Rollout

Rolling out IFS across an organisation and into a number of different sites or countries enables an organisation to deliver a global, holistic solution to all its business users. However, ensuring that the core template, local modifications and all stakeholders are bought into the programme of delivery is not without its associated risks and issues which need to be mitigated before the rollout in order to ensure a successful programme delivery.

Totalamber’s approach to rolling out IFS is to mitigate issues and risks before the rollout and ensure changes are applied to the environment in a structured manner which minimises business disruption and does not delay the rollout roadmap. Using Totalamber’s Integrated Services Component Model to deliver a rollout provides an organisation with the tools, methodology and approach to identify and mitigate risks and issues associated with the rollout.

It is not uncommon to find the following symptoms associated with a rollout initiative:

• Sequencing and priority of sites / countries – organisations do not fully address the prioritisation and sequencing of a rollout
• Country/Site readiness – organisations do not ensure a country or site is ready for their implementation
• Management of the core template – organisations do not always understand the importance of the core template and the impact of any changes during the rollout programme
• Standardisation and consistency – organisations do not always maintain standards and consistency of data, training and support, leading to delays later in the rollout programme
• Maintain ownership and control – the rollout team needs to devise their rollout plans without losing ownership and control
• Limited or no senior buy-in – lack of senior management buy in or an unsupportive leadership team often results in failure of rollouts
• Business disconnect – many organisations consider rollout to be an IT-led initiative and do not pay sufficient attention to other key aspects – the people, process and business strategy when designing the blueprint and overall solution
• Business Process Improvement – rolling out a new implementation into new sites provides organisations with the opportunity to review and improve business processes, many organisations do not consider improvements in business process and continue to automate old practices

Totalamber's tools, methodology and approach are all designed to assess the holistic environment of the IFS system, incorporating assessments of the business strategy, people, process and technology environments prior to the commencement of any initiative to rollout IFS, ensuring the key aims and objectives of the programme are fully understood and agreed by all stakeholders and any risks and issues have been identified, enabling the programme to mitigate these during the rollout initiative.

Totalamber’s approach is to assess the requirements of a rollout using its Rollout Needs Analysis (RNA) tool, which provides a complete review, assessment and analysis of the holistic IFS environment using Totalamber's Diamond Methodology to assess business strategy, people, process and technology.

The RNA uses the following tools and techniques to assess the IFS environment, identify risks and issues and provide the business with the most appropriate roadmap for delivering the rollout programme:

• IFS Snapshot - An initial survey and questionnaire designed to elicit key feedback on the current system and environment from a cross-section of key stakeholders (management, super/key users, users) and to determine their views and aspirations for a rollout of IFS
• Landscape Internal Support Assessment (LiSA) - An on-line tool that assesses the issues and capabilities of the current support provision within an organisation
• Support Needs Analysis (SNA) - A detailed assessment of the specific Support needs of an organisation assessed against Totalamber's 6 layer Support Tower

Analysis of the findings from each of the tools enables Totalamber to feed information into the Rollout Project Configurator which provides an initial indication of the proposed structure and approach to rollout IFS across the organisation. The associated Statement of Work provides a high level assessment of the potential sequencing of the rollout, country or site costs, duration and return on investment for the rollout initiative, mitigating risks and guaranteeing the success of the project.

Undertaking a rollout of IFS is a strategic initiative more often than not mandated by the Board and undertaken based on a number of drivers, which include a requirement to reduce costs, increase performance, drive competitive advantage and ultimately demonstrate a tangible return on investment. Consolidating a number of legacy applications into a single homogenous environment provides an integrated application strategy that eliminates or reduces reliance on third-party applications, thus increasing performance, usability and effectiveness of the application whilst reducing costs and placing responsibility for ERP services into a single vendor, such as IFS. This strategic approach to the implementation of IFS needs to be translated into a pragmatic delivery programme, ensuring the drivers and high level requirements of the organisation are delivered by the rollout initiative.

