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Build Your Enterprise Application Implementation Playbook

Your implementation doesn’t start with technology, but with an effective plan that the team can align on.

  • Given the increasing complexity of software implementations, you are continually challenged with staying above water with your current team.
  • In addition, rapid changes in the business make maintaining project sponsors’ engagement challenging.
  • Project sprawl across the organization has created a situation where each project lead tracks progress in their own way. This makes it difficult for leadership to identify what was successful – and what wasn’t.

Our Advice

Critical Insight

An effective enterprise application implementation playbook is not just a list of steps, but a comprehensive view of what is necessary to support your implementation. This starts with a people-first approach. Start by asking about sponsors, stakeholders, and goals. Without asking these questions first, the implementation will be set up for failure, regardless of the technology, processes, and tools available.

Impact and Result

Follow these steps to build your enterprise application playbook:

  • Define your sponsor, map out your stakeholders, and lay out the vision, goals and objectives for your project.
  • Detail the scope, metrics, and the team that will make it happen.
  • Outline the steps and processes that will carry you through the implementation.

Build Your Enterprise Application Implementation Playbook Research & Tools

1. Build Your Enterprise Application Implementation Playbook Deck - Your implementation doesn’t start with technology, but with an effective plan that the team can align on.

This blueprint provides the steps necessary to build your own enterprise application implementation playbook that can be deployed and leveraged by your implementation teams.

2. Your Enterprise Application Implementation Playbook – The key output from leveraging this research is a completed implementation playbook.

This is the main playbook that you build through the exercises defined in the blueprint.

3. Your Enterprise Application Implementation Playbook - Timeline Tool – Supporting tool that captures the project timeline information, issue log, and follow-up dashboard.

This tool provides input into the playbook around project timelines and planning.

4. Light Project Change Request Form Template – This tool will help you record the requested change, allow assess the impact of the change and proceed the approval process.

This provides input into the playbook around managing change requests


Member Testimonials

After each Info-Tech experience, we ask our members to quantify the real-time savings, monetary impact, and project improvements our research helped them achieve. See our top member experiences for this blueprint and what our clients have to say.

9.7/10


Overall Impact

$85,640


Average $ Saved

11


Average Days Saved

Client

Experience

Impact

$ Saved

Days Saved

Greenheck Group

Guided Implementation

10/10

N/A

10

Ministry of Industry, Innovation, Science and Technology

Guided Implementation

9/10

$137K

14

Was great, Im looking forward to more

Matanuska-Susitna Borough

Guided Implementation

10/10

$34,281

10

The playbook was pretty extensive so the best part is the willingness to reconnect again as questions arise. The worst part is that the playbook is... Read More


Build Your Enterprise Application Implementation Playbook

Your implementation doesn’t start with technology, but with an effective plan that the team can align on.

Analyst Perspective

Your implementation is not just about technology, but about careful planning, collaboration, and control.

Recardo de Oliveira

A successful enterprise application implementation requires more than great software; it requires a clear line of sight to the people, processes, metrics, and tools that can help make this happen.

Additionally, every implementation is unique with its own set of challenges. Working through these challenges requires a tailored approach taking many factors into account. Building out your playbook for your implementation is an important initial step before diving head-first into technology.

Regardless of whether you use an implementation partner, a playbook ensures that you don’t lose your enterprise application investment before you even get started!

Ricardo de Oliveira

Research Director,
Application Delivery and Management
Info-Tech Research Group

Executive Summary

Your Challenge

  • Given the increasing complexity of software implementations, you are continually challenged with staying above water with your current team.
  • Rapid changes in the business make maintaining project sponsors’ engagement challenging.
  • Project sprawl across the organization has created a situation where project leads track progress in their own way. This makes it difficult for leadership to identify what was successful (and what wasn’t).

Common Obstacles

  • Your best process experts are the same people you need to keep the business running. The business cannot afford to have its best people pulled into the implementation for long periods of time.
  • Enterprise application implementations generate huge organizational changes and the adoption of the new systems and processes resulting from these projects are quite difficult.
  • People are generally resistant to change, especially large, transformational changes that will impact the day-to-day way of doing things.

Info-Tech's Approach

  • Build your enterprise application implementation playbook. Follow these steps to build your enterprise application playbook:
    • Define your sponsor, map out your stakeholders, and lay out the vision, goals, and objectives for your project.
    • Detail the scope, metrics, and the team that will make it happen.
    • Detail the steps and processes that will carry you through the implementation

Info-Tech Insight

An effective enterprise application implementation playbook is not just a list of steps; it is a comprehensive view of what is necessary to support your implementation. This starts with a people-first approach. Start by asking about sponsors, stakeholders, and goals. Without asking these questions first, the implementation will be set up for failure, regardless of the technology, processes, and tools available.

