Guest post by Kevin Ordonez, Managing Director at .orgCommunity and Consulting Director at orgSource.
Let’s face it, no one likes being involved with an AMS implementation. There’s never a good time to implement a new system and with the additional workload to accomplish it, staff can’t wait for it to be over. A colleague once said to me, “the only day you love your AMS is the day you select it.”
I have helped lead dozens of AMS and other software projects. As soon as the kick off meeting ends, staff are counting down the days until the project will be over which always concludes on this arbitrary date called “Go Live.” I remind people that the “Go Live” isn’t the end but the beginning. That statement is usually met with confused and stressed looks on faces. So, people ask “what does that mean? There is no end date”?
Yes, the rigor of weekly project meetings and status reports will go away but the real relationship with your vendor and your AMS begins as soon as you start to use the new system. Go live is the beginning when you use your system for real, everyday operations. Decisions and board reports are now being produced out of the system and your customer’s and member’s online experience is now powered by that new AMS.
In my experience, it is important that your implementation teams not be totally dismantled. Communication with your vendor shouldn’t stop. Meetings to exchange best practices with the new system should not stop. And ongoing training should not suddenly end. Why would you end these important things at go live? Is it because that’s what you did last time you implemented an AMS?
To achieve the sense of beginning (and maintaining that sense of priority) at go live takes leadership and communication. When I was the Interim-CIO at a large medical society, I told senior staff that ‘Go Live’ was really the beginning, not the end of their relationship with their new system and solution partners. This new sense of reality did not happen overnight and staff questioned me all the time what I meant. I repeated my message at every senior staff meeting on Monday mornings. I got to the point where the CEO was able to preach the message to staff at an all staff meeting during the infamous ‘go live week.’
To prepare staff for their long term relationships with their new vendors, I assembled a team of subject matter experts and front line staff from most of the departments. This was not going to be another IT led project with little involvement from the stakeholders. To ensure success:
- I encouraged staff, the business owners, to take ownership by leading status meetings and collaborating with the vendors and other staff on solutions.
- I created an environment for making decisions and recommendations.
- A communication strategy was implemented for all levels of the organization.
- Constant training and learning was established and
- Cross-functional teams were responsible for learning about the setups, identifying workflows among the systems, testing, creating SOPs and delivering training to their respective departments.
Preparing for “Go live” didn’t feel like we were preparing for some type of “End.” But rather gearing up for their next chapter in innovation and service to their members and customers.
We did what we could to make go live a non-event. Staff participated in “dress rehearsals” or “mock go live” scenarios, they walked each other through their business processes, they tested integrations, customer service staff performed dual entry when taking service center calls, instead of final training we made it into a friendly game called “AMS Challenge” and awarded prizes to individuals who knew their stuff. Go live week was not a celebrating of the end of something but recognizing the hard work everyone did.
It paid off! When staff had questions, they didn’t form a line outside IT’s department but rather asked the business owners. The organization was prepared because they were confident on how the system worked, how it was configured, understood the data and what was converted, knew how to run reports and fully understood their new business processes.
With this experience, we have now created templates to help guide teams through these types of implementations. They can be downloaded for free by being a member/subscriber of the .orgCommunity. Or if you are looking for a team to help you get started in structuring your project teams, meet me at AMS Fest Midwest on May 10 or you can reach me at kevin@orgCommunity.com.
.orgCommunity is a proud partner of AMS Fest Midwest.