Totalamber has a wealth of experience gained through rolling out IFS and its key guiding principles when developing a strategic, but pragmatic rollout strategy is to:

• Understand the business drivers – what are the strategic aims and objective in consolidating on IFS and rolling it out across the organisation
• Understand Management Aims – what does the management and leadership team want to achieve from the rollout of IFS across the organisation
• Understand priorities and constraints – what are the key priorities for the rollout plan and are there any constraints relating to the rollout initiative
• Understand Critical Success Factors – what does success look like and how will the management and leadership team sign off the project
• Align Global and Local Agendas – How does the global initiative and core template impact individual local requirements and initiatives
• Understanding the rollout approach – managing expectations regarding the rollout approach – “big bang” versus incremental rollouts
• Sequencing of implementations – what is the priority for site/country implementations, what is the sequencing of implementations and should there be a pilot implementation prior to commencement of the rollout programme
• Business / functional requirements – what modules are required by the core solution, how should these be released to the business and what is the impact of such decisions

To provide direction, Totalamber will provide a detailed Rollout Roadmap and Project Charter which will provide the structure, methodology, approach and governance for the delivery of the rollout initiative.

Rolling out IFS across an organisation is not just about the installation of the IFS software application into a new site or country. There are many other aspects that need to be considered in order for a rollout to be successful and deliver tangible business benefit to the organisation. The holistic environment encompassing people process and business strategy all need to be considered as part of the technology implementation.

Understanding current business processes and ways of working enables an organisation to make significant improvements in the re-engineering of processes and ways of working when introducing IFS into the organisation and taking advantage of new features and functionality and improved automation facilities.

Totalamber’s approach is not to just focus on the technology aspects of the rollout, but to assess the holistic environment across four strategic dimensions of people, process, business strategy and technology. Totalamber’s Integrated Services Component Model provides the toolkit, approach and methodology for assessing an organisation and in order to gain an understanding of the IFS environment focuses on the following guiding principles:

• Understand Business Processes – organisations need to review and document current business processes and align these with IFS’s features and functionality
• Understand Ways of Workings – current “ways of working” need to be defined and document and aligned with business processes
• Understand As Is vs. To Be Processes – assess and document the current “As Is” business processes, define the “To Be” business processes and determine the changes required to both business process and IFS configuration to support the new system requirements
• Agree Required IFS Capabilities – analysis of the “To Be” environment will determine the capabilities required from the IFS system and provide the structure for the design and configuration of IFS
• Establish Knowledge Centre – establishing a knowledge centre ensures knowledge and intelligence about the IFS system, business processes and operations remains within the organisation and is not lost when key people leave

Totalamber’s approach is to start with a review, assessment and analysis of the current non IFS environment using Totalamber's Diamond Methodology to assess business strategy, people, process and technology. Assessment of the findings from the review provide the basis of recommendations for the “To Be” IFS system.

Once the “To Be” system has been defined and agreed by the organisation, Totalamber’s Integrated Services Component Model provides the tools and approach to rollout IFS across the organisation in a controlled manner.

Totalamber’s approach to a rollout of IFS is to initially define a global / core template which delivers the strategic requirements of the organisation and then augment the core template with bespoke local modifications to support individual country or site implementations. Totalamber’s Integrated Services Component Model provides a toolkit that enables organisations to:

• Document “As Is” business processes – ensure all business processes are documented and aligned with the ways of working
• Define the future “To Be” environment – define and agree the “To Be” environment
• “As Is” versus “To Be” analysis – identify process differences and re-engineer processes to support the new environment
• Align “To Be” environment with IFS capabilities – determine how IFS supports the “To Be” environment and identify any modifications or system enhancements required

When undertaking a rollout of IFS, Totalamber’s approach is to recommend that an organisation develops a core solution that aligns strategic business requirements with the IFS system. This core solution is then augmented through the configuration of changes to support local country or site requirements. Totalamber refers to this as a “cookie cutter” approach – implementing IFS in one site, moving onto the next site using the same methodology, approach, techniques and delivery team. This enables lessons learnt from the previous implementation to be applied to subsequent implementations, continuously improving the delivery of the rollout.

To facilitate an effective delivery, Totalamber’s approach is to facilitate delivery of key country components (data, training and support) through delivery factories, each of which takes responsibility for the development and delivery the components into each country or site. This factory approach aligns strategic rollout requirements with centres of expertise who have their own tools and approaches for developing and delivering their implementation components. Each factory specialises in their own area and is focused on supporting each individual implementation. The factory approach provides a cost effective mechanism for the development and delivery of key rollout components, keeping the same teams together and create a cost effective production line for delivery of key components.