Enterprise Applications Lifescycle Advisory Services. Strategy, selection, implementation, optimization and operations.

Insight summary

Building an effective playbook starts with asking the right questions, not jumping straight into the technical details.

  • This blueprint provides the steps required to lay out an implementation playbook to align the team on what is necessary to support the implementation.
  • Build your Enterprise Application Implementation Playbook by:
    • Aligning and confirming project’s goals, stakeholders, governance and team.
    • Clearly defining what is in and out of scope for the project and the risks involved.
    • Building up a strong change management process.
    • Providing the tools and processes to keep track of the project.
    • Pulling it all together into an actionable playbook.

Grapsh showing 39%

Lack of planning is the reason that 39% of projects fail. Poor project planning can be disastrous: The consequences are usually high costs and time overruns.

Graph showing 20%

Almost 20% of IT projects can fail so badly that they can become a threat to a company’s existence. Lack of proper planning, poor communication, and poorly defined goals all contribute to the failure of projects.

Graph showig 2.5%

A PwC study of over 10,640 projects found that a tiny portion of companies – 2.5% – completed 100% of their projects successfully. These failures extract a heavy cost – failed IT projects alone cost the United States $50-$150B in lost revenue and productivity.

Source: Forbes, 2020

Planning and control are key to enterprise project success

An estimated 70% of large-scale corporate projects fail largely due to a lack of change management infrastructure, proper oversight, and regular performance check-ins to track progress (McKinsey, 2015).

Table showing that 88% of projects completed on time, 90% completed within budget and 92% meet original goals. 68% of projects have scope creep, 24% deemed failures and 46% experience budget lose when project fails

“A survey published in HBR found that the average IT project overran its budget by 27%. Moreover, at least one in six IT projects turns into a ‘black swan’ with a cost overrun of 200% and a schedule overrun of 70%. Kmart’s massive $1.2B failed IT modernization project, for instance, was a big contributor to its bankruptcy.”

Source: Forbes, 2020

Sponsor commitment directly improves project success.

Having the right sponsor significantly improves your chances of success across many different dimensions:

  1. On-time delivery
  2. Delivering within budget
  3. Delivered within an agreed-to scope
  4. Delivered with sufficient quality.
Graph that shows Project success scores versus sponsor involvement in change communication. Shows increase for projects on time, projects on budget, within scope and overall quality.

Source: Info-Tech, PPM Current State Scorecard Diagnostic

Executive Brief Case Study

Chocolate manufacturer implementing a new ERP

INDUSTRY

Consumer Products

SOURCE

Carlton, 2021

Challenge

Not every ERP ends in success. This case study reviews the failure of Hershey, a 147-year-old confectioner, headquartered in Hershey Pennsylvania. The enterprise saw the implementation of an ERP platform as being central to its future growth.

Solution

Consequently, rather than approaching its business challenge on the basis of an iterative approach, it decided to execute a holistic plan, involving every operating center in the company. Subsequently, SAP was engaged to implement a $10 million systems upgrade; however, management problems emerged immediately.

Results

The impact of this decision was significant, and the company was unable to conduct business because virtually every process, policy, and operating mechanism was in flux simultaneously. The consequence was the loss of $150 million in revenue, a 19% reduction in share price, and the loss of 12% in international market share.

Remember: Poor management can scupper implementation, even when you have selected the perfect system.

A successful software implementation provides more than simply immediate business value…

It can build competitive advantage.

  • When software projects fail, it can jeopardize an organization’s financial standing and reputation, and in some severe cases, it can bring the company down altogether.
  • Rarely do projects fail for a single reason, but by understanding the pitfalls, developing a risk mitigation plan, closely monitoring risks, and self-evaluating during critical milestones, you can increase the probability of delivering on time, on budget, and with the intended benefits.

Benefits are not limited to just delivering on time. Some others include:

  • Building organizational delivery competence and overall agility.
  • The opportunity to start an inventory of best practices, eventually building them into a center of excellence.
  • Developing a competitive advantage by maximizing software value and continuously transforming the business.
  • An opportunity to develop a competent pool of staff capable of executing on projects and managing organizational change.

