Implementing new business software is an essential step towards future-proofing your research department and increasing organizational resilience. However, the journey from purchasing to activation requires careful planning and coordination to ensure the process stays on schedule and the final user experience meets your expectations.
Fortunately, the right implementation strategies can not only keep your team on track from start to finish but also help improve workflows, team cohesion, and more.
That’s why we invited Craig Hospital’s Kelly Goelz and the University of Northern Iowa’s Tolif Hunt to discuss their implementation experiences and advice in our webinar, Mastering the Transition: Your Guide to Implementing New Software.
In this blog, we’ll break down their takeaways and best practices so your team can approach implementations with confidence.
Managing Implementation Constraints
While teams may ideally want to implement one new software system at a time to help reduce potential complexity, this may not be feasible given that the process can last several months, and many organizations do not have the time to implement one solution after the other. Both Kelly and Tolif experienced this implementation overlap, with Craig Hospital adding new Oracle management software and the University of Northern Iowa transitioning to Workday at the same time as their new Cayuse solution implementations.
For both organizations, the dual implementations were a matter of necessity; they could not afford to put off implementing one of the two systems without risking disruptions and needed the software to be rolled out by specific dates to keep projects on schedule. This will not be the case for all implementations, but the Craig Hospital and UNI experiences help to highlight the challenges any implementation can face, from limited resources to time constraints and more.
The Challenges
The implementations presented obvious challenges for both Craig Hospital and the University of Northern Iowa, particularly managing change fatigue and juggling the implementations with existing responsibilities. Given the differences between hospital and university systems, both teams also faced organizationally unique challenges during their implementations.
At Craig Hospital, the implementation was handled by a relatively small team, which added several obvious constraints. This meant that the responsibilities for both understanding the new software and Craig’s existing systems had to be handled by a limited crew with a finite capacity for implementation work, given their normal day-to-day responsibilities.
Conversely, while the University of Northern Iowa had more staff on hand to manage the implementations, they had more legacy data to migrate across a larger system. This made forecasting the impact of their new software more difficult, but also highlighted the importance of careful planning in the early stages of the process.
The Solutions
Despite these challenges, both organizations were able to successfully implement their new solutions and, in situations where they encountered particularly stubborn obstacles, learned new strategies for tackling future implementations.
For Craig Hospital’s smaller team, Kelly and her team overcame their limitations by piloting the new systems across smaller groups first. This allowed them to troubleshoot issues in a more controlled way, ensuring that the final rollout would be smoother for the organization as a whole. Inviting users who were more likely to be critical of the new systems also helped uncover more nuanced issues before the full launch and confirm that the new technology would provide a good user experience for everyone.
The implementations also provided the team with a valuable opportunity to work more closely with their IT department and gain a deeper understanding of their roles, responsibilities, and competing priorities. This brought the separate teams closer together, improving collaboration beyond the final software rollouts.
At the University of Northern Iowa, where data migration efforts were a major concern, Tolif underlined the importance of planning ahead and working with as many stakeholders as possible. This can help prevent confusion around data and workflows and avoid surprising teams that might otherwise be unaware of the specific implementation impacts.
To overcome change fatigue—an issue for all organizations moving to a new software system—both Kelly and Tolif emphasized the importance of one strategy above all others: effective communication. When changes are not addressed with all impacted stakeholders, the implementation process can face delays and even resistance from users who feel left out of the process.
Any team undergoing a new implementation should use the best methods for their organization to communicate changes and make sure employees understand their timeline, responsibilities, and the benefits of switching to a new system. For a smaller organization like Craig Hospital, this can mean in-person meetings, while a larger institution like UNI may benefit more from regular emails and multiple demos to make sure everyone has a chance to learn about the new system and raise questions before they become issues.
The Benefits
Though initially intimidating, the simultaneous implementations ultimately yielded several unexpected benefits for both the teams at Craig Hospital and UNI.
As mentioned previously, a successful implementation requires close collaboration with other departments and participation by stakeholders across an organization. This resulted in major benefits at Craig Hospital and UNI: They both found that working more closely with other teams and departments they do not typically interact with improved cohesion across the organizations. Even just the communal experience of undergoing training and helping others with implementation deliverables created a widespread sense of unity and understanding.
The wide-ranging impacts of the implementations also meant that those involved gained a better understanding of the workflows and responsibilities of others. This, in turn, provided excellent opportunities to improve existing processes and reduce inefficiencies, putting not only teams but entire organizations on the same page and increasing transparency in a way that was previously not possible.
Finally, with their new software in place, both organizations are now better positioned to conduct effective research with the help of modern, electronic management systems. And with the implementations completed in less time than would be required if they rolled out the software one after the other, the teams have more time to focus on their essential work and pursue additional large-scale projects.
Final Takeaways
While implementations can involve degrees of uncertainty and stress, especially when multiple systems are implemented at the same time, they are ultimately invaluable for research organizations and result in both resource savings and process improvements.
As we learned from Craig Hospital and the University of Northern Iowa’s experiences, implementation challenges can be addressed and mitigated with the right strategies. Organizations looking to implement new software should always consider these three best practices:
- Plan carefully and thoroughly: Mapping out workflows, timelines, and deliverables ahead of time will help reduce uncertainty and ensure that implementations proceed on schedule, without interruptions.
- Collaborate with all stakeholders: Keeping everyone in mind from the start will make sure no stakeholders are overlooked and help everyone prepare their deliverables. Involving a diverse group of users to test the new software will raise potential issues for faster fixes ahead of the full rollout, improving trust and adoption rates.
- Communicate effectively and consistently: Perhaps the most important factor, communication, can make or break an implementation. Teams should be sure to communicate frequently in a manner that works best for the size and specifics of their organizations, from in-person meetings to consistent email messaging.
With these three strategies in place, organizations can tackle their implementations with confidence and experience benefits beyond just improved software, from more collaboration to better transparency.
