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Member You - Get the Most from Your New Order Management System with a Post-Implementation Audit
A business lunch for a client is a device to make your client feel valued, comfortable and wanted. It is often looked as a status symbol. A few things to remember are: The lunch is seen as a social event – don’t jump into your sales pitch too soon. Both parties know what the aim is – so enjoy yourselves. Make the client feel special and be polite.How to set up your business lunch: Choose a restaurant that you are familiar with and have preferably been to before. If you have not been to the restaurant before e.g. it has been chosen by your company – introduce the restaurant to your guest as one that you have heard good things about. Always book – there is nothing worse than pleading with the maitre d’ for a table whilst your guest stands by looking embarrassed. If you do arrive to an
Even with a large amount of training, it takes the practical experience of performing daily work for the users to really understand all aspects of how the system is set up and needs to be managed. The company will need to get through the month-end and seasonal processes before you have mastered some systems.
What program problems are there? From the IT perspective, if it’s is a radical change in platform or functionality, how well are they providing system availability? Is the help desk up to speed? Are printers
10 Tips for a Running a Silent and Live Charity Auction1. Choose the right date for your silent and/or live auctionChoosing the right date for your auction is critical. Most auctions are held in either the spring or the fall. Summer is not a good time to hold a major event since many guests may be vacationing. Winter is also considered a bad time of year as many are preparing or recovering from the holidays. Fall is normally considered the best time of year to hold an auction because many of your guests are beginning to get into the holiday shopping mood and may find that what you have to offer is on their shopping list. Weekend evenings are the most popular time to hold auctions since most auctions last well into the night.2. Pick the right auctioneer for your live auctionYou have two choices
At F Curtis Barry & Company we often see that, even a year after purchasing and installing a comprehensive system, companies use maybe 25% to 35% of its potential functionality. Obviously, you’d hope that you’d get much higher use, since companies spend significant capital to purchase and install a new system. Historically, management doesn’t look at how to increase the use of installed systems.
The Solution Your plan of action should be to do a post-implementation audit of all aspects of the conversion and system use. Well after the system implementation, an audit can help increase use of the system. A post-implementation audit will help you confer with the vendor and your people about how to get more out of the system – and make sure users have a complete understanding of the system in areas that have high personnel turnover.
A consultant, an auditor, or a management member can perform the audit objectively. (Keep in mind, there may be some sensitive issues if training or conversion didn’t go as planned.) The audit should include all departments using the system, company management, your IT department, and the vendors. The goal is to consider all aspects of the implementation and obtain answers to the following:
What is the open list of items left from the conversion?
What problems is the company having with the new system?
What people need to be retrained? Be sure all parties understand how to manage your business with the new system (“In the old system I had this, what do I use now?”).
What doesn’t appear to be working?
What don’t you understand in the new system?
Is management getting all the reports and analysis you expected? This is generally one of the major shortcomings.
Are there some problems left from the file conversion? Data being converted is often not “very clean data”.
Key Departmental Areas To find these answers, your audit should consider the following issues:
Are there any customer-service impacts that need to be fast-tracked (e.g., order processing, returns/credit processing, abandonment rate, pick error rates)?
Even with a large amount of training, it takes the practical experience of performing daily work for the users to really understand all aspects of how the system is set up and needs to be managed. The company will need to get through the month-end and seasonal processes before you have mastered some systems.
What program problems are there? From the IT perspective, if it’s is a radical change in platform or functionality, how well are they providing system availability? Is the help desk up to speed? Are printers
When is it appropriate to volunteer to take a position in the group?Have you heard the saying that "the fastest way to get anything done is to ask a busy person"? It is very true. What it actually boils down to is the fact that busy people are often very well organized and have the ability to delegate some of their tasks. A busy person can usually fit more into their schedule than most people. For example, I am working a full time job which takes at least 55 hours a week, plus I am completing studies for a doctoral degree. That seems like a busy person but that is not all I have on my plate: I also own a company that provides sales process consulting, I volunteer as the Historian for my Rotary District, I make time to exercise twice daily, I tend to my family and write books. On top of all this I still have time to volunteer for committee work at th
The Solution Your plan of action should be to do a post-implementation audit of all aspects of the conversion and system use. Well after the system implementation, an audit can help increase use of the system. A post-implementation audit will help you confer with the vendor and your people about how to get more out of the system – and make sure users have a complete understanding of the system in areas that have high personnel turnover.
A consultant, an auditor, or a management member can perform the audit objectively. (Keep in mind, there may be some sensitive issues if training or conversion didn’t go as planned.) The audit should include all departments using the system, company management, your IT department, and the vendors. The goal is to consider all aspects of the implementation and obtain answers to the following:
What is the open list of items left from the conversion?
What problems is the company having with the new system?
What people need to be retrained? Be sure all parties understand how to manage your business with the new system (“In the old system I had this, what do I use now?”).
What doesn’t appear to be working?
What don’t you understand in the new system?
Is management getting all the reports and analysis you expected? This is generally one of the major shortcomings.
Are there some problems left from the file conversion? Data being converted is often not “very clean data”.
Key Departmental Areas To find these answers, your audit should consider the following issues:
Are there any customer-service impacts that need to be fast-tracked (e.g., order processing, returns/credit processing, abandonment rate, pick error rates)?
Even with a large amount of training, it takes the practical experience of performing daily work for the users to really understand all aspects of how the system is set up and needs to be managed. The company will need to get through the month-end and seasonal processes before you have mastered some systems.
