Precursive Pillars

IMPLEMENTATION SERVICES: A PRECURSIVE GUIDE

WHAT ARE IMPLEMENTATION SERVICES?

Implementation services are provided by both software companies and IT consultancies to help customers realize value from their product purchase. The implementation team will have responsibility for getting the customer live with the product and in turn achieving the initial value milestone. The type of product and the associated complexity dictates the type of team, timeline and implementation methodology needed.

Companies implementing less complex products will often focus on having rapid deployment times, ideally with self-service elements to the onboarding phase to help scale. As the complexity of the solution grows or with acquisition of enterprise customers often sees vendors needing to develop a more professional approach to project management underpinned by a PMO.

BEST PRACTICES FOR SUCCESSFUL IMPLEMENTATIONS

Tactics to accelerate time-to-value:

PLAN AHEAD

Demand forecasting is a critical services capability where you have a clear view of demand for projects and resources. The best teams can turn a 1 dimensional pipeline into a 3 dimensional view of FTE requirements alongside skills and roles needs to inform hiring decisions.

SALES ALIGNMENT

The partnership between sales and services to ensure that there is an effective handover is table stakes. To advance your delivery effectiveness, you need to ensure that services are sold correctly and that PS is brought in at the right time to scope projects.

COMMUNICATE ONBOARDING PLAN

Clear & consistent project plans are the cornerstone of effective project management. Your customer may not have a full time project manager and is having to coordinate a mix of stakeholders on their side. Curate project information, customer tasks and dependencies effectively so that the customer knows what they need to do and when, to plan ahead.

CONTROL OVERRUN

Project managers need to be setup for successful with clear policy on managing budget and timelines. If you are selling fixed price implementations, it is easy to fall into the trap of allowing scope to creep to please the customer. Foster a culture where the team take a prescriptive approach and coaches the customer through the implementation processes quickly and effectively.

WHY IS IMPLEMENTATION IMPORTANT?

Failed implementations lead to churn - Gartner research found $5b in annual churn due to poor onboarding. Speed to value should be the guiding principle of your delivery methodology. The quality and velocity of implementations have an outsized impact on the customer relationship where first impressions matter.

As Saood Shah, former VP of Professional Services at Gainsight, states “Optimizing for time-to-value had a significant impact on any services organization that I’ve been a part of with the corresponding impact on revenue generation, customer retention, expansion sales and overall customer confidence.”

HOW DELIVERY TIMES IMPACT REVENUE

The best professional services team understands the financial impact of faster implementations. Accounting standards mean that companies can increasingly only recognize revenue part way through an implementation or at go-live. In telephony technology projects, the software licences are provisioned at go-live - for one publicly traded telecoms company, one of their business units booked $100m in ARR but only recognized $40m within the financial year due to delays in delivery.

Companies that can improve the consistency and velocity of delivery will not only drive better retention rates but also have a significant impact on the financial performance of the company.

"With Precursive, we were able to get ahead of capacity and resource requirements before they ever became unmanageable. Precursive OBX would benefit the large majority of SaaS businesses once they have the ability to focus and invest time into their implementation process."

PATSNAP CAN NOW COLLABORATE ON PROJECTS & TASKS WITH CUSTOMERS PROVING A 30% INCREASE IN PRODUCTIVITY PER PERSON.

Emily Kuske.

Director Professional Services | Patsnap

READ CASE STUDY

PRECURSIVE MAKES IMPLEMENTATIONS EASY

Customer success starts with customer onboarding. You can build project plans for implementation projects that reduce delays and improve time-to-value. Precursive PSA helps to optimize all elements of services delivery including resourcing, project management, customer collaboration and financial management. Project plans including resource requirements are created based on the Professional Services package sold in Salesforce. Your onboarding playbooks are mapped to customer segments, products, or your own criteria all within Salesforce.

IMPLEMENTATION TEMPLATES

Map onboarding plans to the products or services that you sell in Salesforce. Automate the creation of project plans to save time.