Implementation

Bridging the gap between strategy and execution, we strive to ensure that the vision becomes a reality. We’ve combined our knowledge and experience with industry best practices to develop an effective implementation methodology and ensure a successful go-live.

Functional Design 

Functional Design involves iterative design workshops that incorporate various levels of operations, IT, finance / accounting, procurement, software vendors, and project leadership. This implementation step should be a discrete activity; implementations are more likely to be successful due to design option documentation and trade-off considerations. Also, more gets written down! This project promotes alignment throughout the organization as to what will be delivered by the solutions, how they will be delivered, and when functionality is deployed before it is too late to make adjustments.

Systems Deployment

Systems deployments are one of the riskiest activities undertaken by organizations due to their potential to disrupt operations, customer relationships, and financials. Post-functional design, the methodology is crafted properly build (develop and configure) against the requirements, diligently test the right scenarios and document bugs or defects, train the various internal & external user-types on the new processes, prepare & execute a prudent Go-Live schedule, and then support the enterprise through hyper-care. But did the solutions create the expected value? There must be a relentless tie back, at all milestones and during any post-mortems, to the expected return-on-investment.

Change Execution

When supply chain organizations and logistics service providers’ project teams talk about and execute change management, they are usually referring to rolling out the new SOP associated with an execution software deployment. Gaining acceptance and compliance is thought to be no more than ‘tell our employees what’s in it for them and walk them through the SOP’. While it is possible to weave a change methodology into an existing transformation project, you risk not leveraging industry leading change approaches, which incorporate broader stakeholder analyses, resource planning, communication techniques, proper user access considerations, change champions, adoption analysis, and the list goes on! Just remember that every project type (and their cascading implications) experience change – from driver incentive programs, hardware/device refresh roll-outs, new racking installation, to larger-scale enterprise initiatives like digital transformations and mergers & acquisitions.

Core Carrier Program  

Sourcing events are ‘strategic’ projects, but are just a component of this broader program to drive long-term partnerships and results. Network changes, systems implementations, optimization & modeling analyses, and acquisitions are just a few examples of non-sourcing events that have significant impacts on carrier and service providers pricing and performance; the Core Carrier Program helps convert the business strategy into the KPIs and metrics, helping determine the types of partners required and their service offerings to leverage. This pro-active approach to managing strategic partnerships results in better outcomes for the organization and it’s up and down stream partners.