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In many small and medium enterprises, a time comes when the increasing volume of work, sales and bookkeeping requires installation of information technology to help you manage the business better. This will require engaging you and your stakeholders – employees, customers, suppliers and perhaps your board – in a project, the objective of which is obtaining a system to automate various operations of the business.
Traditionally, an IT project has a number of sequential stages that include requirements analysis, project design, testing, deployment and then maintenance throughout the lifetime of the new system. Lately, new methods of project implementation, such as prototyping, and rapid application development (RAD), have gained popularity in IT project design and implementation.
However, in the real world, IT project implementation often deviates from the plan. Below are a few non-technical items that an entrepreneur should consider as he embarks on adopting a new IT system in the organisation.
Step 1: Selecting an IT partner
The person or company you choose to partner with as you embark on your project will have a big impact on how the project proceeds. Selecting the wrong IT partner may result in huge cost implications, delayed system installation and widespread stakeholder dissatisfaction. Don’t believe the hype. Talk to more than one customer of your prospective IT partner, even visit their customers sites to learn about their prior experience.
Step 2: Creating a schedule
Consult widely amongst your stakeholders (board, employees/users, affiliates), and don’t have deadlines that are immovable. While fixed targets are very important in ensuring that the project is delivered on budget and on schedule, deadlines that are too rigid sometimes lead to corners being cut, and thus delivery of a project that is below standards and that may not meet your organisations requirements.
Step 3: Flexibility
Linked to the above point, sometimes it turns out that the design phase did not adequately anticipate the juxtaposition of your organisations practices with the new IT system. This may result in a requirement for additional time for the team to work on providing a solution to the problems that emerge as you move forward in the project. Perhaps there may be a need for new hardware, additional training for your staff or more software licences that were not anticipated in order for the system to adequately deliver the expected benefits to the organisation.
Step 4: Switch over
At some point, make a decision to switch off the old system completely and work only with the new one. Do some test runs of the new system, and compare old and new system reports, but don’t run the two systems in parallel for too long – it can be expensive, both in time and money.
The switch from old to new IT system is usually one of the most challenging points of the implementation. Neither expect everything to go smoothly, nor expect the go-live to go horribly wrong. Expect some hiccups, and a slow start as your people adjust to the new system, but, having selected the right IT partner, and having brought your stakeholders on board from the inception of the project, slowly but surely the new system will become an integral part of your organisation.
Step 5: Review
6 months to a year after switching to the new system, review how the system has changed your organisation. Has it brought the expected improvements? Are workloads lighter and information better organised? Can you obtain up-to-date reports and make timely decisions? Document your review findings, and use this information to inform your next IT project, when in a few years time your business has outgrown the existing system.
As you move your business to the next level, we wish you well in selecting and implementing the software solution to enhance your organisations performance.
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