In our last blog, Making the Business Case for EHS Software, we learned tips and tricks for building your business case for purchasing EHS software and the steps needed to secure buy-in from key stakeholders. Now let’s look at what happens after you’ve leapt over management buy-in hurdles, evaluated and partnered with the right vendor, and procured a new system that’s going to help you drive operational excellence and elevate your role within the organization.
In this article, we’ll cover best practices to ensure the software rollout is a success and that your team loves using your new EHS solution.
Step 1: Determine Your Implementation Approach
Your implementation will be guided by the SOW that you and the software vendor agreed to. It’s important everyone understands what their role is on the project and what the key deliverables are for each milestone identified in the SOW. One of the first things you will need to determine is the approach you will take for your implementation: a phased or big bang rollout.
Remember: Implementation priorities can change. For example, if your company is suddenly having issues managing regulatory and permit-driven compliance obligations or inspection programs have become resource intensive – you might decide to move these up on the priority list.
This decision will come down to how much change you are introducing into the company and the resources you have available during the project. It’s important to remember that implementation is a lot more than just turning the system on. For your software project to be successful, you must first map your business processes to the system, ensure proper change management, and create governance processes for internal management and changes. This will ensure that the work done during implementation is maintained.
Pro Tip: If you’re implementing multiple modules within your new EHS platform, consider taking a phased approach.
Regardless of approach, implementation is a lot like building a house. Setting up the system with your company hierarchy, security, and people are foundational elements that must be configured first. Once those components are added, you will start implementing the high priority functionality you identified (likely in your SOW) to ensure you realize value quickly.
You wouldn’t hire a mechanic to build your house. Partner with a vendor who has certified EHS experts on staff to design, deploy, and support your solution.
Step 2: Round-Up Your Internal Resources
EHS software implementations require internal resources from corporate, operating facilities, and IT. It’s unlikely everyone working on the project will be a dedicated resource, so remember to respect people’s time and only schedule meetings when it’s necessary. Overtaxing people with data requests, meetings, and training are quick ways to lose buy-in. Key dedicated resources that are needed include:
- IT project manager
- 1-2 IT business analysts (could be more for larger organizations or projects)
- Department project manager
- Department champion to help with decisions
- Vendor project team members
Pro Tip: Your project’s success depends on your ability to bring everyone together and coordinate activities. Having a detailed project plan will help you manage all the moving pieces and ensure everything goes smoothly.
Bonus: You or the vendor may have also hired a third-party consultant to be part of the team. If you hired them, they work for you and are the liaison between the software vendor and you.
Step 3: Create Your Communication Strategy
Communication is paramount to project success and the change management process, but it’s also one area project leads tend to overlook when developing their project plans.
People want to know what’s going on and when to expect changes. If you can’t dedicate resources to project communication, be sure to include communications milestones in your project plan.
Pro Tip: Sync with your internal communications team to highlight your project and share the success across the company.
Tips to create an effective communication strategy:
Create distribution lists
Distribution lists make sending communications to staff and executives easier and more efficient. Consider creating a distribution list for executives and one for staff who will be impacted by the changes.
Establish a Communication Cadence
As your implementation gets underway, determine which milestones are important to communicate and to whom they should go to. If you are taking a phased approach, it’s likely that you will be sending out communications every two weeks. It could be more frequent if you decide to also conduct pilot projects. For those opting for the big bang approach, communications will be less frequent, but will need to include more details.
Determine How You Will Communicate
After you’ve established your communication cadence, consider how and what kinds of updates you will share with key stakeholders. Tap into your company’s resources such as intranet, blogs, knowledge sharing solutions, and internal newsletters. You may even want to create a project website so that people can easily find materials and information about the project. What you share may include:
- General announcements about project milestones
- Training event dates and times
- Training documents
- Go-live announcements for modules and sites using the new functionality
- FAQ documents
FAQ documents are some of the most useful and timely communications pieces, so make sure you are keeping a running list of questions from users during training and post-go-live support. You’ll also want to send out communications that highlight the successes because this will help the change management process and improve buy-in. Work with those using the technology to determine how it’s helping them with their day-to-day tasks. Share their stories. The goal is to demonstrate that the project is successful.
Step 4: Launch Your Training Program
Training is critical for adoption and overall program success. Your project plan and SOW should include a training line item for each module you are implementing. For training to be successful, you must do the following:
- Identify who is doing the training: Will the software vendor, implementation partner, or your own team members provide the training?
- Develop a training timeline: Will training be iterative or done all at once? If you take a phased approach to implementation, you should do the same for training.
Pro Tip: Training doesn’t end when the project does. With true SaaS providers, the software platform is updated frequently, so it’s important to regularly review new features and functionality and update your documentation accordingly.
Check out our blog, What is True SaaS and Why Does it Matter to EHS? to learn more about True SaaS and its major benefits.
- Determine the type of training that will take place: Will training be conducted online, on-demand, or in-person? More than likely, you will use a combination of all three. If your company has a training department, consider working with them to build on-demand courses so that future users can complete training quickly and efficiently.
- Create training documentation: Documentation is critical to ensuring the success of any software project. Be sure to work with the software vendor and any third-party consultants working on the project to create documentation for system design, configuration decisions, and training. These documents will help ensure a successful transition from project to program and maintenance.
Pro Tip: Conduct refresher training periodically with administrators, superusers, and end-users. These sessions give everyone the opportunity to ask questions, share best practices, and get updates on the latest features that the software provider has released.
Following these four steps will ensure a successful implementation, but what happens next? The post-implementation period will consist of ongoing maintenance, that requires attention from multiple teams, and continued training as the company changes and grows. In our next blog, we’ll look at how to sustain your EHS program, maintain buy-in from stakeholders, and optimize your solution for continued success.
