IMPLEMENTATION SERVICE
What are Implementation Services?
Implementation services are provided by both software companies and IT consultancies to help customers realize value from their product purchase. The implementation team will have responsibility for getting the customer live with the product and in turn achieving the initial value milestone. The type of product and the associated complexity dictates the type of team, timeline and implementation methodology needed.
Companies implementing less complex products will often focus on having rapid deployment times, ideally with self-service elements to the onboarding phase to help scale. As the complexity of the solution grows or with acquisition of enterprise customers often sees vendors needing to develop a more professional approach to project management underpinned by a PMO.
For Successful Implementations
Follow these proven strategies to ensure your implementation projects deliver maximum value.
PLAN AHEAD
Demand forecasting is a critical services capability where you have a clear view of demand for projects and resources. The best teams can turn a 1-dimensional pipeline into a 3-dimensional view of FTE requirements alongside skills and roles needs to inform hiring decisions.
SALES ALIGNMENT
The partnership between sales and services to ensure that there is an effective handover is table stakes. To advance your delivery effectiveness, you need to ensure that services are sold correctly and that PS is brought in at the right time to scope projects.
COMMUNICATE ONBOARDING PLAN
Clear & consistent project plans are the cornerstone of effective project management. Your customer may not have a full time project manager and is having to coordinate a mix of stakeholders on their side. Curate project information, customer tasks and dependencies effectively so that the customer knows what they need to do and when, to plan ahead.
CONTROL OVERRUN
Project managers need to be setup for success with clear policy on managing budget and timelines. If you are selling fixed price implementations, it is easy to fall into the trap of allowing scope to creep to please the customer. Foster a culture where the team take a prescriptive approach and coaches the customer through the implementation processes quickly and effectively.
Why Is Implementation Important?
Failed implementations lead to churn - Gartner research found $5b in annual churn due to poor onboarding. Speed to value should be the guiding principle of your delivery methodology. The quality and velocity of implementations have an outsized impact on the customer relationship where first impressions matter.
As Saood Shah, former VP of Professional Services at Gainsight, states "Optimizing for time-to-value had a significant impact on any services organization that I've been a part of with the corresponding impact on revenue generation, customer retention, expansion sales and overall customer confidence."
How Delivery Times Impact Revenue
The best professional services team understands the financial impact of faster implementations. Accounting standards mean that companies can increasingly only recognize revenue part way through an implementation or at go-live. In telephony technology projects, the software licences are provisioned at go-live - for one publicly traded telecoms company, one of their business units booked $100m in ARR but only recognized $40m within the financial year due to delays in delivery.
Companies that can improve the consistency and velocity of delivery will not only drive better retention rates but also have a significant impact on the financial performance of the company.
ThesisLogix Makes Implementations Easy
Customer success starts with customer onboarding. You can build project plans for implementation projects that reduce delays and improve time-to-value. ThesisLogix helps to optimize all elements of services delivery including resourcing, project management, customer collaboration and financial management. Project plans including resource requirements are created based on the Professional Services package sold. Your onboarding playbooks are mapped to customer segments, products, or your own criteria.