This project was a long time coming for Point B. I spent about 6 weeks developing a business case, process flows, and prioritized requirements soon after I started with Point B in 2014. In January 2015 the project had been placed on hold due to lack of budget and other priorities for the business. For 2016, we got commitment to a budget and at last, the project was a go! It was exciting, because the business applications we would be replacing were well past their prime with lagging performance, and customized to the point they were not practically upgradeable. Also, we were following a Software-as-Service, cloud, platform-based tech strategy that would put some of the latest tools on our radar.
We spent much of the year in 2015 working to select a vendor. My job in vendor selection was to analyze each product's fit with the organization’s needs. For this purpose, I developed a scorecard that was based on the work I had done previously, but updated since it had been over a year and some of our business owners had changed or changed direction. I also put together a prioritized inventory by business area of the goals and pain points each area hoped the new software would address, as a point of reference during the selection process.
We then scheduled conference room pilots with each vendor. I asked each of the four vendors to come with working software that they could demo to the business team members in each of our effected business areas. In the end, each business area had a clearly articulated score and a list of concerns and bright-spots per vendor, and a solid feel for how well the vendor’s software would address their goals. The project team and I layered this point-of-view on top of a variety of soft and hard inputs including client reference checks, solution time on the market, vendor reputation, product roadmap, and, not least of all, negotiated pricing. Of the four vendors we looked at - including Oracle, Microsoft, Netsuite, and Salesforce.com/FinancialForce, we determined that Salesforce.com/FinancialForce was the best fit for us.
Selecting a vendor was a lot of work! But it was only the beginning. By the end of 2016, we had started to look at what it would take to get this thing implemented. My role was first to get a clear picture of the current, near-term, and future use of the software by the business areas, and then make sure our software configuration met the business needs. I was also responsible for developing any other artifacts needed outside of the software to support the business process.
Using my original process work as a framework, I interviewed users and managers and got a good understanding for their current process and how the old legacy software was being used. This way, I knew which features weren’t working, which were irrelevant, and which processes and features were critical and why. I learned what the processes were as well as what they should be, based on what the business was trying to accomplish.
Using this deep understanding of my user, I created user stories. I prioritized these and explained them carefully to our implementation partners. A note here - ideally my dev partners would have been in the meetings with me, and this knowledge transfer wouldn't be needed, however there wasn't time allowed for this in the project budget. Once they had a design developed, we talked about how to tweak it to meet all the user’s needs, and then they configured it in a test environment. I worked with my user group again to demo the tool, gather feedback, and ask for a few more small changes that would make the tool even more useful and flexible, and then I gave the green light to move the configuration into production.
While the process of development and configuration was happening, I was also working with the data team to gather requirements for migration of legacy data, as well as with the training team to develop job aids, and with various other business groups to develop new form templates for imports from existing systems, and organized a host of other cut-over tasks. Once the legacy data was migrated, I tested a statisically signficant portion of records to ensure everything had gone as planned. After a few interations, the data migration process was ready for it's final journey. I sat in on training sessions and helped troubleshoot mobile app setup issues. Finally, on go-live day, it was all-hands-on-deck as we worked to smooth out new-system-jitters. We were live!
Once we were live, we had all the benefits of this great new system. But, were we hitting our target objectives? I worked with the various user groups and our admins to get feedback, measure useage and performance, and make sure we had it right. We identified several enahcements right out of the gate, and prioritized those with the things that didn't make it into the first release. I'm now working to make the tool as useful as possible. As the business needs evolve, so will our tool. Through the process of implementation, I have built a strong background of trust with the the tech team and business leadership that enables me to understand and make sure our business applications keep pace with business needs.