected partners for proposal development.

    4. Make a shortlist of solution and implementation partners

    Shorten the options depending on the requirements and other criteria identified. Several solution manufacturers delegate configuration and customization to partners, so at this stage you should also identify which partners fit you best considering the identified solutions.

    5. Identify TCO

    With the partners proposals you should already have the main elements to identify the total cost of ownership, which will provide you to fully understand the financial effort over time.

    The following steps for effective product and partner selection depend on additional factors regarding the implementation process, which will be covered in the second part of this series: How to implement enterprise software solutions.

    If there are questions about this article, or you require additional information contact us through the available channels.