Prior to the rollout commencing, Totalamber’s Integrated Services Component Model provides the tools, methodology and approach to assess the readiness of each delivery component to support the rollout:

• Core template assessment – up to 12 worksteams for the core template are individually assessed. These are business process, reports, data, software configuration, business change management, business communications, user training, solution deployment, technical infrastructure, support, testing and acceptance and project management. Individual assessment then results in an overall assessment score for the readiness of the core solution
• Factory Readiness – each factory is assessed to determine its readiness to deliver the data, training and/or support requirements for the rollout
• Country / Site Readiness Assessment – This tool assess each local site / country and determines their readiness to commence with the implementation

Following assessment of the core component and the rollout factory readiness, Totalamber’s approach is to then use its Country/Site Configurator tool to provide indicative costs for the rollout, identify any risks and prepare an action plan. The Country/Site Configurator enables an organisation to enter information for each country/site based on 6 criteria – Users, Modules, Localisation, Data, Training and Support. The information presented into the Country/Site Configurator is then assessed to determine the costs for a particular rollout scenario. The data in the Country/Site Configurator can be amended to determine different costs based on different criteria, enabling an organisation to investigate rollout options.

Once IFS has been implemented in a site, the delivery team can be disbanded or move onto the next site, taking knowledge and experience with them. Continued success of the implementation is reliant on a support service that retains knowledge and expertise within the site and maintains a sustainable service to the business. The level of support needed will depend on the nature of the organisation complexity (e.g. global presence / time zones / languages / cultures) and the solution which need supporting after rollout.

When providing support for a rollout, not only does support need to be provided to the local users and super users, but it also needs to be provided for the core template/solution as any changes required at the local or country level may impact the global solution. Alternatively any changes required at the global level will need to be rolled out to local / country implementations.

Totalamber’s Integrated Services Component Model provides an organisation with a sustainable support service for both the core solution and country specific requirements. The key guiding principles relating to this are:

• Understand the core template – gain an understanding of the core template and develop a global approach for supporting the core template at a super / key user level
• Country / Site Support requirements – determine country or site specific training requirements
• IFS Modules Required – which IFS modules have been implemented in the site, any local configuration and any modifications
• Manage IT Risks – identification of risks and mitigating risks through change management
• Understand IT skills and capabilities - assess the IT skills and capabilities of users of the system and provide a training programme to bring everyone up to the same level
• Define IFS Support Strategy – define and agree a sustainable strategy to support IFS

Totalamber's tools, methodology and approach are all designed to assess the holistic environment of the IFS system, incorporating assessments of the business strategy, people, process and technology environments and build a sustainable support function following a rollout or site/country implementation

IFS Performance Review (IPR) - Totalamber's IPR is a 360 degree review, assessment and analysis of the holistic IFS environment using Totalamber's Diamond Methodology to assess business strategy, people, process and technology.

The IPR uses the following tools and techniques to assess the IFS environment, identify risks and issues and provide the business with the most appropriate roadmap for delivering a sustainable support function:

• IFS Snapshot - An initial survey and questionnaire designed to elicit key feedback on the current system and environment from a cross-section of key stakeholders (management, super/key users, users) and to determine what they would like to see from any initiative.
• Landscape Internal Support Assessment (LiSA) - An on-line tool that assesses the issues and capabilities of the current support provision within an organisation
• Support Needs Analysis (SNA) - A detailed assessment of the specific Support needs of an organisation assessed against Totalamber's 6 layer Support Tower

Analysis of the findings from each of the tools enables Totalamber to develop a bespoke support toolkit which supports both the global support requirements and individual local support requirements:

Global Support Requirements

• Global Support Policies and Guidelines Rulebook – governance and management of the support service and how this is delivered to both the global and local implementations
• Module Support – support for the modules delivered as part of the core template – includes both business process support and application support
• Reports – design, development and enhancement of reports required at the global level
• Refresh and Advanced User Training - structured training programme and documentation to provide refresher training and key/super user training

Country/Site Specific Support rollout for key users:

• Understand global business rules and roles for supporting country users
• Refresher/new user training on key functionality – provide refresher and new user training to local users on an ongoing basis
• Coach on FAQ, functionality issues and lessons – provide regular training sessions to educate and update users on frequently asked questions, functionality issues and lessons learnt from other users from other implementations
• Escalation route for complex functional enquiries – provide an escalation route to global super/key users for complex functional enquiries, especially if the global template is liable to be impacted
• Local country reports and data model to support management decisions – design, development and enhancement of local country reports and alignment with the data model to provide intelligent reports to facilitate management decisions