Digital Transformation

Our Plan and Prepare phase mitigates the risks typically associated with projects such as:

• Scope changes
• Budget overruns
• Schedule delays
• Resistance to change
• Over customisation
• Data integrity issues
• Integration challenges.

Thorough upfront planning, stakeholder engagement and engaging an experienced implementation partner, mitigates these risks.

At SMC we see a key outcome of any project planning is a comprehensive project plan which has considered all key client side and partner side activities, accurate estimates on work effort, client-side resource constraints, and all project dependencies. This provides a comprehensive project plan which you can confidently start your implementation project with confidence.

A key outcome of our Plan and Prepare phase is an updated Total Cost of Ownership which covers all key costs associated with implementation project. This includes the solution upfront and ongoing costs, any associated hosting costs, implementation partner costs to implement and to provide ongoing support, internal costs for your personnel on the project and finally any additional costs for external resources to assist you.

In any implementation project, defining the project team structure and key roles and responsibilities is crucial. The Plan and Prepare phase yields key outcomes, including the establishment of a project organisation structure, clarity regarding roles and responsibilities, onboarding of all project team members, and the development of a comprehensive resource plan to support your engagement in the project.

Our Plan and Prepare phase is an upfront planning exercise to fully consider all aspects of deploying a new solution. One key outcome is whether the solution is fit for purpose and another being that the implementation partner has the requisite experience to implement the solution. Both these questions are addressed during the Plan and Prepare phase by confirming the solution is the right one and the implementation partner has demonstrated good capabilities and experience.

At SMC, we define this role as a project lead. Beyond fulfilling standard project management responsibilities such as planning, organising, coordinating resources, managing risks, and facilitating communication to ensure timely and budgeted delivery, this role also offers leadership to the project. The project lead ensures alignment with the overarching vision set from the project’s outset.

Ultimately, the ownership of the implementation project lies with the client organisation and its senior stakeholders. Hence, it is crucial from the project’s outset to clearly and effectively communicate the project organisation structure and governance standards. Maintaining effective project reporting and escalations is vital to ensure visibility for senior stakeholders, enabling informed and timely decision-making.

Data migration is a critical workstream in any implementation project as it has direct impact to the business. Some guiding principles include: start planning early as possible with a clearly defined strategy, transfer data that is critical only, determine the best automation tool to assist where data that is complex, large volumes and/or require heavy transformation, and ensure data is validated by the business data owners. Accurately migrated data is a client-side responsibility.

In implementation projects there are many moving parts when it comes to the solution setup. This may include out-of-the box configuration, some customisations (i.e. reports, forms, solution gaps), integrations to 3rd party solutions etc, so it is critical to ensure it all works before training end users and going live. At SMC, we see effective testing as critical to any implementation project. Best done when ownership of the overall testing workstream is managed by a client-side test lead and an upfront testing plan is agreed by senior stakeholders. Testing is a client-side responsibility.

The solution working as required, and accurately converted data, are key outcomes of any implementation project. However, the education of your staff and them buying into the project is as equally important. So, it is important to assess during the implementation design stage what impacts there will be in your staff’s ways of working, and then formulating detailed training plans to achieve the desired outcomes. Training is not a one-time activity. The education and learning is a whole of project initiative and effective feedback from your staff should be actively encouraged and monitored.