Implementation Failure

A good example of a system “not guilty as charged” in that the problem was NOT the fault of the packaged software code, but rather the implementation activities, specifically the data conversion and testing. Here’s what I’ve been told by a student in my “Introduction to ERP — JD Edwards Day One” graduate class at Kansas State University …

A company was attempting to transition from Hubspot CRM over to Salesforce CRM. During data conversion, “a LOT of data, contacts, etc., got corrupted or changed around, and was not discovered until after they went live. The “source data set” was bad, and was not fixed before the go-live. Employees, including interns, had to manually go through thousands of Excel rows to fix the errors. In the meanwhile, as you can imagine, people were frustrated at the delay, and didn’t feel good about the new system.

As mentioned in Third Stage Consulting’s publication, “20 LESSONS FROM 1,000+ DIGITAL TRANSFORMATIONS OVER 20 YEARS” by Eric Kimberling, lesson “Number 10” says “make sure your house in order before you implement.” My source relates that this would have been a wise rule to heed before throwing the go-live switch. Clearly, the source data set had problems, and the new system inherited all of those errors, making the new system look bad, but not ‘guilty as charged.’

Obey the rules before you go live!