At Fabric Group, we partner with our clients to co-design and deliver valuable software and share the success. Software is an enabler for a business change usually expected to bring new customers, make existing customers happier and more loyal, reduce the cost of operations, save time or reduce the risk of error in internal processes.
Although various software we build with our clients is beneficial to support multiple types of business activities, this does not mean that every implementation of it goes as smoothly as one would want to. There are some key factors to consider that we would love to share with anyone thinking of initiating a new software project to ensure success from the very beginning.
To reach success, you must know what success actually is. Is it when you reduce customer churn risk, or increase your average check, or is it when you see a 30% increase in productivity in your workforce? How you define success is up to you, but this will dictate what the software should do. If you find that existing procedures do not work, you can implement software to fix the problem. Fixing every issue and meeting every metric is the key to deeming your software a success!
At Fabric Group, we use initial discovery workshops to collect insight collaboratively with the project stakeholders. This aids in the collective understanding of what success looks like and how we will measure our progress. We all believe it justifies the investment required to build and support new software. And you don’t have to be too specific about the exact target, but defining a comfortable “landing zone” for each success metric would help you steer the product strategy, feature prioritisation, and assessment of the rollout success.
Preplanning is a vital step in developing code. Without planning to follow standardised rules, conflicts in the software can emerge that can seriously hurt implementation and take a long time to resolve - as such, preplanning the coding structure makes it easier to code the software and access it for various purposes.
As a part of the inception workshop at the start of the project, we always include a tech planning session to agree on the code storage approach and structure, branching strategy, environments setup and CI/CD pipeline. This agreement with the technical stakeholders is critical to make sure we’re clear on how we collaborate on building code and deploying our changes to suitable environments for quality assurance and stabilisation.
Most of the time, the software we build aims to replace and significantly enhance existing software solutions and ecosystems. An essential part of this transition to a new software product is seamlessly moving your previous and current work to a new solution which includes data cleansing, data mapping and transformation and transfer to a new database. The migration approach and strategy is included in the inception workshop activities to ensure the business stakeholders and Fabric Group engineers fully understand and agree on the activities required to make this transformation as smooth and painless as possible.
Understanding and improving your data in the legacy systems include removing duplicate records, deleting out-of-date information, and evaluating the current data for accuracy. This strategy ensures that you can start on the right foot when using the new software for the first time. Going through your old data will also allow you to identify any potential concerns, such as outstanding payables that you need to address to keep your business out of trouble.
You cannot assume that your team will know how to follow an improved business process and use new functionality right away with new software. Our UX consultants want to make sure the learning curve is minimal, and all the user interfaces we build are simple, easy to follow without extensive training or reading lots of manuals. However, we believe some form of user trials, demonstrations and training is required so that new users will use the software properly, have time to learn it in a sandbox environment and adapt to the changes coming with this implementation.
Remember, when you implement new software for your business, you introduce a change that not everyone may welcome with open arms. Going slowly and ensuring appropriate implementation from the get-go can increase the likelihood of success. Also, educating the users on how the software can improve their work can smoothen the application of the new system.
Follow the tips we have shared with you, and you'll find your software implementation successful. And if you are looking for a trusted partner that can take the lead of your new digital initiative in Melbourne or Sydney, design and build new custom software and implement the change for your business, work with us today!
Our team of experts combine innovative principles in analysis, quality automation, design, and development to produce high-quality digital platforms that generate maximum business value.
