There’s a wise adage that says, “Start the way you mean to finish.” Never is this truer than when implementing a new solution! What you do coming out of the starting gate either fast-tracks new processes or causes pain and rework down the road.
Thankfully, the Envi team has done this lots of times – at over 11,000 facilities. These simple best practices help your organization align resources and get to a faster ROI.
Start by setting focused goals that:
- Identify and resolve gaps in the current state
- Eliminate manual processes
- Create a new foundation of accurate data
- Build-in processes to measure results
Once you’ve chosen Envi as your materials management solution, these 8 steps will get you off to a great start:
1. Build your team! Select a dedicated project lead (often considered the #1 factor in successful implementation), then identify your cross-functional experts. Together, define each team member’s responsibilities, and get buy-in to timing and tasks.
2. Ask your executive sponsor to kick-off the implementation meeting to review the end-state vision and goals.
3. Be sure every team member attends the kick-off, where you’ll review the first 90 days of deliverables, dates, owners, responsibilities, and align organizational goals with the implementation plan.
4. Use the team’s cross-functional expertise to validate the vision against your organization’s current state, systems, requirements and restrictions.
- Facilitate a detailed review of the vision and goals, giving your front-line team time to consider ways to work through any internal challenges or limitations.
5. The Envi team will set up weekly cadence calls with you and the implementation team. During the call we’ll review agenda items, such as project points, tasks, and upcoming deliverables. Be sure your team members are on the call – team members missing meetings slow implementation, causing setbacks and even driving higher costs. Have your pen and paper ready because you’ll have homework!
6. The project plan is your milestone tracker, so keep updating the plan weekly, and store it online in a shared location. After every call, update deliverables addressed that week and make sure any date changes – especially to the go-live date – are communicated to the executive sponsor to keep expectations aligned.
- If a team member misses a call, make it a requirement to review the project plan updates and their assignments, keeping tasks on track.
7. Collecting data is a very important part step in the Envi implementation process. It’s how you win! Take the time to resolve gaps, and prep, cleanse and normalize data. Outsource it if you need to! Data accuracy drives process automation and ultimately, savings. Avoid taking shortcuts during the data collection process to avoid errors in setting up your Envi account. (Check out the blog post on Item Master Management for tips.)
8. Let your end users take Envi for a spin. It’s smart to run the current process in parallel with the new processes using Envi and helps ensure all end users have hands-on experience before you switch over.
- Be sure to test Envi reporting. It’s the step in your implementation that often helps identify any remaining gaps.
Envi is only the beginning. The real fun is seeing how you utilize Envi to focus on what matters most—those in your care.