Blueprint deliverables

Each step of this blueprint is accompanied by supporting deliverables to help you accomplish your goals:

Your Enterprise Application Implementation Playbook – Timeline Tool

Supporting template that captures the project timeline information, issue log, and follow-up dashboard.

Info-Tech: Project Planning and Monitoring Tool.
Light Project Change Request Form Template

This tool will help you record the requested change, and allow you to assess the impact of the change and proceed with the approval process.

Info-Tech: Light change request form template.

Key deliverable:

Your Enterprise Application Implementation Playbook

Record the results from the exercises to define the steps for a successful implementation.

Build your enterprise application implementation playbook.

Info-Tech’s methodology for Your Enterprise Application Implementation Playbook

Phase Steps

1. Understand the Project

  1. Identify the project sponsor
  2. Define project stakeholders
  3. Review project vision and guiding principles
  4. Review project objectives
  5. Establish project governance

2. Set up for success

  1. Review project scope
  2. Define project metrics
  3. Prepare for project risks
  4. Identify the project team
  5. Define your change management process

3. Document your plan

  1. Develop a master project plan
  2. Define a follow-up plan
  3. Define the follow-up process
  4. Understand what’s next
Phase Outcomes
  • Project sponsor has been selected
  • Project stakeholders have been identified and mapped with their roles and responsibilities.
  • Vision, guiding principles, goals objectives, and governance have been defined
  • Project scope has been confirmed
  • Project metrics to identify successful implementation has been defined
  • Risks have been assessed and articulated.
  • Identified project team
  • An agreed-to change management process
  • Project plan covering the overall implementation is in place, including next steps and retrospectives

Info-Tech offers various levels of support to best suit your needs

DIY Toolkit

"Our team has already made this critical project a priority, and we have the time and capability, but some guidance along the way would be helpful."

Guided Implementation

"Our team knows that we need to fix a process, but we need assistance to determine where to focus. Some check-ins along the way would help keep us on track."

Workshop

"We need to hit the ground running and get this project kicked off immediately. Our team has the ability to take this over once we get a framework and strategy in place."

Consulting

"Our team does not have the time or the knowledge to take this project on. We need assistance through the entirety of this project."

Diagnostic and consistent frameworks are used throughout all four options.

Guided Implementation

What does a typical GI on this topic look like?

The three phases of guided implementation.

A Guided Implementation (GI) is a series of calls with an Info-Tech analyst to help implement our best practices in your organization. A typical GI is between 8 to 12 calls over the course of 4 to 6 months.

Workshop Overview

Contact your account representative for more information.

workshops@infotech.com 1-888-670-8889 Activities and deliverables for each module of the workshop. Module 1: understanding the project, Module 2: Set up for success, Modeule 3: Document your plan, and Post Workshop: Next steps and Wrap-up(offsite).

Your implementation doesn’t start with technology, but with an effective plan that the team can align on.

About Info-Tech

Info-Tech Research Group is the world’s fastest-growing information technology research and advisory company, proudly serving over 30,000 IT professionals.

We produce unbiased and highly relevant research to help CIOs and IT leaders make strategic, timely, and well-informed decisions. We partner closely with IT teams to provide everything they need, from actionable tools to analyst guidance, ensuring they deliver measurable results for their organizations.

MEMBER RATING

9.7/10
Overall Impact

$85,640
Average $ Saved

11
Average Days Saved

After each Info-Tech experience, we ask our members to quantify the real-time savings, monetary impact, and project improvements our research helped them achieve.

Read what our members are saying

What Is a Blueprint?

A blueprint is designed to be a roadmap, containing a methodology and the tools and templates you need to solve your IT problems.

Each blueprint can be accompanied by a Guided Implementation that provides you access to our world-class analysts to help you get through the project.

Need Extra Help?
Speak With An Analyst

Get the help you need in this 3-phase advisory process. You'll receive 8 touchpoints with our researchers, all included in your membership.

Guided Implementation 1: Understand the project
  • Call 1: Sponsor, stakeholders, vision, and guiding principles.
  • Call 2: Review goals and objectives.
  • Call 3: Establish project governance.

Guided Implementation 2: Set up for success
  • Call 1: Review project scope and define tracking metrics.
  • Call 2: Prepare for project risks.

Guided Implementation 3: Document your plan
  • Call 1: Build the project team and change management process.
  • Call 2: Project plan and progress-tracking process.
  • Call 3: Lessons learned and optimization opportunities. Project closure procedures.

Author

Ricardo de Oliveira

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