IT Transformation Roadmap

EXTRACTING DEEP-ROOTED SYSTEMS WITHOUT ANESTHESIA

The life cycle of any business system has its limitations. At some point, you need to quit bolting on fixes and move on to something better. That time came recently for a leading specialty equipment manufacturer. Their technology and systems were out of date, too costly to support and needing to be replaced to keep up with the market and remain in synch with technology advances.

Two projects were initiated to run in parallel: one to replace their Customer Portal and the other a complete change of their ERP system. In a relatively short period of time these projects were merged as it became obvious that much of the needed customer facing functionality was actually within the ERP domain; the determination became to deploy a singular, seamlessly integrated solution. Pursuing this project reminded many of the employees, especially within senior management, of the painful experience they encountered when they deployed current systems over a decade ago, thereby setting the stage for a very risk adverse and cautious approach to this undertaking.

In addition, one of the company’s core value propositions is being easy to work with; something that had precipitated much of the customizaton they introduced to their current systems. Easy is good, but it often results in hidden costs and inefficiencies. Standardized requirements for the new systems had to maintain the proposition of being easy to do business with while also ensuring consistency, accuracy and cost-effectiveness. Not easy to do.

ACME worked with the client to develop an approach to determining an overall integrated solution to support the business. To begin, client teams were led through a highly facilitative process to design an approach that would fit within their highly collaborative environment and set the direction for the project going forward.

Here’s how we proposed doing it.

Set the direction – the vision for the future
Gain market intelligence through customer input and industry benchmarking
Define future state requirements
Solicit vendor input
Select vendor finalists to demonstrate their proposed solution
Select a vendor following a thorough evaluation, including reference validation
Plan implementation with detailed timeline, cost of ownership, and resources plans
Make the recommendation and gain approval and funding
Implement

We helped the client choose between two finalists and then moved into a proof-of-concept approach to make the final determination before going into a full deployment mode. Using this approach, we made it possible to actively demonstrate how the leading solution would function, thus mitigating risk and instilling confidence in the client’s final choice.

Work is still underway, but it’s clear that the POC approach will allow for rapid build-out and deployment of a tested solution and an efficient transition with minimal risk.

In short, replacing old systems with new ones doesn’t have to be a painful process if you do it right. No anesthesia needed.