3. What does an implementation look like?
There are 3 major phases to our implementations;
Discovery
Often the most underestimated expense of an implementation is the discovery stage. We would rather plan twice and implement once, knowing this stage is vital in making sure your implementation is scoped and costed correctly, minimising unplanned additional costs and extended timescales later down the line.
Some projects will involve more detailed scoping where there is a manufacturing, job management or field service requirement or different offices in different geographic locations. And some projects are straightforward. Proper scoping can take anywhere between a couple of days and a couple of weeks on average, and cost in the region of £2,000 to £20,000. As you would expect, the more complex the business, the more important it is to document the scope and the longer it takes to do.
We prefer to come and meet you to get a sense of your business and people, and for you to meet and get to know us too – good implementations are built on trust and credibility. It’s also much easier to scope a project when we can see people in their natural environment and talk to them about how they currently work.
We’ll run workshops to show you Business Central in its full state so you can see the potential for growth, adaptation and data analytics, and to look at what the purpose of your implementation is, plus how we’ll measure success both during the implementation and post go-live phases.
The result of our discovery phase is a costed and timed proposal for implementation that we’ll present to you in person, with a clear explanation of what’s in and out of scope, that will be as accurate as possible, and the price fixed based on it. Our aim is not to give you a ballpark figure that then gets revised upwards every time something new gets uncovered on the project. We want to de-risk the implementation as much as you, and avoid the unforeseen as much as is possible.
Implementation
A successful implementation relies on clear and transparent collaboration and communication. It’s difficult to balance day to day workloads with learning, testing and documenting a new system, but if this isn’t done well, it can lead to a poor implementation.
With our Blueprint project management tool that’s embedded within Business Central, every member of the project team will see their tasks, progress, issues and next steps so that the entire project is transparent.
Some of the major implementation considerations are data quality, document design, report design, operating processes and appetite for change.
Some of our projects are phased so to minimise change at the beginning, and bring in automation as a post go-live project, and some help a client completely revamp the way their work from the start. The pace of change is determined discovery change, and driven by you combined with our experience of successful change.
As simple finance only implementation can be done in as little as 4 weeks, but a large complex business implementation can take anywhere up to 18 months to 2 years. There’s a danger in extended implementations that the business changes along the way, and the scope becomes at least partially irrelevant, so we aim to keep implementations to a reasonable timescale.
An average simple manufacturing, order processing/stock based, or job based implementation for a company with a turnover between £1m – £5m should take in the region of 6-12 months at a cost of between £70k – £150k.
Factors that can decrease cost hinge on having great data quality, clearly understood objectives, great team communication, having a team that carries out their role effectively especially for testing and documentation, and a business willing to adopt change.
Factors that than increase costs are poor data quality needing lots of cleansing, a team or managers not fully invested in the project, unclear criteria for success, lack of testing, inconsistent processes and people pulling the business in different directions.
At the end of the day, our role is to guide you through the process of change using our skills and expertise. Your role is to use the process and results in order to meet your goals.
Post go-live
We’ve come across a lot of project plans that stop at go-live. Ours do not!
The implementation phase of a project is in an artificial environment that has no impact on the every day transactions of dealing with customers, suppliers, deliveries, queries, manufacture and finance. Whilst we lean heavily into testing during our implementation phase, and will go through several trial go-lives as part of stress testing data, procedures, training and reports, it is never quite the same as having to use a new system for real.
For this reason we stay with you for at least the first week after go-live to help anyone struggling, to answer queries and to be an extra resource. We then come back at month end, VAT quarter end, sales planning, stock planning, stock taking and year end, plus any other important points in your calendar to support you, because change takes time to embed and new working habits take time to become second nature.
Many of our clients retain us to work alongside them on an ongoing monthly basis to support their change programmes and come up with new solutions to help other areas of their business. We don’t push this; we’re not in selling you stuff you don’t need or want, but we are here to help you maximise your business potential through technology where appropriate.
We’d love to talk to you about how we might be able to help you with Business Central, or just to have a general chat about how well you feel technology is supporting you.
NOTE: Prices stated are exclusive of VAT applicable at the current rate.
