Once you “go live,” sit back and relax ” you’re done. Fact: Your integration project may be completed at the moment — and by all means take time and celebrate your achievement! But just don’t plan on stopping.
You now have a live enterprise system. This means adding and removing users, rolling out enhancements, update, and patches; evolving security and compliance matters, and more. A downhill ride, this is not. Your live production environment is a moving target complicated by living, breathing users with expectations of 24/7 support and 99.999% uptime.
This doesn’t seem like the best time to be left alone. Would you want a coach who only runs practice but never shows up for the game?
Leveraging the cloud (vs. using on-premise technology) means managed services are a thing of the past Fact: It’s actually quite the opposite. While it may be true that refining a transformation after go-live built on a SaaS platform is easier than refining an on-premise project, the cloud doesn’t magically do all of the heavy lifting for you.
The cloud is comprised of as many (or more) pieces than your old on-premise set-up, and those pieces all must be maintained. The top-of-the line cloud offerings provide much of this maintenance seamlessly and covered in your license. However, there are still vital responsibilities that cloud providers won’t or can’t cover, such as reporting, data quality, custom objects, user security, dashboards, calculations ” and on and on. These are some of most frequently changing pieces of an enterprise system.
Thriving after go-live means hiring expensive, hard-to-find internal talent to manage your transformations. Yes, the amount of value you get from your systems investment will be proportional to the skills of the team that provides your ongoing administration and maintenance; in other words, you get what you pay for. There’s no point in owning a race car without a driver and pit crew ” but this doesn’t mean every company needs to or should hire an elite group of in-house ninjas. It simply isn’t economically feasible for most companies to have all the skills and experience required to maintain a world class system internally. And even if you can afford it, it might not make sense. It’s extremely difficult to recruit and retain technical talent in today’s super competitive workforce. Finding an external partner to handle the important functions of maintaining your platforms can make a great deal of sense; it’s more cost-efficient, more convenient, and one less worry to keep you up at night.
Do you need help understanding how to manage your transformation after go-live? Learn more about Evolve, our digital managed services solution and contact us today.
Founded in 2018, Spaulding Ridge is a top management consulting firm, dedicated to client success and helping organizations implement and adopt best-in-cloud technology to solve their most pressing challenges. We provide the office of the CFO financial clarity to Sales and Operational complexity by integrating financial and sales SaaS Platforms.
We help:
• Finance gain control ” Increasing financial effectiveness, insight and impact
• Sales increase Productivity ” Hitting quota more quickly, consistently and efficiently
• Operations increase Competitiveness ” Through productivity rates, customer service outcomes, and efficiency