What program problems are there? From the IT perspective, if it’s is a radical change in platform or functionality, how well are they providing system availability? Is the help desk up to speed? Are printers
Individual sales people, as well as sales managers and business owners, all share the same concern. How to sell more without burning everyone out, or paying too much for marketing.That’s a dilemma that has certainly been solved, quite scientifically, and I’d like to share it with you now ...Executive SummaryEveryone knows that 95% of businesses fail within 5 years. Not so many people realize that even in the top 500 businesses in the world, within 2 years if history is any judge, more than 50% of them won’t be there!So size is no guarantee of survival, let alone success. To survive, a business must continually grow its sales, and the only way it can do that is to remain relevant to the market, and retain the capacity to communicate its relevance in a meaningful way.Whereas one of our previous reports covered this
What is the open list of items left from the conversion?
What problems is the company having with the new system?
What people need to be retrained? Be sure all parties understand how to manage your business with the new system (“In the old system I had this, what do I use now?”).
What doesn’t appear to be working?
What don’t you understand in the new system?
Is management getting all the reports and analysis you expected? This is generally one of the major shortcomings.
Are there some problems left from the file conversion? Data being converted is often not “very clean data”.
Key Departmental Areas To find these answers, your audit should consider the following issues:
Are there any customer-service impacts that need to be fast-tracked (e.g., order processing, returns/credit processing, abandonment rate, pick error rates)?
Even with a large amount of training, it takes the practical experience of performing daily work for the users to really understand all aspects of how the system is set up and needs to be managed. The company will need to get through the month-end and seasonal processes before you have mastered some systems.
What program problems are there? From the IT perspective, if it’s is a radical change in platform or functionality, how well are they providing system availability? Is the help desk up to speed? Are printers
Your walk-in customers visit retail branches to carry-out very personal, private business. Many of them have the ability to comfortably log-on to their personal computers to make these same transactions in the privacy of their home, yet they choose to make a face-to-face visit. Some of these walk-in customers are visiting because they are unsure of their internet banking abilities or may be uneasy about on-line privacy. It’s not likely that they have come to your bank for the free gourmet coffee, cookies and trendy music, though these freebies are always welcome. It is quite probable that your customers are simply stopping-by to have a very personal, private bank transaction, executed in person with an official receipt in-hand. Your bank design should facilitate your customer’s desire for privacy at all times during their visit.There are a few differe
What doesn’t appear to be working?
What don’t you understand in the new system?
Is management getting all the reports and analysis you expected? This is generally one of the major shortcomings.
Are there some problems left from the file conversion? Data being converted is often not “very clean data”.
Key Departmental Areas To find these answers, your audit should consider the following issues:
Are there any customer-service impacts that need to be fast-tracked (e.g., order processing, returns/credit processing, abandonment rate, pick error rates)?
Even with a large amount of training, it takes the practical experience of performing daily work for the users to really understand all aspects of how the system is set up and needs to be managed. The company will need to get through the month-end and seasonal processes before you have mastered some systems.
What program problems are there? From the IT perspective, if it’s is a radical change in platform or functionality, how well are they providing system availability? Is the help desk up to speed? Are printers
160 years ago, the newly invented electric telegraph carried the first news message. The message zipped 40 miles in a flash over wires from Baltimore to Washington, D.C.The public was dazzled -- except Henry David Thoreau. He wrote: "We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate."Today, we live in a Golden Age of communication. We have the Internet. We have faxes. We have e-mails. We have streaming video. We have on-line audio. We have RSS feeds. We have logs and blogs.Yet today Thoreau is as right as rain. When it comes to really getting our messages across, we're stuck in the Stone Age.Here's why. The vast majority of business leaders I've encountered are repeatedly making a huge mistake in communication, a mistake th
Even with a large amount of training, it takes the practical experience of performing daily work for the users to really understand all aspects of how the system is set up and needs to be managed. The company will need to get through the month-end and seasonal processes before you have mastered some systems.
What program problems are there? From the IT perspective, if it’s is a radical change in platform or functionality, how well are they providing system availability? Is the help desk up to speed? Are printers and terminals in the right locations and in sufficient numbers? Are all the interfaces ready for non-daily activities (e.g., printers, merge/purge services, etc.)?
Did the vendors perform their duties in line with the written and verbal agreements? Did the conversion come off accurately? Are there still clean-up problems? In retrospect, how well did they manage the conversion with you? Did you get what you were promised in the pre-sales and negotiations?
In setting up systems today there are hundreds to thousands of software switches that determine the “system personality” and functionality. Are all of these set right? Are there some that need to be reconsidered?
From an integration or interface perspective, these data exchanges are often the most difficult to implement and debug. Are all these inter-departmental systems working correctly?
Order management systems and warehouse management system have data feeds to accounting and general ledger. Are all the financial aspects of these systems working accurately?
Are there additional operations functions or processes that are needed, or should be investigated, to gain more productivity and to improve throughput?
What program modifications have been delayed and will now be scheduled as a subsequent phase? From your experience with the system, are these modifications and enhancements really necessary, or are there new functions, now that you understand the system, that you can use in their place.
From the perspective of company’s standard operating procedures, are the procedures completed? What still needs to be done, or changed and updated, so that you have a way to educate future employees?
While you’re doing this assessment, go back to your original objectives or feasibility study. Realistically, have you achieved (or will you achieve) the tangible dollar savings promised (e.g., personnel savings, inventory turnover)? Has the company gained the intangible benefits expected (e.g. customer service levels, ability to plan and analyze the business better)?
Create an Action Plan Once you have completed this survey, you need to circulate the results to all parties and get their concurrence that this audit is in fact a complete list and all the points are valid. Showing the list to everyone, generally often means that the list gets smaller because people will help each other answer things by saying
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Get the Most from Your New Order Management System with a Post-Implementation Audit
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