Pre- Project Process
During our first meeting we engage in a joint discussion to understand your desired outcomes. If we have a solution that suits your needs, we proceed accordingly. In the event that we do not have a suitable solution, we reach out to our network to help you find one. Our goal is to ensure that you receive the optimal solution, even if it means exploring options beyond our immediate offerings.
Once we establish that we have a solution for you, we do a deep dive into the requirements, looking at what you do now, business process changes needed and the people involved in the process. During this phase we will also show you some software solutions to sense check that our thoughts are aligned.
We believe in long term relationships with all our clients and approach our projects with transparency in all aspects. You will know the full cost of the project upfront, including any estimations for further customisations that might be needed during the project. We typically work on fixed price projects, so you are safe in the knowledge that you will not end up paying more than what was estimated.
To be fair to all our clients, we offer our services on a first-come-first-served basis. Upon contract signoff and initial project deposit, we allocate resources and schedule your project. We endeavour to commence the project ASAP, but would typically have a 6-8 week lead time for commencement. During these weeks we work with your internal teams to prepare for the project by sending you a 'Client Preparation Pack' that provides guidelines for appointing an internal project team, preparing information on processes and data and a guide on change management.
Project Process
The Beaver Hub Project Implementation Methodology includes the use of Industry expertise to recommend business process changes in line with industry best practices, a user training program that aims at client independence by the end of the project and minimal customisations to the product to enable a more efficient upgrade path coupled with a phased approach that allows clients to start reaping the benefits of the project in a shorter time period.
The first phases of the project involve a detailed blueprinting and scoping process, after which each respective phase will consist of System configuration (and development if required), an end-to-end process replication, user training, UAT, a parallel run, go-live and sign-off. The final phase includes reports, dashboards and a reference manual for system processes and SOPs.
Project Success Factors
Business Process Re-engineering
As part of the implementation process there will be a number of business process changes required. When defining this ‘To-be’ process it is important to avoid simply replicating the existing process. Business process experts and senior management together with the BH team should question the relevance of all current processes and only replicate them on system in the most efficient way possible.
Project Governance
The Project team will consist of C-Level executives as well as a dedicated project manager and business project experts form the client end. Formal weekly reports as well as pre-scheduled steering committee meetings are part of the project governance process.
Change Management
A change management team is appointed to support the transition of the business to a digitised process. This team should include senior respected members who are influential within the business and have the trust and confidence of the employees. This team should regularly have conversations with employees to help alleviate doubts and concerns by providing re-assurances. The change management team will report back to the Steering committee on any user concerns in order to find ways of addressing these as a management committee
Keeping it simple
During the implementation it is important to resist the urge to digitise every minute detail within the system. The critical business processes should be digitised whilst taking a balanced view on non-critical processes, where existing methods might make more sense, taking into account the time and effort required to include these within the system. Customisation should be avoided unless absolutely essential.
Best Practices
We use the experience gained from working with a variety of businesses to recommend best practices as part of the business process re-engineering activity. This is where we differentiate ourselves as business consultants, not just software implementers.
Client Independence
From the get-go we aim for client independence by the end of the project. We work closely with Super Users and transfer system knowledge to them by involving them in system configuration, user training, user manual creation and SOP creation. This allows us to ensure that these future internal-experts have fully understood their respective business processes relating to system functionality. We build their confidence by conducting role-play sessions, replicating typical user questions before they interact with users.
Post-Project Process
We understand that going live with a project is just the beginning of your journey to success. As part of our support and maintenance agreement we continue investing our time to help you to get the most out of the software that you have implemented. As you familiarise yourself with your new software you will begin to understand it better and come up with newer, more innovative ways to maximise the benefits you get out of the system.
To help you on this journey we designed our Continuous Improvement program where we regularly review system usage with you to help you make better use of the system as your business evolves. During our visits, in addition to discussing any questions you might have with regards to functionality we also get feedback with regards to system features and new functionality that you would like to see in the future. This feeds into our development roadmap, where we prioritise common enhancement requests and roll these out with future system updates.
Through this process our clients are assured of ongoing support to help them maximise the return on their investment for many years to come, whilst being safe in the knowledge that the system will continue to evolve as their business changes. Our goal is to not simply have clients, but long term, mutually beneficial partnerships.