Advisory Services:
Implementation can be daunting, especially if you’ve never done it before—or worse, tried and failed. But we applaud your courage. It’s your dedication to improve that inspires us to do what we do. Work with clients to make their implementation goals a reality. Simplus improves the probability of project success by focusing on the impact to people, setting expectations, and driving adoption and usage.
When you come to Simplus, we develop a carefully planned change program customized to your requirements. With thousands of implementations under our belt, we know the space better than anyone else. We understand that change management is about people, process, and technology, and we work beside you to align them perfectly. By the time we part ways, you’ll be educated and able to keep the wheels rolling and accelerating on your own.
Here are some aspects of the Simplus methodology, time-tested for success.
Change Readiness
Before you can make real change, we need to get a “pulse check” on your organization’s readiness. To do this, we will:
- identify and document a list of stakeholders who will be impacted by the upcoming change
- develop an approach to engage the various stakeholders
- define an approach to mitigate the impact of change by developing a change management strategy
- conduct change readiness assessment via interviews, workshops, or end user surveys
- define a prescriptive and evolving metrics program to measure usage behaviors supporting the program at various points in the project
By the end, we’ll have a complete readiness report as well as a change management and training plan (e.g. tactical engagement activities with key milestones and deliverables).
Stakeholder Alignment
When it comes to engagement, you need more than just cooperation from your stakeholders. You need them to feel a sense of ownership. We work with stakeholders throughout and beyond your organization by
- creating a business advocacy group with the leadership and management team
- facilitating leadership and business champion meetings
- establishing a formal network of SMEs and super users from various business units that will act as change agents
With both the Business Champion Program and Change Agent Network in place, you’ll have an army of advocates at your side to drive your implementation.
Communication Planning
Within your organization, we need to create program awareness; everyone from sales to marketing, from the CEO to the most recent hire, needs to know what’s going on. We’ll outline expectations, set directions from the top, and provide a mechanism to receive feedback. We will
- develop a communication plan, with deliverables, owners, timelines, channels, and audiences all mapped out
- link the communication plan based on talent impact assessment
- articulate program objectives and business outcomes via communication campaigns
- develop messaging that links benefits to user (WIIFM) and business strategy.
You’ll find that transparency is key to any organization’s success. With everyone on the same page, the implementation process will speed by.
Training Methodology and Development
Together, we’ll develop a process-based end user training curriculum that focuses on functionality and business process learning. The process will include
- formulating a training strategy, in-depth analysis of process, and user requirements for your end users
- developing a training plan, including activities, milestones, and deliverables
- developing and building curriculum content
- developing supporting content, such as quick reference cards, video tutorials, and measurement readout reports
- infusing future state processes into training curriculum.
Once done, we’ll deliver to you a training plan and outline as well as a method for evaluation.
Training Delivery
Our end goal is that you be strong enough to walk on your own legs once we’re through. Once the training development is done, Simplus will formally transfer all appropriate knowledge for you to continue running training long after we’ve gone. We call this our “Train the Trainer” program. It consists of the following steps spread over four days:
- Day 1: Present class to attendees
- Day 2: Class review / teach backs
- Day 3: Feedback and audit teach backs
- Day 4 : Final presentations
Adoption Measurement
If we didn’t measure, we’d never know if our work was worth the effort. Throughout adoption, we track change progress against the change curve. We do this by
- leveraging adoption metrics to measure usage behaviors supporting program objective
- developing end surveys to identify a broad range of opinions regarding the introduction of the new CRM program
- distributing the surveys, compiling our findings, and analyzing themes;
- Developing an adoption measurement readout report
- continuing to refine the change management plan based on findings.
Measurement isn’t a one time-time thing. We are constantly watching ourselves for any way in which we can improve.
