Technology & Systems – Part 2

You have decided to purchase your brand new system. It is brilliant, shiny and new!….and empty and useless!

The key to making any system work for you is to start with a plan. Do not be tempted to get your hands on the data that you have to hand and start pummelling it into your lovely new database. I have done this on more than one occasion and through a lot of heartache and pain have now discontinued this popular method.

The art to making a system really work for you is to plan. Start by getting key employees on board with the project. Set a list of tasks to get you from the start to the end and make a timeline or Gantt Chart. It may seem longwinded to start with, but there is a well known graph of system implementation shown below:

IT Project Implementation Planning

The graph shows the likely outcomes of Project A (limited planning) and Project B (significant planning). The conclusion is that the more planning you do with a system implementation, the more quickly it will go live and be successful.

As the old saying goes: Fail to plan; plan to fail!