Achieving project success – are you preparing yourself properly?
Organisations feel themselves forced these days to improve the use of information technology to take advantage of the new buying behavior and the global market opportunities. Unfortunately, the preparation for these projects is too often still focused on technology only. In the meantime, other important success factors are often ignored. Are you preparing yourself properly for project success?
There is a common understanding that the contribution of the chosen software solution set is less than 50 percent of the defined success in ERP/ CRM projects or digital transformation initiatives. Nevertheless, the focus in market research is still mainly on the technology part. Not rarely, over ninety percent of all the questions in RFI/RFP documents are product related. With the implicit risk of underestimating other key success factors. Which ultimately leads to additional project risks.
If you are striving for project success, here’s a number of crucial success elements that also demands your full attention:
- Clear business goals.. What is it that you want to achieve with the new implementation? And how do these goals relate to your overall business strategy? Ideally, these goals are defined in a SMART way.
- Good communication. On ‘the why’ behind the initiative of course. On the business goals itself. Ideally, these goals are defined in a way that every single employee is not only able to fully understand, but also to explain these goals back-home.
- Modernized business processes. Today’s customers want to be in the center of everything you do. And if you are not willing to create a customer-centric organization, they will simply spend their budgets elsewhere. Modernizing your business processes is a crucial element for achieving future success
- Active management involvement. You can’t expect your IT department to change your business processes and your organization’s mindset, right? That was and is always a management’s job. Active involvement from the management is an indispensable element of project success.
- Well trained end-users. Putting your customers in the center demands for well-trained and motivated end-users. Traditionally, end-users were trained in one application only. In today’s reality it is mandatory that they understand and oversee the whole IT-platform.
- And lastly, And finally, a big portion of organizational change management. Let’s face it – human nature is change averse. So now that your projects rely less on technology only, you must facilitate the change management component more than you’ve ever done before.
If your RFI’s are still largely made up of questions about functions and features, it is time to change your preparation. Focusing on these non-technical elements will help you increasing your chances of success.
(*) RFI – Request for Information
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