5 Critical Steps for Your Software Implementation Plan

Implementing software is a daunting task, and it’s super important—but

people/businesses do it every day.

You’ve likely just purchased a new software system, which is a great step in the right
direction for your business. Now it’s time to get a software implementation plan in
place. Proper implementation will maximize the value of your new system.

Businesses that fail to define and achieve a software implementation plan have wrecked
the long-term value of the new system and wasted what resources were spent on the
system.

That’s why we’ve put together the following 5-step software implementation plan.
Regardless of your industry or your new software, the following steps will ensure you
have a successful implementation and get the most out of your new systems.

Here are the steps we’ll cover:

1. Keep Vendors Accountable With a Detailed Needs Document

2. Control Your Scope—Or It Will Control You
3. Assign Realistic Teams to Drive Software Implementation Plan
4. Generate User Adoption With a Proactive, Engaging Strategy
5. Focus on Continuous Improvement

1. Keep Vendors Accountable With a Detailed Needs Document

Your vendor is a key stakeholder in your software implementation plan. The extent to
(and cost at) which your vendor will support your implementation varies—but that
doesn’t mean you shouldn’t squeeze as much assistance as possible from them.
Our research shows that getting the most from your vendor and new system actually
starts during the selection stage. The process begins by engaging employees that’ll
regularly use the new system.

You want to answer critical questions from your vested parties to create a needs
document to share with vendors.

The idea is to take this document into your vendor demos to ensure the new system
covers all your needs. But the document should then be used again during the
implementation stage. You’ll want to be sure your system champions get trained on
those features that’ll help them overcome the pain points in the needs document.

2. Control Your Scope—Or It Will Control You

Your needs document defines the capabilities your new system needs so that you can
focus on what’s most important during your selection stage.

And then again during the implementation and training stage, your needs document
helps you avoid doing everything all at once.

In the case of your software implementation plan, scope creep will happen when you
decide to set up and customize all the features of every capability at once. There’s no
denying those bells and whistles make an enticing trap, but you’ve got to stay on task,
stay true to your needs and get the key parts of your new system into use.

To avoid scope creep, you’ll want to employ some project management tools and best
practices to your software implementation plan. There’s a few options here:

 Larger businesses (50+ employees) might look to adopt formal project

management systems (but that’s ironic as you’d theoretically need to implement
 that too).
 Midsize businesses (11-50 employees) could likely get by with free project
management tools (such as Wunderlist) to help manage and assign implementation
tasks.
 Smaller businesses (10 or fewer employees) could always just stay organized using
Google Sheets, Calendars, and other manual digital methods.

Be sure that your capabilities include the top project management functionality we’ve
identified from the project management software buyers we work with.

Top-Requested PM Software Functionality

Eventually, these collaborative tools will help implementation team members work
together to maximize software adoption and usage for their respective team.

3. Assign Realistic Teams to Drive Software Implementation Plans

The next critical step in your implementation journey is assembling the team(s)
necessary for success. The makeup of an implementation team will vary for every
business, depending on the unique needs of your business and the scale of
implementation.

To determine your needs, identify how many business units will be using the new
system and estimate of the total number of users. The more business units/users
adopting the software, the larger you’ll want your implementation team to be.

But beware of bringing too many cooks into the kitchen.

According to research by Brian Westfall, senior content analyst at Software Advice, you
should start small with your implementation team. Westfall’s 7 Best Practices: Avoid
Flunking Your LMS Implementation report recommends starting with a team of two:

 Acting administrator for the new system: Probably an IT administrator who’s

already been working closely with the vendor. Likely that this employee has handle
prior integrations/relationships with vendors.
 Training lead for the new system: Point person for the new software. Likely leads
the/a team that will use the system on a daily basis and has lead the charge for
adoption from the beginning.

Depending on the size of your business, this might be the extent of your implementation
team. Smaller organizations might even have an implementation team of one.

Larger businesses might need what Westfall calls an extended team that can champion
the new system for their unique business unit.

Each member of this extended team should assume the position of system champion
for their business unit—they’ll be the point person for answering system questions,
training on additional features and onboarding new hires.

It’s also crucial that these champions are aligned with each other and the system
administrator. Consider hosting workshops to ensure alignment and keep everyone
informed on updates and changes to the software implement plan.

4. Generate User Adoption with a Proactive, Engaging Strategy

No matter how great and intuitive the new system and tools you’ve selected are,
implementation doesn’t equal adoption. You must put strategies in place to garner user
acceptance and adoption of the new system.

Without positive engagement around the product, you risk adoption falling flat and
ruining the software implementation plan.

According to Taylor Short, senior content analyst at Software Advice, there are some
key steps you can use time and time again to achieve great organizational changes like
implementing new software and achieving adoption rates:

Adopt a proven methodology to set guidelines for change

Much like communication and collaboration tools, your company might already have a
methodology in place to manage change.

If not, a software implementation is a great time to instill one. Such a methodology

provides the steps necessary to ensure sustained user adoption for the newly
implemented system.

Short recommends using the ADKAR change model:

Again, ADKAR can boost user adoption for your software implementation and also
help manage other organizational changes.

Define clear goals that the newly implemented software will help achieve

You’ll want to return to your needs document for this step.

 Identify what the pain points are that the new software address.
 Ask yourself what the optimal business output is if those pain points are removed.
Be as specific as possible.
 Whatever that best case scenario is should be the goal that this software will help
achieve.

For example, Short says, “Instead of [saying] ‘eliminating the backlog of work orders,’
challenge your organization to ‘reduce the average backlog of work orders by 50
percent within six months.'” Again, be specific.

A specific goal creates accountability for users and provides a tangible cause for
effectively adopting the new software.

Personalize messaging and communication about the implementation for each team

You’ve gone through the trouble of defining pain points, setting a methodology for
change and listing implementation goals.

These are big deals that need to be properly communicated to those teams adopting the
new software as well as the organization at large.

It’s best to personalize messaging at the team level. Each team will likely have different
goals that the new system will help them achieve. You’ll want to hone in on those team-
specific goals when communication with individual teams. This sense of
personalization will go a long way in drive adoption.

5. Focus on Continuous Improvement

Though I’m sure you’re elated to get running with your new software, you’re going to
want to master walking with it first. It might take some time to get up to full speed, and
that’s fine—just continue working better with the software each day.

To support the long-term implementation of your new system, start by prioritizing those
capabilities that need to be mastered first. This will help influence training and provide
benchmarks for regular check-ins.

Training is a central pillar in continuous improvement. But much like implementation,

the right kind of training done when needed is better than poor training done often.

It recommends some different types of training to employ throughout your software

implementation plan.

Training Initiatives Designed to Drive User Engagement and Adoption

Employing training best practices are an obvious, surefire way to instill continuous
improvement in your implementation strategy. But don’t settle for just guessing what
works.

Just like with monitoring actual adoption and use rates, you can monitor the training
that resonates most with specific teams in your organization. Remember, the end game
here is to affect the greatest improvement possible.