Overview
Most dealers start off not wanting to spend time on Readysell's project planning. Yet it is critical that you take the time to understand the benefits and cost savings you can achieve by sticking to Readysell's standard project plan. Readysell's project planning can help you get peace of mind by achieving the following benefits:
- Get us all on the same page, align and manage expectations :
- Readysell can make sure you get the result you expect for the price you expect. You will start off not knowing much about what Readysell will do while having your own expectations about the results you want. Readysell initially will not know what you expect but will know a lot about implementing our software. The extensive planning work pays off by making sure you, your team and Readysell are on the same page about what is expected and how it will be achieved.
- Prevent you from running the project on your own:
- As a business owner, you are used to running the show yourself. The natural approach for many project leaders is to make all the decisions yourself. If you take this approach with the Readysell conversion, things will not go well. Dealers that go there own way with the conversion tend to have the least success. Especially if the project is run "by the seat of your pants". Readysell does this all the time, we need to help you take advice from our expertise
- We need to make lists of agreed plans to help you understand and take on our advice about how to run the project
- Agree in advance about any changes you want to the standard install plan. We normally find that each dealer’s experience can broadly fit into our standard conversion project plan. But we need to adjust the plan around the edges to suit individual requirements
- Show you how to save money by using on site training, the training documentation and videos:
- The lazy and most expensive way to complete your implementation is to have Readysell show you how to complete each task individually
- We can show you how to save money by using the training documentation and videos
- Having Readysell team members on site has a cost, but can save you money. It saves as on site training gets the best result using the least amount of your teams time
- Avoid unplanned costs by helping you budget for the full cost of the project:
- Training, equipment, site visits, they all add up
- By helping you plan a full project budget, we reduce the change of any surprise bills arriving on your desk
- We also help you understand the support policy, so you and your team make use of Readysell support without incurring more charges than you need to. Some dealers don't contact Readysell when they could do so without a charge. Believing everything is charged is an error. Just as believing no Readysell support will be charged is also an error.
- We can help you understand what costs and what does not
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- Completing all project engagement work, such as review of initial data import, setup of required equipment, deciding on which sites have their own databases etc.
- Setting tentative project start date and gl live date, just to frame discussion
- Project engagement planning
- Training engagement planning
- Financials engagement planning
- Readysell will be regarding you as the project leader for your business, We will nominate your project leader for Readysell
Project engagement
The next few steps from here involve completing the project engagement work so that we can set a start date for the project. I have asked my team to help you with the following steps over the few weeks before the project starts:
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- Muli-site considerations
- If you have more than one site. We can have a seperate database at each site or one database at the 'main' site and remote connections to the branches
- One database at a head office with VPN/RDP for Cannonvale probably a good option. Requires the server at the main site to have sufficient RDP licences
- A cloud based solution is possible, but generally more expensive based on current technology. A lot of what is said about the cloud is hype. We can do a cloud based solution for you, but it will probably run slower and increase your costs
- Reaydsell 8 Web client can be used to connect to any location as well with or without a cloud based database
- Data conversion
- We complete a first rough data conversion before the project engagement meeting and the start of the project
- Extracting data from your existing system is done in a number of steps. The first conversion does not have to be perfect, just enough to allow training
- In the last few weeks before the system goes live, your team have to tidy up the address and contact data
Reducing your costs by firming up your project budget
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We don’t want any surprises in regards to costs. So we try to start the project by helping you with budget estimates for all aspects of the project. Greg handles costs and charges. Greg needs us to agree on a training and implementation budget, at least in draft form, so that he can estimate costs and charges.
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