If your business is trying to justify working towards a digital transformation then you will need to present the pros of doing so along with outlining how the cost will be absorbed by the value gained from the transition.
However, many businesses learn that even after game changing implementations, there are certain barriers within the business that can hinder getting the best value from it.
It can be quite easy to forget about the advantages gained from the move post-implementation and not follow up to see if these have been achieved. This will help to ensure that you avoid getting embarrassed if there are problems which are preventing you from gaining the best value that you were expecting.
However, the more modern approach to doing so is to allocate time and focus on making sure that you are gaining the advantages of moving to Dynamics 365. Some of the day-to-day problems that we discover are outlined below along with how you can address them quickly and effectively.
Difficulty in getting employees to change their ways
You will find that change management is usually overlooked when it comes to change programmes and even when it is around it can often be seen as being completed on go-live day. However, this is not the case as it is usually the first 6-8 weeks after a launch where most employees will be adjusting to the changes. At this point, change management is vital to ensure there aren’t any grumbles when it comes to new processes or new systems.
To be honest this is probably the hardest problem to address as the most valuable time to begin managing these changes is around 3 months before this. If this is still a concern after you have implemented Dynamics 365 you will need to go through the following:
- From the top down, all senior management must put on a united front and all agree and give the impression that this was the right action to take.
- It must be repeatedly stated that this is the new system and people need to get used to it.
- Communicate regularly with the team across the business repeating the same messaging around this.
- Begin a programme of areas where progress can be made quickly.
- Highlight improvements over the old process and system to give the impression that this change is positive.
Issues around workflows
This is a very precise problem but often a very common occurrence in post-implementation evaluations. Building workflows in Dynamics 365 can help to automate certain parts of your processes and can be achieved relatively easily. To put this into context with an example, let’s say we create a workflow to use for the approval of purchase orders before they go out to suppliers. The most common problems the team at Advantage encounter are:
- The workflows are too complicated
- The design of the implementation isn’t great
In order to resolve the above, there needs to be a number of difficult conversations in the affected areas to see how complicated the business processes are and whether or not they could be simplified. In the vast majority of cases, the answer is usually like that for historical and not for business reasons.
Little or no support
For most businesses, lots of time and effort goes into the implementation of a new system and processes. However, less thought is given on how to support it once the implementation has been finished. It is usually easy to diagnose as you will usually see loads of emails being sent out, group emails along with problems or ideas on how to improve it going forwards. As well as this, you will often find that the system users will make it very clear that they don’t know what to do if the system goes wrong.
The best way to approach resolving this is to have a small collection of superusers that can be the central point where issues can be raised to a single email address which can be accessed by all of them. Regardless of whether you use a systems integrator to provide support to you or make use of something internally, a central contact point will make it easier for the users to raise issues as and when they occur.
Employees struggling to work with the system
It is important to take into account that this isn't a rant at your employees. In most situations, if a team is experiencing a difficulty in using the system, it is usually down to the projects team not giving appropriate training.
The best way to solve this is to construct a heatmap of which areas of understanding are required for each user base and ask every employee where they rank on it. This will allow you to quickly identify which user base needs which type of training.
Different data sources
Given how connected businesses are these days, it can often be the case where there are multiple systems running alongside Dynamics 365 but are brought in to help on the reporting side of things. Different data sources and data siloes allows different individuals to help build reports that meet their own requirements.
Many businesses fall victim to inaccurate reporting figures depending on the source system that delivered the data, meaning that stakeholders in the business are concentrating their efforts on the figures more so than making decisions based on the insights that their data can provide.
You can gain more insights into your business by combining data from Dynamics 365 and other systems you use into one centralised data for business data enabling you to make faster decisions instead of discussing who has the right answer to the question.
Next Steps?
If you are business that is wanting to solve your day-to-day problems by implementing Dynamics 365 or are looking for some extra Dynamics 365 consultancy, additional Dynamics 365 training or need leading Dynamics 365 support then please give our team of Dynamics 365 experts a call to discuss how we can help you to transform the way you work.
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