OX SYSTEMS provides services for all the system change phases.
Stages of Systems Change:
Needs and Requirements Analysis
The business, or accounting, system is the spine of the company. If designed well it will incorporate all business records, both financial and communications. Reporting and retrieval of information should be a built design requirement. Having information at your fingertips is critical to customer satisfaction and good decision making. A lot of management and staff time is either saved or wasted as a direct consequence of the system you choose. Good systems can make businesses, bad ones can break them.
more ... Needs and Requirements Analysis
Budget & Timescales
A financial model may be necessary for a cost – benefit analysis.
Ensure the Budget covers all aspects.
Identify benefit & savings.
more ... Budget & Timescales
New System Evaluation & Selection
The broad requirements of a new system should be decided at Board level. The system selection process should then be regularly monitored to ensure the requirements are met.
Each department should list its requirements, carefully differentiating between the 3 categories: critical, highly desirable and ‘nice-to-have’. Be prepared for compromise – particularly if this means that the company will have to change the way it operates.
more... New System Evaluation & Selection
Process Design
Appoint a team to design new processes. It would be unusual for existing practices to migrate unchanged from one system to another. Indeed, process change is a main drive for a software change.
Ensure that departmental managers or team leaders are involved in the design. Not only does this ensure that their requirements are met, it also gives them an early opportunity to see the new software first hand, and then be well placed to train their own staff.
more ... Process Design
Implementation
Technical: Initial installation and setting up of the new system is mainly the work of the IT Department or a senior member of the Finance Dept. These are technical tasks rarely involving other staff.
Take On: An important element of the implementation is the setting up of customers, delivery addresses, suppliers, products, stock locations, chart of accounts, pricing tables, units of measure and other relationships. Following this the open balances and transactions can be added, ie. customer balances, supplier balances, general ledger balances, stock count, open sales orders and open purchase orders.
Settings: Every business system has settings. These are choices (ie. flags to be set) made from the design process, eg. “Allow customer discounts: Yes or No”, and “Allow sales when stock in negative: Yes, No or Warn”.
Testing: Testing is a critical phase of implementation. Take every step to ensure that everything is tested and problems eliminated well in advance of Go-Live. Test all the Take-On, and all transaction types. Test reports, stationery, reconciliations and resulting balance. Test that the staff have been trained.
more ... Implementation
Training
Training is critical: everyone agrees this in principle. However it is frequently the victim of trimming the new system budget.
The cheapest training budget involves training key staff, preferably department heads or team leaders, then giving them responsibility to train there own staff. Depending on the lead time to go-live, and the accessibility and ease of use of the new system, experienced team leaders may be able to self teach.
The recommended approach is to have some formal training with the new software supplier, preferably on site using your own facilities. This avoids the need for travelling expenses. Try and include all key staff. Get the most out of the day by asking all the questions.
The most expensive option is repeated away visits to the new software supplier’s training suite. These are often good team building ‘away days’ and can add value if the budget can be stretched.
OX SYSTEMS conducts all training on the client’s site.
more ... Training
Go Live
The go-live date should be chosen carefully. Many companies in a fixed reporting cycle choose a yea end. This coincides with the normal catch up and tidy up cycle normally required for published financial accounts and audits.
more ... Go Live
