No matter who you work with, implementing a new financial system will require significant time and energy from your internal team. The potential upside of a well managed implementation is transformative, but that means avoiding all the common mistakes. Here are the seven we encounter most frequently:
#1 Excluding the Team
When an individual from your finance division identifies the opportunity for a significant system upgrade but doesn’t include the team from the outset, problems arise. The project becomes shaped by the prejudices and limited insights of a single person. And by the time the broader team is involved, it’s often too late to rectify early errors. Your project lead must take every stakeholder on the journey from day 1.
#2 Prioritising Speed Over Utility
A frequent mistake is the push to meet a specific deadline, such as the close of the fiscal year, demanding the system be operational by this largely arbitrary date. In this situation we remind the client that this new system will likely serve them for a decade or more. With that in mind, would they rather we deploy rapidly or deploy correctly?
#Inadequate Project Resources
All too often, project leads are set up for failure by their own management. They’re given the exciting but enormous task of overseeing a new system implementation, but when we quiz them on the specifics, it immediately becomes evident the necessary resources simply aren’t there. In such circumstances we will try to help the project lead by advising them on how to educate their senior management and adjust expectations.
Companies have to understand that this is one of the most significant and impactful investments they will ever make; something that will have major benefits to both operational efficiency and strategic decision making for the next decade. But that means finding resources commensurate to the task.
#4 Competing Objectives
A particularly damaging situation can arise when the finance department is fragmented into silos, each pursuing its own interests and goals. The absence of a shared objective or failure to understand how one decision can have different effects throughout the team, all but guarantees a chaotic project and unsatisfactory outcome.
#5 Insufficient Budget Allocation
Similar to the third point, there are instances where the budget doesn’t align with actual project requirements. When the numbers aren’t consistent with goals, it’s better that the project be delayed until sufficient budget can be found. This is something we try to be clear on in the earliest stages of interaction to avoid wasting people’s time or mis-setting expectations.
#6 Absence of a Senior Advocate
Without a champion at the executive level, even the most diligent project lead will find themselves struggling. Such a figure is essential for navigating strategic challenges and influencing essential stakeholders to ensure the board is kept on-side through all the major milestones of the project.
#7 Clinging To The Past
Perhaps the gravest error is attempting to recreate old procedures in a new system. The whole point of an upgrade is to harness new efficiencies and automations, and that cannot be achieved by clinging to the past. There is always one person in every finance function that embodies this attitude, so we all just have to hope they’re not the one at the helm!
