As the owners of an industry unmatched 100% project success rate in government software implementation, we’re often asked, “Why is the Computronix approach so much more effective than the industry averages for such projects?” While there are several contributing factors involving people, process and products over 40+ years of project successes, we’ve recently implemented an effective new High Fit/Hands-on customer engagement approach that is particularly appropriate for jurisdictions willing to modify their business processes to achieve a more agile, lower cost enterprise implementation.
In focusing our product configuration and project delivery methodologies on this ‘High Fit/Hands-on’ mandate, we can provide our clients with distinct and measurable advantages across the following project deliverables:
To understand how these advantages are baked into this approach and more importantly, how they can be achieved by your organization in the planned delivery of an enterprise software implementation, let’s take a closer look at this High Fit/Hands-on approach in action.
Given the inherent flexibility of well-designed software, it’s inevitable that the paths to product configuration are as varied as the organizations that utilize these solutions. Some agencies pursue a path of comprehensive customization resulting in a highly tailored solution yielding potential upgrade challenges over an extended lifecycle. Conversely, the current trend towards low code development can promise agile iteration while failing to yield critical out-of-the box functionality particularly when the solution is reliant on a generic development platform ill-suited for highly specific business requirements.
It is for this very reason that Computronix offers the best of both worlds with feature rich COTS solutions powered by our award-winning POSSE PaaS.
Starting an innovation project with this versatile combination in mind, Computronix clients can approach their project goals with confidence secure in the knowledge that they have a proven, feature rich COTS solution providing a ‘High Fit’ for the vast majority of their initial business requirements AND a robust development platform and business rules engine that can be leveraged to drive further innovation and product configuration as future requirements evolve and emerge.
With the extended lifecycle utility of this combination in mind, many of our state, provincial and local agencies have begun to focus their initial energies on maximizing the out-of-the-box value of their COTS solution. By avoiding the tendency towards extensive customization in this initial project delivery, these shrewd agencies substantially shorten project timescales, greatly reducing overall project costs while simultaneously increasing their speed to market.
For many Computronix clients, this approach also yields an often-unanticipated benefit. Given the chance to ‘live’ with a best-in-breed COTS solution leveraging out-of-the-box workflows and permits based on ICC best practices, we repeatedly receive feedback from customers expressing satisfaction with these streamlined workflows AND relief that they avoided unnecessary early stage customization that could have resulted in inefficient or inelegant business processes.
Once clients have decided on this High Fit project path, our CX Solution Experts embark on a decidedly unique approach to client/project engagement: one that emphasizes the value of clear communication rather than the all-too-common approach which buries clients in excessive paperwork and complex processes that reduce rather than reinforce project momentum.
This approach starts with the creation of two teams:
With these two teams in place, our CX Solution Experts then focus on teaching the teams how to talk to each other with the Project Team taught ‘why they’re getting asked something’ and the Admin Team given sufficient expertise to understand ‘what to ask’ to efficiently translate internal business requirements into appropriate client led configuration.
In essence, this approach empowers clients to simultaneously understand and embrace their new software solution from both an end user perspective AND from a development perspective to spur ongoing innovation.
As these two teams are ‘learning the language’, our CX Solution Experts get them hands-on from Day 1 in their own dedicated development environment. Here our future product champions and end users will work iteratively through each phase of the project delivery gaining an immersive understanding of the system. With comfort levels increasing with each successive configuration completion and project milestone, internal business and technical users alike achieve true system fluency.
As a result of this hands-on approach to project configuration and delivery, agency staff arrive at their UAT phase fully capable of troubleshooting potential issues and teaching others end users, however detailed the use case scenarios.
In contrasting this approach with projects where clients are not hands-on from the beginning in their own development environment, this more immersive approach to product configuration drastically reduces the reliance on conventional role training and post launch support queries. As our two teams of internal business and technical experts advance through a series of progressively more complex business processes and configuration challenges, they become true POSSE SMEs and passionate product experts. In fact, in one recent project with the City of Saskatchewan, one of our client team leads reached out the next morning to relate how their entire team had stayed at the office until 10pm the previous night because they were so excited to discuss how they could exploit their new software solution to the fullest for the benefit of co-workers and citizens alike. This is the kind of senior level solution adoption that all organizations are striving for!
To properly capture and focus this client enthusiasm within the implementation effort, CX Solution Experts take great care to ensure that the project plan and business requirements stay tight and focused. Rather than demoing the software as generic use cases, a ‘POSSE PLS Storytime’ approach presents user stories with clear and consistent narratives that enable internal project teams to clearly envision organizational roles and responsibilities within their new technology platform and toolset. Of equal importance, each session and QA is delivered to progressively build out our end users’ knowledge base at a pace designed to maximize retention AND is fully documented to ensure all information gleaned can be referenced back to clarify project progress or refresh the memory on specific task processes.
Is this High Fit/Hand-On approach for everyone? Probably not. There are still organizations with more robust budgets that will seek to customize their enterprise software solution to a highly agency-specific state and that is their choice.
However, most civic agencies are residing in a space where the public mandate is to deliver more elegant services, more quickly, and more cost effectively. For these organizations, low code technologies present as an obvious approach, but it’s an approach that only works if the foundational platform that these tools leverage is a mature and feature-rich solution easily able to meet the vast majority of your business requirements out-of-the-box.
When implementing a new enterprise software solution, one of the greatest challenges agencies face is achieving true solution adoption across every level of the organization—with adoption meaning not just leveraging the suite for essential daily business processes, but fully exploiting the platform to serve as a springboard for innovation across the entire organization.
Our High Fit/Hands-On approach achieves this from day one, mentoring your internal SMEs and technical staff into enthusiastic innovation champions—fully capable of teaching and leading your broader organization into a sustainable digital transformation model.
Curious to learn more and find out if ‘High Fit/Hands-On’ can get your desired software solution to market quicker and more cost effectively? Contact a CX Product Specialist today. We’re keen to hear the challenges your agency is facing. Chances are, we have a solution that will fit you like a glove.
