You’ve done all the research, completed an exhaustive comparison of the features, and settled in on purchasing licenses for some new cloud software. It’s an exciting time. Now all you have to do is implement it into your business and you’re home free. Right?

Wrong. Implementation is not an afterthought. Implementation IS where the magic happens and is the most important aspect of adopting any software solution into your organization. I would argue that how you implement a solution into your organization is more important than the solution itself.

When taking a survey of the various CRM and Accounting/ERP packages available to your organization, there are many options and each of them has a large overlap in features. Sure, some are more suitable for some industries and have some native features that may appeal to one customer segment vs another, but all in all, at their core, they do similar things and can be customized to round off the rough edges or fill any gaps. The importance here is picking a solution that acts as a “Platform” (as we’ve discussed in other articles) so that you can mold the solution around your unique business.

At the heart of all of this is the need to take an off-the-shelf cloud solution, which is built intentionally to be vanilla enough to be suitable and appeal to a wide market yet be configurable/customizable for organizations to take that vanilla version and create their own unique flavors. The process of melding this solution into what a specific organization needs and making it usable for its users is called “Implementation”, and it is the main factor in determining the success of the software’s adoption.

With implementation being such a critical factor in the success of a new software solution, it is shocking to see so many companies often overlooking its importance and seeking out low-cost, low-value-add implementation services vs partnering with a firm that has a mindset of understanding the unique mission, values, and strategic direction of the company as well as the desired outcome of implementing the software and then crafting a program to ensure that the software is constructed in alignment with those goals while also taking into consideration usability of the end-users.

Why does this happen?

It’s hard to say for sure, but here are some from my perspective

1. Buyers of cloud solutions, especially in smaller businesses, are usually not technologists themselves and do not understand or have a full appreciation as to how important the implementation process is. They often have “sticker shock” when searching for an implementation partner and look for the quickest/cheapest route of getting the software up and running.
2. During the purchase process for the solution itself, unfortunately, in many cases the account executive selling the software overlooks or simply is not fully informed on the cost and importance of the implementation and thus, to reduce the friction of the sales cycle does not educate the buyer on the importance of implementation or its related cost.
3. Many solution providers have their own internal implementation teams. Some of these teams undoubtedly do a great job, but many are in place to be the “low-cost leader” and as a result skimp on many of the activities performed by an outside partner whose entire value proposition is to uncover the nuanced details that lead to more effective implementation of the software to drive customer outcomes.
4. The misuse of or the way “Quick Starts” are marketed. Quick Starts in the cloud solution and especially the Salesforce ecosystem, are touted as low-cost, fixed-bid engagements designed to “Get your business up and running in weeks”. There is nothing inherently wrong with Quick Starts, and as an agile proponent, I am totally on board with the idea of getting an MVP version of a solution up and running quickly and then iterate from there. There are a few places where Quick Starts go wrong.
   1. One is that the project stakeholder engaging in the QuickStart needs to understand that a Quick Start is Milepost 1 on a much longer journey. Yes, QuickStarts are a great place to start, but they are a starting point, not a destination. They should be used to get up and running so you can validate assumptions and collect feedback from users, and then iterate to a better solution via multiple small iterative phases.
   2. Another is that Quick Starts and their limited/fixed scope nature prevent the business from taking advantage of many of the features that platforms like Salesforce have to offer. This impacts adoption and if the Quick Start is all the business has budgeted for implementation, they are likely to be left underwhelmed with low adoption.
   3. The third issue with Quick Starts at many firms is that they are handed off to either young/inexperienced consultants with no significant business experience or completely outsourced altogether

Remember, price is what you pay, value is what you get…

How SHOULD we approach it?

The following is not intended to be a full guide to how an implementation should be run, rather a high-level overview of some of the key activities to prepare you for the activities that contribute to a higher success rate for implementations.

Establish clear desired outcomes and success criteria

This is THE most important activity you can do when preparing for implementation. Without a clear, shared understanding of the outcomes that are desired from the project, it is rudder-less and doomed from the start, wandering from stakeholder whim to stakeholder whim without any accountability.

To establish clear outcomes, you need to involve the right people. Many organizations attempt to establish the desired outcomes AND project requirements only at the management level of the organization. I disagree with this approach. Even though management will make the final call on what makes the cut for various project phases and scope, there needs to be representation from the people actually performing the work to provide insight to ensure that the detailed requirements line up with the desired outcomes.

Determine metrics/KPI’s that can support the obtainment of your desired outcomes. Many times, people simply equate “going live” with the technology to the project being a success. This simply is not enough. If at all possible (and in most situations it is), correlate a measurement or KPI that can be produced as a byproduct of using the system to determine whether the outcomes are being met and whether the project is a success.

This can be as simple as adoption/activity in using the system by targeted users, or process/cycle time of certain key processes, or improvement of established operational metrics which the implementation is attempting to impact

This is an area that many “cookie-cutter” or “QuickStart” implementations skimp on or miss entirely. This phase of the project should get crystal clear on what the outcomes of the project truly are, and how the various requirements from users link up to support those outcomes.

Example Outcomes:

• Get users out of excel. Establish a streamlined process for allowing marketing and sales to create and manage the entire sales cycle from lead creation through opportunity execution via Salesforce
  • Supporting Metrics:
    • Leads Created
    • Opportunities Created
    • Activities against Leads/Opportunities (emails, logged calls, meetings, etc)
• Reduce the time required to create monthly invoices to customers
  • Supporting Metrics
    • Number of User-Created Invoices (likely need to include in this metric the time-savings of manually creating an invoice in the new system vs old on a per-invoice basis)
    • Number of System-Created Invoices
    • Estimated Time Savings per month
      • Aggregation of the previous two metrics

Carve out the smallest feature set that can begin to deliver on those outcomes

Once you know where you want to go and how you will determine success, it’s time to break your trip up into smaller, manageable chunks. This allows you to reduce the risk of the initial phase of the implementation and gets the system in the hands of the end-users as soon as possible to begin realizing ROI on the project’s outcomes and obtain information as to how the system is being adopted and used so that you can address any issues on a smaller scale before adding on additional features.

This is key because getting the system into the actual users’ hands is the best way to get real feedback on the business value of what you have created up to this point. This will inform the priorities of further phases.

It is at this point where many implementations stop. Hopefully, by now you are realizing that the journey has just begun.

Learn, Build, Repeat until outcomes are achieved

This is where the gold is hidden. It is the follow-up phases after the initial implementation where you can really start accomplishing the major outcomes and success criteria that you set for the overall implementation.

Now that the users are in the system and using it, we can understand what is working, what is not, and where there are rough edges, manual processes, etc that need to be worked through. We can now use this information to inform priorities of follow-up sprints with actual data and fewer assumptions.

At each step of the way, we need to be taking the overall success criteria and outcomes that were created at the start of the project and continue to validate that they are in fact still relevant and continue to build out processes to support those outcomes, all while weaving in metrics to continue to pull insights out of the system as to how well it is being adopted and how productivity is being increased.

If there is anything that you’ve learned from this article, I hope you leave with an understanding of why the implementation of a system like Salesforce or Accounting Seed is extremely important to the successful adoption of the product and accomplishing the key goals you have for the product. In addition, I hope you now realize that “implementation” is never really done. With platforms like Salesforce and Accounting Seed, the possibilities are endless, and rarely will taking on too much at one time result in a successful project. The better way to look at it is the “marathon vs sprint” or lean/agile approach. Break your project into multiple, small phases so that you can deliver value to your business incrementally while taking advantage of the learnings your users will provide you as you guide the implementation forward using the overall goals/outcomes as your North Star.