Page Comparison

Overview

Small If your team have time and the right skills, you can cut your implementation costs by taking on more self training and project management. The project still works as a partnership with the Readysell team providing some training and project management:

• The key is to agree a plan at the start
• Quality rather than timing is the key to success
• Readysell will give you a list of checklist to complete. Only after all those checklists are signed off can you go live.

Some sites can spend less on Readysell assistance by using the small self managedsmall site implementation methodology. But if you don't do enough to prepare, you will have a difficult conversion experience. You will eventually get Readysell going, the program works. But you could cause difficulties for your customers and your team. If you decide to use this approach you can cut costs and it can work well. But you are increasing the risk of a difficult transition to Readysell 8, especially in the first week or two. You have to put more of you and your teams time into the project in order to make it work. If you are short of time you should use the full implementation strategy and pay for more of Readysell's time to help you with your project.

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• expecting to implement less of Readysell's benefits on the first day
• focus more on quality rather than an implementation date
• pick a list of basics to implement on the conversion weekend when building your project plan before starting any training and stick to those priorities only
• get help from other dealers by sending your staff to learn at other sites for a few days

But this will only work if you stick to the small set of features we agree on. Readysell has piles of features that can help your site. The temptation to run with more of the features is hard to resist. But if you can't do so the small site approach will not work. It is a lot easier if you have another Readysell user you can visit.

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Tips

• Only use the small site self managed implementation strategy if
  •  You have up to five staffstaff with the time and skills to perform the management and self training functions
  •  You are switched on to learning new computer software skills
  • • Assess if you and your team have the learning skills required to do more of the work yourself. You have to have someone that can learn new software easily.Be honest with yourself, some dealerships just don't have anyone with the skills to learn the system through self training

• •  You have plenty of spare time to put into self training instead of having Readysell train you

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• Make and STICK TO  priority list of the few features that are most critical to your business and run with Readysell's most basic implementation of those featuresbusiness. A few tips that may not suit every business, but should be considered include:
  •  Automatic price updates
    • Live with the fact that turning on automatic cost and sell price updates will change your old cost and sell prices
    • This typically takes about 6 hours of your time and can require an hour or two help from Readysell. 
    • See Getting started with automatic product price updates
  •  Sale order entry
    • Make use of the training guide Sale Order And Shipment Training Guide. You can skip the bit about sale shipments without an order
  •  Data review and tidy up
    • Understand want needs to be cleaned up and work on it slowly over time if you can.
    • You have to complete those steps:
      • Initial Review Of Addresses
      • Initial review of contacts
      • Readysell approval checklists
  •  Point of sale
    • Skip this unless you have more than a few cash sales a day
    • If you do run with point of sale you need to understand:
      • Make use of the training guide Sale Order And Shipment Training Guide. You have to cover the bit about sale shipments without an order
      • Entering and declaring a cash count and ending shifts at end of day
  •  Manual purchasing and receipting
  • • You have to know how to enter a purchase order, send it to suppliers and process receipts:
      • Purchasing Training Guide
  •  Automatic purchasing
    • Requires a few hours training but has huge benefits in time saving and improved stock accuracy
    • Skip this if you do not have good stock on hand values
    • You have to have complete:
      • /wiki/spaces/INT/pages/622649
  •  Web site integration
    • Don't use contract prices if you can help it
    • Sale orders can be set to integrate before the go live date if you don't currently import sales orders from the web site into your existing system
    • You have to complete some of the following, depending on your requirements:
      • Office Brands Integration
  •  Scan stock in and out
    • Huge time saving and accuracy improvements available. Recommended, but does require a few hours of training time, some large screens and scanners.
    • You need to understand:
      • Scan checking purchase receipts
      • Scan checking a sale shipment
  •  Financials basics for suppliers and customers
  • • You need to understand:
      
      • Getting started with cards
      • Getting started with customer payments
  •  Full financials
    • There are a lot of details that just have to be right with financials. 
    • There is no way to substantially reduce the implementation cost. 
    • This is one area where the small site strategy can't reduce implementation costs
    • To get started with your preparations, you have to conduct a Readysell Financials Engagement Meeting for around two hours over the phone
  •  Reports
    • Only use lists and reports as they currently are in Readysell
    • See:
    • What do I get for my reporting
    • Reports Training Guide
  •  Readysell staff on site at the start of the project
    • Readysell's staff on site can kick start your training. It is over ten times more effective to train standing in your store than over the phone.
    • Read the project engagement plan before you decide to skip on site training the start of the project. See Readysell Project Engagement Meeting.
  •  Make sure you go to another dealers site before your go live date
  • • . Especially if you are not having Readysell on site at the start of the project
  •  Readysell staff on site for the go live weekend
    • Readysell's implementation team are experts on tidying data, training your team and helping people manage the move to live operations
    • Readysell can give you checklists of what do do. But you don't have the experience to correctly interpret the list and apply it in your business. It is like any do it yourself project. Even with the best instructions. You need experience to use the instructions, it is harder than it looks, and quick response is critical. Taking time to work out the answer on your first day can result in getting behind and errors effecting your customers.
    • If you don't have Readysell on site your go live weekend will be a lot harder. Expect to spend more time fixing things after you go live
    • Make sure you have spent time at another Readysell 8 site for a few days before implementation if you are thinking about this approach

    • You can book a Readysell team member to help you remotely over the go live weekend

      Warning
      Readysell's implementation team do this all the time, they have many years of experience. There is no substitute for having a Readysell team member on site when you go live. You can save money by skipping this assistance, but your go live will be a lot harder. You may end up spending more on assistance after you go live helping with issues than the cost of having someone on site.

      
      

Get help from other Readysell 8 customers

•  Make sure you line up more than one day of site visits to an existing Readysell 8 dealer's business!

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• You need to gain a lot of experience as economically as possible, the cheapest way to do this is to work at another Readysell 8 store. Just pick stock, enter sales, anything you do will be a huge benefit. Going to other sites and watching what they do will not work. You have to stay there and help them process work in order to learn. You have to do the work at the site you visit for the knowledge to sink in. But if you can't do that, sit and watch what the other Readysell 8 customer does for a few days. One day will not be enough.
• Find another Readysell user near your business and agree to send a key staff member to that site to work in their business for a few days
• Get a key team member trained in an outline of those basic features you need. Then send them to another dealer to help that dealer with their day to day work for a few days. By the time you team member returns. They will know a lot of what they need without having to pay as much for Readysell training
• Follow the standard "fail safe implementation strategy", but cut down the features covered

You still have to do the project engagement meetings early in the project

You need three two hour blocks of time to complete the following meetings over the phone as within a week of the project start date:

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Readysell Training Engagement Meeting 

Make sure you understand what you get for your investment in implementation assistance

You get a fixed number of free training hours. Readysell can charge for any other time we spend assisting you.  Assistance during implementation is charged as per our standard support policy. 

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Planning your Readysell 8 conversion project

What do I get FAQ

You still have to sign off the customer sign off checklists at the correct dates in the project

You have to sign off one checklist now, two more before the conversion weekend and one on the conversion weekend. See: Readysell approval checklists

Handy hints and warnings

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