Overview
Most dealers start off not wanting to spend time on Readysell's project planning. Yet Readysell's project planning can help you get peace of mind by achieving the following benefits:
- Get us all on the same page:
- 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
To make your project work, it is important that you take the time to understand why we need to complete the following steps:
- 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 next few weeks:
- Set a tentative project start and go live date. We need the start date, when all project engagement is complete and we start to get serious about training etc., needs to be some six to eight weeks before the go live weekend
- Our support team is to connect to your server and run our standard internal stage 1 data review. In order to check that the stage 1 data conversion is reasonable
- Once our support team confirms the stage 1 data conversion is reasonable, they are to:
- Run you and if possible one other team member at your business through an outline of the “introduction to Readysell” training program. The purpose being to show you enough about navigating around Readysell that you can complete the stage 1 data review checklist. See, as optional reading
· https://readysell.atlassian.net/wiki/display/RSELL/What+do+I+get+for+my+data+conversion
· https://readysell.atlassian.net/wiki/display/RSELL/Data+Conversion
· https://readysell.atlassian.net/wiki/display/INT/Implementation
o Send you the stage 1 data review checklist and help you understand what is involved with completing the checklist. See:
o Your Readysell 8 project leader needs to explain the “fail safe implementation methodology” to you. They will also talk to you to ensure you have been sent all of the project documentation, such as the shared priorities checklist and that you understand the purpose of each of the project documents. See:
- · Di Partridge on our support team is to phone you and schedule a day when she can work with you over the phone to complete the “Financials engagement meeting”. See:
o https://readysell.atlassian.net/wiki/display/RSELL/Readysell+Financials+Engagement+Meeting
· We need to conduct a project engagement meeting. We can do this over the phone or on site:
- Project engagement can allow us to record all your requirements and show you in outline how Readysell will achieve each of those requirements. The project engagement meeting helps us define your business needs and determine when we might implement various features such as mobile app for technicians, advanced warehousing etc. This help us stage the project so that your team moves forward at a steady pace over time without trying to implement too few or too many features at one time. We also do some training during project engagement meetings when they are on site
- Best practice is to send Sharon from our training team to your site for two days. Sharon can conduct a day and a half of “boot camp training” will would give you a great start to the project. Greg can give you an estimate of costs
- A cheaper, but less effective alternative, is for Sharon phone you and schedule a day when she can work with you over the phone to complete the “Training engagement meeting”. This will require a few hours of your time. Sharon is to explain to you the self-training materials available to you such as our you tube channel and the training guide. Sharon would have to skip the “boot camp training” part of the project engagement meeting, as we are conducting the session over the phone. See:
- Sharon will then prepare a training plan for you. The training plan outlines the areas of training required for each of your team members. Note, one aim is to keep to a trim training budget, so Sharon will focus on how self-training can help you reduce Readysell training hours. See:
o https://readysell.atlassian.net/wiki/display/RSELL/Readysell+Training+Engagement+Meeting
o https://readysell.atlassian.net/wiki/display/RSELL/Readysell+Training+Guide
o https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCdrTkUhSjNDKlZN733HRufw
- Muli-site considerations
- One database at Mackay with VPN/RDP for Cannonvale probably a good option. Requires the server at the main site to have sufficient RDP licences
- Reaydsell 8 Web client can be used to connect to Mackay from any location as well
- Data conversion
- I have completed a first rough data conversion. Extracting data from your existing system took a lot of time when we worked on it during this first conversion. We probably need to plan another extract of data from your existing system and a more formal review and data cleansing procedure for the resultant data conversion.
- One database at Mackay with VPN/RDP for Cannonvale probably a good option. Requires the server at the main site to have sufficient RDP licences
Firming up your project budget
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.
Planning the Readysell on site staff over the course of the project and the training generally follows a standard procedure. We find investing in training before the conversion will help you get the most out of the system and will make the conversion as stress free as possible for you and your customers.
We can’t firm up the budget until the project engagement work above is complete. But just for discussions sake, let’s say you run with one Readysell team member on site for two days over the conversion weekend. This would result in the following conversion budget:
· 3 Readysell implementation team days on site
· Around 5 hours’ financial implementation assistance. You will need to put quite a bit of effort in to keep the financials implementation assistance down to this level
· Around 15 hours remote training and training audit. You have 8 included hours. You will need to do a lot of self-training to keep the remote training to this level
I would work out the draft budget estimate as follows:
o Onsite training and implementation assistance:
OnSite |
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| Total on site days | Engagement | Last week before go live | Go live weekend | Week after go live |
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Engagement visit |
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| 2 days | 2 days |
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Main site conversion |
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| 3 days |
| 0days | 1 days | 2 days |
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Second site conversion |
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| 0 days |
| 0days | 0 days | 0 days |
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Education/other sites? |
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| 0 days |
| 0days | 0 days | 0 days |
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- A Readysell team member on site on site for 2 days perhaps from Sunday to Monday, depending on the agreed go live date
- Remote training via telephone and screen to screen connections
- Remote training is charged on a time and materials basis. Expect something like 15 hours
- You have a credit for 8 included remote training hours based on Readysell’s special deal for Office Brands dealers
- Be aware this is a bit light on remote training hours. Your team will need to rely on a lot of self-training and pick up the training audit feedback quickly to keep to this budget.
- Financials implementation assistance
- Financials implementation assistance is charged on a time and materials basis and normally involves a few hours before go live and can involve days after go live.
- Financials assistance is normally provided remotely
- Expect something like 5 hour in total
- Be aware this is a might be bit light on financial assistance hours. Your team will need to pick up the financials quickly and put in quite a bit of their own time to keep to this budget. Ultimately you can do all the financials setup yourself, but investing in some financials implementation assistance will make things a lot easier
- Ongoing training
- You should budget for some 8 hours training per year to help keep your site up to speed with the latest Readysell developments
Over the next few weeks, we should firm up the project budget discussed above.
I look forward to helping you with your Readysell 8 conversion project.