Start small to achieve larger implementation goals
Author: David Edwards is a Certified Master Anaplanner and Associate Partner at Columbus Consulting.
Whether you are an Anaplan customer or implementation partner, it can sometimes be difficult to convince business stakeholders to invest in large digital transformation initiatives. This is often the case when positioning Anaplan and other IT tools as the solution for overhauling existing or outdated planning processes.
Before we get into a recommendation for overcoming this initial change management hurdle, I’ll share three main concerns that company executives typically hold when weighing the pros and cons of purchasing or expanding the scope of a particular software. These are the top areas that I’ve witnessed as both a solutions architect and client manager over nearly a decade working with the Anaplan platform:
- Cost/budgetary constraints
- Do we have funds allocated for this project both now and into the future?
- Can we manage this internally or will we need to hire an implementation partner?
- Do we have funds allocated for this project both now and into the future?
- Resource availability
- Do we have the internal skillsets to learn a new platform?
- Do our teams have time to increase their workload?
- Who is going to oversee this initiative (IT / business users)?
- Do we have the internal skillsets to learn a new platform?
- Uncertainty (can the software do what is promised?)
- How will the demos translate into practical usage?
- Will this software solve each of our needs, or will we need to supplement?
- Are my teams willing to migrate to a new process?
- How will the demos translate into practical usage?
If you plan on proposing a wholesale process transformation initiative (i.e. migrating your entire FP&A, merchandise planning, portfolio investment strategy, etc.) in one go of it, you are setting yourself up for a lengthy pre-implementation or pre-sales cycle, with no guarantee of a favorable final decision. The weight of the concerns listed above may prove too heavy to be answered in hypotheticals. Instead, seek an alternative approach that can both decrease the length of your implementation roadmap and mitigate against potential fallouts prior to committing to a large-scale reconfiguration of your company’s internal planning processes.
The recommended approach is to start with a significantly pared down use case. For example, if the eventual goal is to migrate your entire FP&A organization over to Anaplan, propose a one-month pilot project that only covers workforce planning for a reasonable subset of your company. Ideally, the pilot use case will convey Anaplan’s critical components (data integration, model architecture, calculation capabilities, customizability, end user interface) in a way that is more specific to your company’s unique needs than a pre-sales demo and can easily be extrapolated to a broader scope. In other words, regardless of the end goal, choose one small piece of the eventual final solution to use as a proof of concept that can assist in decision making for the project’s key stakeholders.
Re-examining the concerns from above, starting small alleviates these roadblocks accordingly:
- Cost/budgetary constraints
- The pilot is low-cost; ROI on the sample use case can be calculated much quicker than a full transformation project.
- The cost of ongoing maintenance and ease of implementation can be multiplied out based on the results of the pilot.
- The pilot is low-cost; ROI on the sample use case can be calculated much quicker than a full transformation project.
- Resource availability
- Business users and IT will have a better sense of the knowledge needed to handle a broader implementation.
- How much effort went into completing the pilot? Use this as a basis for forecasting a larger development effort.
- Based on the pilot, the business users will have a better sense of the burden of ownership and can decide between continued oversight or delegation to IT.
- Business users and IT will have a better sense of the knowledge needed to handle a broader implementation.
- Uncertainty (can the software do what is promised?)
- The demo functionality is no longer theoretical; stakeholders can see exactly how Anaplan will handle their processes.
- By introducing the platform both from a technical and end user standpoint, any limitations are much more likely to be discovered; an exact mitigation plan can be developed as a result.
- User engagement with the pilot will most certainly indicate the probability of final adoption; change management discussions can begin well in advance of deployment.
- The demo functionality is no longer theoretical; stakeholders can see exactly how Anaplan will handle their processes.
It is often that we get caught up in idealistic visions of large-scale process transformation. Whether it be in pre-sales cycles or internal discussions within corporate planning teams, too many hypotheticals around how software will solve current shortcomings, how much it will cost, and what it will take to support cause timelines to be extensively drawn out, or perhaps fail to materialize altogether.
We are a species that is most easily convinced with direct proof. Next time, start small and use those little wins to drive toward big and sustainable victories.
Questions? Leave a comment!
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