With the harmonising of business and software understanding the processes can be mapped into the software and a training plan developed. This may include initial training sessions with the key members of the project team, in a train the trainer format. It may also include scheduled classroom sessions for departmental members, or entire departments. It is critical when training end-users that the processes are agreed with the key team members beforehand to ensure the sessions delivered meet the needs of the business.
The training itself can take many forms, but generally the most productive form is hands on sessions where the users have individual access to a test system and are given scenarios to create or follow.
The training of the users however is not the end of this process.
Once trained the users need to process train. Training in isolation may help the user gain an initial understanding of how the software works, but undertaking this in process loops is an essential step. By undertaking this the business gets to see how each department impacts on the other and how the decisions made upstream affect what the downstream departments "have" to do. Additional to this, and perhaps more critically, holes between the departments begin to appear from a software perspective. If discovered and understood at this stage provision can be made, but if this is not undertaken these issues can only be uncovered at go-live.
The acceptance of the users in totality is critical. Once the business understands how the business process flows through the software the business can assess the suitability of the processes, and whether they are really needed, or with the implementation of the new software whether other alternatives are now present from the software itself.
The entire processing cycle must be undertaken, and not simply once, different scenarios, different issues and different users should be used. All users generally bring a different perspective and a different set of questions and issues to the table. By collating all of these requirements the business has the best possible chance of going live smoothly. Undertaking this will mean all of the processes are understood, and the users understand how to use the software to meet the needs of the business.
If a business chooses to be trained and then go live without letting the users undertake static and process testing then all of the process gaps and issues will be discovered at go-live. The incumbent system will have been bent and abused to hide and conceal these gaps. The current system is as yet unaware of these issues and needs to be warned. It should not be expected that the new system will solve all of the issues of the old system, primarily because these are generally not software issues, they are process issues, but secondly because no one in the process of training has discovered they exist.
Columbus are a Microsoft Dynamics AX partner. In our next article we'll explore how to handle the tricky task of migrating your data to ensure a successful ERP implementation.
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