ERP Implementation - Initiation Phase

Today I'd like to discuss the #initiationphase for ERP projects. Let's assume you did your due diligence and found a partner for your ERP implementation, negotiations are complete, and you signed the contract. A lot of companies misunderstand that once the contract is signed, they can start the project right away. All consulting companies do forecasting to ensure they have resources assigned to their pipeline; however, in most cases they will not fully commit the team until they receive the signed contract. The reason is simple, there are a lot of ‘potential’ projects in the pipeline that have a specific start date, which often get delayed, while others never come to fruition. No consulting company will fully commit a team without a guarantee of work. It's a balancing act, but until you sign a contract you have no say who will be on the team. Most of the time Consultants get assigned on a first come first serve basis. Something I suggest you should watch out for is when a partner tells you that they can start one week after the signed contract. A statement like that should raise some red flags because declarations like those are hardly achievable. Please do yourself a favor and give yourself a minimum of one month between signing the contract and starting the project. 

 If you’re implementing D365, then it will take up to six weeks to have the license in place and spin an environment. I would recommend you spin a demo environment until the design phase. After that you'll need the full environments set up (assuming waterfall methodology here). With D365 on cloud, you receive three standard environments: production (tier 2), configuration (tier 2), and testing (tier 1), and you’ll need at least one more, which you can spin on a private subscription to be more cost effective.

Before you start the project, it’s important to interview the partner team to assess compatibility. Once the partner’s team is agreed upon, they'll start project preparations, review all gathered documentation, review the contract, as well as discuss the scope and prepare for ‘their internal’ and ‘official’ project kickoff. Additionally, they'll need to prepare the agendas for the ‘Concept Training Phase’ so that you in turn can coordinate your team, including the SME’s (subject matter experts) to fully participate in the upcoming workshops. There will be a lot of going back and forth between the two PMs to organize the first phase. 

 Your PM also has a lot of preparation to do by making sure your core team is ready for the project. I would suggest team building activities to cultivate cohesiveness between team members. Together with the team, the PM needs to decide the project governance (if it’s not in place yet) as well as what tools to use and communicate the set expectations. Then, once your PM receives the workshop agendas, they'll need to coordinate all the workshops, communicate within the company on who will need to attend, what time, and on what day they're being run. The Change Management Specialist will start company wide communication and start setting up expectations according to the strategic plan. I would recommend there being regular updates on the progress of the project throughout the organization, as doing so increases acceptance of the upcoming change. Just a reminder, that whether communication is happening or not, there will always be ‘gossip’ going around, so you might as well control to a degree what information is being shared.

 Once everything is in place, you'll want to have an ‘Internal Kick-Off Meeting’ to share all the information regarding your project with the project team and all the stakeholders. Next, you'll want to have a ‘Project Kick-Off Meeting’ with your partner. This meeting is for both teams and selective stakeholders. Following the presentation, I recommend a tour for your partner of your DC, store, etc., depending on the industry. Before the end of your first day, I suggest a few team building exercises to fortify the bond between the teams, as from that point on the two teams will merge while working towards the common goal (successful implementation). I urge you to please refrain from skipping the internal kick-off meeting. I’ve seen that happen a few times and it's never gone over well. The company’s project team wasn’t fully informed, there was a lack of communication throughout the duration of the project, and things didn’t go as smooth as they could have, compared to when projects are set up properly. The worst thing you can do is cut corners, it will cost you a lot in the long run!

As always, there's much more that I could write about, but these are what I believe to be the highlights of the initiation phase.

 Thank you for reading.

 Until next time…..