Steps to Successfully Changing Your Business Software Part IV: Implementation

You've selected and purchased your new software, or signed up to a cloud-based application.  Now it's time to implement it.

There are two major challenges to implementing new software.  One is change management, and the other is data migration.  The new software should be as close as possible to what you documented when you were analyzing your needs during the business analysis phase.  However, the new software's design might require you to make some changes in your processes that you wouldn't have made otherwise.  If you involved all your employees in the design and selection phases,  change management will be easier because they will have had the opportunity to participate in decisions about the new system and be much more likely to be positive about making changes.  If you intend to import data from your old system into the new one you'll need to plan how to do it.  Data migration is often not given the consideration it should when implementing new software.  Lack of planning and appreciation for the difficulty of this task leads to frustration with getting a new system running and working right.

You should follow these guidelines when implementing a new software system:

- First, you should expect, and accept, that things will go wrong.  If you expect that unplanned problems will crop up you'll be much better prepared to deal with them.  Almost any new system implementation requires more work and time than can be foreseen.

- Be careful about setting deadlines for implementation.  Don't base deadlines on arbitrary dates and wishful thinking.  It's good to have a ballpark date for final implementation, but you should be ready to adjust this.

- Avoid the temptation to do a complete cutover from the old system to the new all at once.  This places your business at risk.  You can manage risk by following a staged plan for transition from the old system to the new.

- Include a testing phase in your plan.  You should schedule testing the new software with sample data to be sure it works as expected.  Testing can reveal problems you can get corrected before committing to the new system.  Break up the testing for vaious parts of the software.  Be sure you do thorough testing.  Don't assume everything will work without a hitch in the new software.

- Don't try to migrate all the data from the old system before testing the new system.  You should import only enough sample data to test certain parts of the new software at a time.  Importing small sets of data will reveal issues with data migration which you can address when doing a complete migration plan.

- Be sure to include data cleanup in your data migration plan.  Usually the data in an old system lacks consistency, which makes it difficult to import correctly into another system.  For example, a data field in the old system may have been used to record phone numbers at one time, but then used to record emails at other times.  But the new system has separate fields for phone numbers and emails.  Or perhaps the old system had a field for a phone number which could be entered in any format (with or without parentheses and dashes, with or without long-distance prefixes), but the new system uses phone number fields that require a certain format and number of digits.  You'll need to identify data that's entered inconsistently or incorrectly in the old system and get it corrected before trying to import it.  This might require hiring data entry temp help.

In some cases a business can adopt a new software system without migrating any data from the old system.  In such a case you'd be using two separate systems without the need for any sort of  data synchronization.  In most cases a business will require running two systems in parallel with some kind of data synchronization until the old system can be dropped.  In the latter case it would be wise to plan for a phased transition from the old system to the new one.  This means using only parts of the new system in stages.  This helps to mitigate risk, and affords a fall-back strategy in case issues are uncovered with the new system.  By keeping the old system running and up to date you can fall back to using the old system for everything until issues uncovered in the new system are resolved.  

Keeping data in sync between two systems can be a challenge, and must be carefully planned.  It might require doing double data entry, or  running data synchronization software, or a combination of the two.

Of course, there should also be time planned for training on the new system.  But training should not be used as a substitute for early employee involvement in the software selection process and testing it to be sure there aren't issues you didn't anticipate.

Steps to Successfully Changing Your Business Software Part III: Software Selection

Before you've reached the stage of selecting your software, you've thought through and documented what you're looking for.  Therefore, you should already know what you want.  When weighing choices you should follow the guidelines below.

Rely on your own needs analysis.  You should have done a thorough job developing a design for your ideal system.  Software salespersons don't know your business, and they can't do a better job than you in the selection process.  They only know about their own software, and can't know how well it will meet your needs.

Avoid basing your selection decision on canned demos from salespersons.  Ask if you can get demos based on your own specifications.  The pre-developed demos that salespersons present make their software look great, but they almost never tell you anything about how well it will work for you.

Make sure you understand the software you are looking at.  If anything is confusing, that's a warning sign.  Don't assume training is the answer.  You should be selecting the software that comes closest to your ideal design concepts.

Take advantage of free trials.  You should never purchase any software, whether cloud or installable, without first giving it a test drive, if possible.  A lot of software comes with a free trial.

Be sure to weigh the pros and cons between cloud software and software installed in-house.  

Check the scalability of the software to see if it can keep up with possible changes and growth in your business. 

Carefully check the support agreement.  Is 24/7 phone support available?  Will any user support involve a cost?

Try to estimate the true cost of ownership for a package you're looking at. If in-house, how often will you have to upgrade?  How long is a given version supported?

Find out what integration capabilities the software has.  Does it have an API?  An API - or application programming interface - allows anyone with the right programming skills to create custom applications that can interact with, and augment, the software.  Does it have good features for exporting and importing data from various sources?  Does it have built-in integration with such popular office software as Outlook, Excel, and Quickbooks?  If you don't have your own programming expert to help you evaluate these capabilities you should seek a consultant who can do this.  

How much will implementation cost?  Do you plan to migrate data from your existing system into the new one?  How big a job will this be, and how much could it cost?  Moving data into a new system is often overlooked and grossly underestimated in the selection process.  Don't rely on the salespersons for the new software to advise you on this.  They will want to minimize the difficulty, of course.  If you don't have someone working for you who can evaluate this, you should seek the advice of a consultant.

Avoid basing your selection on what other similar businesses use.  Remember every business has unique processes.  Even if another company is in the same industry as yours, it will likely be using a given software package differently from the way you would.  The software might be a good fit for the other company, but not yours. Stick to the ideal design you developed when you analyzed and documented your needs.

While you shouldn't base your selection on what similar businesses use, you should get references or find others who are using a package you are looking at.  Ask them about their customer satisfaction experience.

Always consider combining more than one piece of software.  Any single package has strengths and limitations.  People often look for a single package that will do everything.  It's possible to select two or three inexpensive pieces of software, with different sets of functions, and integrate them.  This way you take advantage of the strengths of each piece.  This combination can be much more powerful than relying on a single piece of software that performs some functions well, but is weak or lacking in others.

Avoid brand new software or a brand new version that hasn't stood the test of time.

For cloud solutions figure on implementing your own data backup scheme.  Also consider what to do during outages.  Always assume you'll have outages.