When a customer chooses to invest in any kind of Customer Communications Management (CCM) platform, there are two things that have a direct impact on the scalability and the effectiveness of the chosen solution. They are the performance and features, and the method by which the solution is implemented. A good service with 100% certified consultants dedicated to successfully implementing the solution is a must. Knowledge handover on any on-premise deployment is also mandatory to accelerate the return on investment. Let’s review an example of how you can maximize your project’s success by mitigating risks and delays.
Address your business challenges right, the first time
As the old adage in the tire industry goes, power is nothing without control. When investing in a CCM solution such as OpenText Exstream, technical considerations not only need to be taken into account, but expert advise also needs to be provided in order to help meet the expectations of internal and external stakeholders.
Usually, a successful project team consists of four key personnel types:
- A Solution Leader, who manages the comitology, provides the project guidance, the resource allocation and ensures the SLOs are met and desired customer outcomes are realized
- A Solution Architect who will design the best architecture for your implementation based on your specific needs, outcomes and overall solution best practices
- One or more senior consultants to install, setup and deploy the solution based on architecture guidance. The consultants also ensure a complete set of documentations is sent to your team to maximize the knowledge handover
- One or more application specialists to analyze and enhance your specifications, design your template and develop the template creation and/or migration to Exstream
These key personnel work as a team to build your platform to meet your business challenges using a proven and reliable methodology or using your own.
Maximize ROI and get acceptance from the business users
A CCM solution is usually chosen for technical or financial reasons. It will replace an outdated, obsolete and even non-supported solution bringing new interfaces, new capabilities and technologies that help resolve today’s challenges.
While these key factors are likely enough to help make a decision, it is sometimes forgotten that business users and administrators are also key to making the whole project a success. Leaving the IT and business people aside could lead to frustration, unwillingness to cooperate and even animosity against the solution itself. While this could be mitigated with proper communication and training, this could add complexity to a project that is already challenging.
In order to avoid such conflict and make individuals feel they are part of the change and the enhancements, there are some key points to keep into account to ensure successful user adoption:
- Involve the teams at an early stage of the project, ensure they contribute and provide their input and additional value to the solution
- Rely on the software vendor or subcontractor solution leader to provide detailed communications of the changes ahead to ensure there are no surprises or people unaware of the coming changes.
- Provide high quality training dedicated to business users and administrators
- Send satisfaction surveys to the teams to understand their expectations and feedback against them, which can then lead to applying changes to the project or communications if needed.
A solution could be the best one of the market, but if people don’t adopt it, it will likely fail! OpenText Professional Services have years of experience in implementing CCM solutions and helping with user adoption strategies. Please contact us for more information.
Author:
Arnaud Kubacki, Senior Account Executive
Professional Services – Customer Enterprise Management
