{"id":1784,"date":"2011-02-28T01:00:00","date_gmt":"2011-02-28T09:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/?p=1784"},"modified":"2011-02-05T18:04:56","modified_gmt":"2011-02-06T02:04:56","slug":"hr-technology-deployments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/?p=1784","title":{"rendered":"HR Technology Deployments"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I love it when consultants come in and talk to you about all the things you need to do around an implementation.\u00a0 Obviously your implementer is going to do all the normal things around table configuration and testing, but they often miss some of the bigger items.\u00a0 When consultants come in to talk about the other stuff, they are usually not particularly comprehensive \u2013 they like to talk about change management.\u00a0 Change management is a wonderful thing, but it still does not mean you\u2019re going to have a successful deployment, no matter how good the change program is.\u00a0 There are so many things that go into swapping your HR technologies out that missing any of them could spell disaster.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Foundation.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know why so little time is spent on the foundation of any HR system.\u00a0 Whether it\u2019s core HR or talent management, there are some pretty big foundation issues that you should be looking at before you even think about starting an implementation.\u00a0 Whether you like it or not, half of your problem with your prior system was not the system.\u00a0 Half of your problem was that you screwed up the foundation, and had you gotten it right, you\u2019d never be moving to a new system anyway.\u00a0 Either you messed up the organizational structure and after that it was all downhill, or your jobs never made sense, or your security was horrible and ultimately your own poor security decisions ended up in horrific data quality.\u00a0 Perhaps you didn\u2019t really think through competencies or goals well enough when you did your first talent management implementation because the talent market was so young that nobody really knew what they were doing.\u00a0 Either way, fix it now before you configure tables, because your implementer really just wants to get values in the table and stay on time \u2013 not help you figure out what the right org structure is for the next 10 years.<\/li>\n<li>Decommissioning.\u00a0 Ok, there are easy parts and hard parts.\u00a0 The easy parts are reports, interfaces and data conversion.\u00a0 Heck, that\u2019s just part of any old implementation.\u00a0 Of course we\u2019re going to convert those.\u00a0 But wait, did you say we\u2019re not converting history?\u00a0 How long are we going to have to access the old system for?\u00a0 Does that mean we\u2019re running reports out of 2 systems?\u00a0 Wait, have we done analysis around the downstream systems and not just creating interfaces?\u00a0 Listen, if you\u2019re changing the org structure (see #1 above), you had better prepare every singe downstream system (and downstream from the downstream system) to get ready for new values or structures.\u00a0 It\u2019s not just about an interface or a report.\u00a0 What you are doing is going to have far reaching impact \u2013 especially if it\u2019s core HR.\u00a0 Last thing you need to do is mess up some random headcount report that goes to the board of directors just because it comes out of a system 2 interfaces removed from core HR.<\/li>\n<li>Implementation.\u00a0 This is obviously one of the things that will get covered.\u00a0 Your chosen implementer is going to be all over table configuration, and they are motivated to be on time and under budget.\u00a0 That\u2019s really where the problems comes in \u2013 you want them to be on time and under budget, but you\u2019d also like to think that they are going to be strategically minded and help you out with other things above.\u00a0 90% of the time they are not.\u00a0 The cost model that your purchasing people drove them to simply won\u2019t allow them to help you out, and even if thoy could, do you really want a group of people operating in the weeds of table configuration to also operate at the highest strategy levels?\u00a0 Usually not.<\/li>\n<li>Change Management.\u00a0 Can we please get away from thinking that training and communication is all there is to change management?\u00a0 Realistically, the estimate you should be using for change management should be about 20% of the implementation budget.\u00a0 That\u2019s right, if you are spending $1M on implementation, you should have a $200k budget.\u00a0 When things start to get tight, the first things to go are any real hopes for change management.\u00a0 If you don\u2019t get your audience analysis and change strategy right, all you\u2019re going to have are vendor provided training and generic communications.\u00a0 Listen people, the new technology is 80% adoption and 20% everything else in the equation of success.\u00a0 If you want to be successful, don\u2019t cut the 20% of change management budgets, cut $200k out of your implementation and live without a piece of functionality.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Sorry \u2013 am I ranting?\u00a0 It\u2019s not just implementation, table configuration and change management.\u00a0 You can get all of those perfect and still have a bad outcome.\u00a0 In order to get it right, you have to do all of the activities, including the ones that are not totally obvious at first, and including the ones that your consultants are not trying to sell to you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I love it when consultants come in and talk to you about all the things you need to do around an implementation.\u00a0 Obviously your implementer is going to do all the normal things around table configuration and testing, but they&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1809,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_coblocks_attr":"","_coblocks_dimensions":"","_coblocks_responsive_height":"","_coblocks_accordion_ie_support":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[40,8,2,29,34,3],"tags":[453,277,278,279,276],"class_list":["post-1784","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-enterprise-solutions","category-strategies","category-hr-technology","category-hrms","category-implementation","category-vendors","tag-change-management","tag-decommissioning","tag-deployment","tag-foundation","tag-implentation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1784","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1784"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1784\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1810,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1784\/revisions\/1810"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/1809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1784"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1784"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/systematichr.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1784"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}