Beyond go-live: solutions to optimise investments in cloud software

The last ten years have seen increasing numbers of businesses investing in modern software as a service (SaaS) solutions across customer, finance, HR, and supply chain. Companies have invested in them with the objective of improving productivity, efficiency, quality, consistency, reporting, insights, and user experience.  

However, despite the vast sums and huge levels of effort spent in implementing new solutions, many businesses still report dissatisfaction with their new systems. There are three problems that are frequently reported by C-suite sponsors in finance, HR, supply chain, and IT. Understanding the causes and potential consequences of these issues is essential for resolving them. 

Failure to deliver anticipated cost savings 

Too often projects are predicated on an unrealistic business case because of pressure to justify the benefits of the programme in the form of hard cost-savings. The best business cases take a realistic view of the quantum and timing of any cost savings alongside analysis of wider benefits, such as improved controls, better reporting and analytics to support decision making, and the impact of embedding modern ways of working.

Defining process success can help you drive programmes and measure the benefits.

Process adoption

The mantra of modern SaaS implementations is 'adopt, not adapt'. That means leveraging the out of the-box functionality, rather than customising the software as was the approach with on-premise implementations. Yet, projects commonly focus heavily on the technical work required to deliver the go-live but ignore the work required to land the change successfully. Failure to plan for the change to a wider operating model will inevitably result in system and business processes that are poorly aligned.

Support systems-transformation projects depend on the right preparation 

Limited or poor quality reporting 

Company executives are often convinced of the need to invest in new systems by the promise of AI and improved reporting and analytics to strengthen strategic, management, and operational decision making. However, those same executives often find post go-live reporting is worse or at least no better than what they had before the project. Reporting is one of the most commonly under-resourced parts of the project, most commonly descoped to a future phase with implementation partners often passing the responsibility to the company who have limited or no in-house experience of their new software reporting tools. 

Continuous improvement

One of the major advantages of a SaaS-based deployment is never needing to upgrade again and having access to the latest technology available as part of the annual subscription. Yet so many companies don’t have a TOM that supports this and don’t invest in either the right partner or internal resources to truly track and take advantage. Companies descope capabilities to get live and then at point of go-live stop or pause rather than accelerating.

However, companies need not panic if they experience these or any other challenges post-implementation. Going live with a modern SaaS application should be the start of the journey, not the end. The areas most commonly poorly implemented are tax, GRC, intercompany, purchasing, and financial reporting. A rapid assessment of your processes today can make immediate improvements and role out the latest learning tools to users to accelerate adoption. 

We’re on the edge of a technology transformation. Don’t be left on the start line.  

As one Head of HR Operations said: 

“I thought I needed to rip down the walls of the building but had the foundation built, when actually all I needed to do was some redecorating”. 

Undertaking a proper assessment of your solution can avoid making costly decisions to rip up and replace underperforming solutions. 

For more insight and guidance, get in touch with Mark O'Sullivan.