Upgrading to a new ERP system is one of the most important and challenging tasks a business can undertake. Choosing the right platform is vital, and hours upon hours of research typically goes into the decision.
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central is the clear leader for small to medium-sized businesses.
One area often overlooked, however, is the actual implementation partner, which can be equally important in achieving a smooth implementation. To help businesses screen potential partners, experts have put together a list of helpful questions to ask potential collaborators as they search for the right fit to lift their ERP to the next level.
How Do We Define the Vision?
Few things can cause more friction in a collaboration than differing visions. Ensuring that a potential partner shares your vision for both the end goal of your go-live and the steps it will take to get there will go a long way to making the entire process smoother and more cost-effective.
Asking questions to better understand how partners approach topics like requirements gathering and analysis, solution engineering and deployment, training, and post-implementation support will ensure that your visions match, and conversations should be had about how they approach the challenges that will inevitably arise in the process.
These conversations will ensure that expectations are clear for all involved, eliminating potential stumbling blocks that could derail the project. Choosing to partner with Enavate for an Xcelerate BC implementation comes with a clear vision for the timeline, cost, and ultimate goal of your project, both implementation and go-live.
How Will Collaboration Work?
Before beginning to work together, it is important for business leaders to understand how their company will be expected to contribute to the implementation process, as the best implementations are the product of collaboration, not a company coming in and doing all the work. Discussing how each sphere of the company, from executive leadership to “front line” employees are expected to contribute to the project’s success will be another step in ensuring everyone is on the same page, as well as helping evoke a sense of ownership in the employees, which will lead to better buy-in and improved results.
In addition to the increased sense of ownership, engaging employees early and throughout will lead to better understanding of the platform and project through pressure-free training periods, lowering confusion and stress during the often-turbulent transition. This lack of stress will give employees a sense of security as they learn how the new system will affect their roles, leading to better results at go-live.
What Training Can We Expect?
As mentioned above, training for employees is a vital step to ensuring a smooth go-live for a new ERP platform, so having conversations with potential partners concerning the level and nature of the training and support they offer, particularly in the area known as change management, is incredibly important before committing to a partner.
Setting up a strategy to deal with change-averse employees will help ensure positive communication and diminish friction.
Implementing changes in phases will also go a long way to cultivating a culture of collaboration and should therefore be a topic of discussion before committing to a partner.
Perhaps most important of all is discussing the length and nature of the training they offer, as businesses with large or particularly entrenched in their ways employee forces will require a level of training not every provider is accustomed to, which could cause friction or even delays to the launch of the system, should their methods be inadequate. When choosing the Enavate Xcelerate implementation, a team of BC experts will create a targeted training plan for your users, ensuring they are ready to hit the ground running.
What Measures of Success Will We Use?
Much like the need to define the vision outlined above, you should ensure that your potential ERP partner shares a common understanding of what a successful implementation and go-live looks like. This means you need to understand the needs and goals of your business, and communicate them with the potential partner, to ensure they can help you deliver on them.
Defining important goals like success metrics and workflow transformations is important. A potential partner may think to prioritize elements that would be “nice-to-have’s” for you, not must-haves. Having a firm understanding of your needs and priorities is important for this reason.
Sharing growth targets, KPIs, and specific areas of business or workflows that you want to focus on gives potential partners a chance to outline how they can help, allowing you to make a better, more well-informed decision. If there are industry-specific KPIs or concerns, you need to ensure your potential partner is familiar with their inner-workings, otherwise they may struggle with the demands you place on them, risking the success of the project.
How Are You Staffing the Project Team?
Before trusting a company with your future, it is important to know how they will assign people to work on your project, and what those people bring to the table. Understanding how a potential partner assigns their experts to your project will help ensure that your needs are being met during all phases of the project.
- What expertise and specialized skills will the people working on your implementation bring to the table?
- Do they have industry-specific experience or skills that will benefit your implementation?
- Do they lack experience that may be required?
While it is not feasible to get an in-depth understanding of every employee at every partner who may touch your project, knowing the skills and qualifications of the people you will interact with most, such as project managers or training supervisors, is important.
If a potential partner is unable or unwilling to give you insight into their staffing choices, they likely are not the right fit for your project.
What Makes You the Best Choice?
It goes without saying that a major part of every research process is asking potential partners what, exactly, sets them apart from the competition. Having an in-depth knowledge of their own product is not enough- every potential partner will have that. Partners need to have skills, knowledge, and experience that are unique and specific to your project in order to stand apart from the field.
Asking questions about how much they understand about your business and industry’s unique needs is highly recommended, as well as asking for information such as any certificates and qualifications their team has trained for that may apply to your project.
Additionally, asking for experiences they have learned from previous implementations with other clients that they can learn from and bring to your project will give you a unique window into their thought-process.
How Do You Handle Customizations?
Modern ERP platforms will possess similar basic functionality. For gaps in functionality, particularly industry-specific challenges, users turn to Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) to create specific solutions. These ISVs are not always enough, however, and custom-built solutions or processes are sometimes required to ensure that a platform is the perfect fit. Discussing how partners approach these customizations is an important step in choosing the right collaborators for your project.
This is another area where a potential partner’s experience with challenges specific to your industry can be vital. Partners familiar with the challenges and needs of your specific industry will be able to offer solutions to challenges, either custom-made or ISVs, that others will not be familiar with.
How Often Do You Run Over-Budget?
The perfect partner will not simply deliver a top-tier implementation, they will also deliver an on-time and on-budget implementation. Discussing a potential partner’s history of delivering projects on-time and on-budget may feel uncomfortable, however, it is an important and overlooked step in securing the right partner.
Partners should be able to outline plans for how changes are handled during the project, with specific documentation and pricing available. Having a sit-down with your potential project manager to understand their approach to keeping to the plan can help give you a feel for how the implementation could go, especially if a specific budget will not be available up front, instead following the requirements analysis phase.
Choosing the Enavate Xcelerate plan offers you the ability to get your platform up and running at low cost, then expand it as you feel necessary. Designed for budget-conscious businesses, Xcelerate offers all the expertise and professionalism Enavate is known for at a fixed price point that you’ll know up front.
Are You the Right Size for Our Project?
The size of a potential partner could have a major impact on how they approach your implementation.
A large partner may have copious resources a smaller provider may lack but could fall short in the “personal touch” a company could need, while a smaller company may excel at one-on-one service, while lacking some of the tools or expertise of their larger counterparts. Asking exploratory questions of potential partners will give you an idea of how their size and resources will affect your project.
Besides standard considerations such as how many people will be available, and how long they have worked in the field, consider asking about how long specific teams have worked together. Determining if teams are familiar with each other’s methods or if they are a cobbled-together group of disparate individuals could help sway a choice.
The company culture as a whole should also be considered—checking reviews online and consulting other businesses about their experience is recommended.
Can They Answer the Tough Questions?
The right partner for an ERP implementation can be the difference between a smooth, business boosting project and a costly, headache-filled growing pain. Treating your search for a partner like a job interview and asking copious exploratory questions may feel uncomfortable, however, that discomfort will make an immense difference in the long run, both for the success of your implementation and the long-term future of your business.
Partnering with the experts at Enavate, whether leveraging an Xcelerate BC implementation or a more traditional implementation, will check all the interview boxes, and more.
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