You have my sympathy/empathy, and I'm sure that of many others here. I have some thoughts that may seem common sense, but they may be worth mentioning:
Document everything. -- Downtime -- Delays -- End-user complaints -- Discussions with management and software vendors -- Missing features, reports, inquiry screens -- Limited access to end-users who should have authorization to access specific data -- Situations where the software forces a change in business practices This is good for many reasons. -- Ass coverage in case someone starts blaming you. -- Good morale for end-users to see you care about their concerns. -- Provides a metric regarding what vendors are doing or not. -- Helps with progress reports for management. -- Helps in tracking cost overruns, It sounds like the company switched over to the new apps cold turkey. That wasn't a good move. Running in tandem is preferred even if it means double entry for a while. It also sounds like the move was made a little too quick, without full understanding of the business requirements or buy-in from the end-users. End-users need to be consulted before-hand and treated as partners during the migration, otherwise you get people gossiping around the watercooler about the clueless computer guys. If they're involved in every step then they can't point fingers either unless they're totally ignored along the way. Running a company isn't a democracy but you don't need a mutiny from the ranks when people start asking why things aren't being done properly anymore. Bottom line here: Listen. If you're caught in the middle and being asked to manage the decisions someone else has handed down then keep channels open and maintain frequent but not annoying dialogs with management and vendors. The last thing you need are inquiries about "why didn't we know about this?" or "how long has this been going on". Keep on top of issues so that you aren't involved in damage control. Have manuals and phone numbers for support handy, identify usenet forums for GP. See if you can get a couple key end-users into classes so that they can front issues before you have to. Create a pseudo first-tier support group out of a few of these people and delegate responsibility. This goes along with the partnering thing - and buy them lunch now and then, they're working overtime here. Encourage all users to report issues to your or your support group immediately so that issues can be resolved rather than sitting on them until they become serious. Some people don't want to make waves and you find out about stuff way too late - like in the middle of closing the month-end. A big issue is, have you been given the authority to do what's required, or have you been given the responsibility without the authority? IT usually gets the latter. If you have authority, keep on top of your support providers and make sure they don't sit on issues. Escallate unresponsiveness to their management and yours as required before technical issues explode on you. If you don't have authority then hopefully you have the ear of someone who does. Once people in a new implementation like this realize that no one is in authority, the feces really strikes the rotary oscillators: Front-line end-users start using words like FUBAR as your project turns into yet another migration horror story for Pick people to smugly enjoy. HTH, Good Luck. Tony Nebula R&D >-----Original Message----- >From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Mark Johnson >Sent: Friday, April 02, 2004 8:05 PM >To: U2 Users Discussion List >Subject: Conversions > > >Does anyone have a short paper on the care and feeding of both >the company and its employees during a conversion/migration >from one system to another. > >I'm facilitating a migration from MV/Results/Primac to Great >Plains and it is a very large mismatch. GP seems to be >shopping-cart oriented and Results/Primac are more of a >traditional Order Entry system. > >I can't seem to convey that difference as management (read: >those who don't use the computer) like the GUI and all of the >nice links and screens. The worker bees are in a turmoil with >the increased amount of carpal-tunnel potential mouse/keyboard >back and forth as well as the absense of many functions that >were present under the MV app. Their productivity has fallen >75% as it takes 4x longer to enter an order. > >There are no sales tax lookups, no product or customer >lookups. You clearly cannot scroll through 35,000 line items. >There's no easy alternate shipping addresses and the original >reports leave a lot to be desired. The accounting package is >appealing but a company doesn't exist just for the accounting >dept. Not to mention all the hamburger-helper features i've >installed over the last 6.5 years. > >I also have to fabricate custom reports with Crystal Reports >and/or Access as there are many fields of data that should be >there like customer back orders, sample customers, customer >categories and a whole truckload of sales reporting fields >that simply don't exist. Am I wrong in concluding that Great >Plains is just a glorified shopping cart application. > >Has anyone else experienced this kind of mis-match, especially >with great plains. At least i could inform the users that >others have these growing pains. There doesn't seem to be a >light at the end of the tunnel for them. > >thanks in advance. -- u2-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.oliver.com/mailman/listinfo/u2-users
