How can a software vendor and grower work together on a successful grower software implementation?

Much of the hard work has to be done before the purchase.

The following areas can help a grower and vendor work toward a successful outcome if the proper assessment, functional planning, and processes are understood and planned for in the implementation process.

System Function

System function deals with how the software will handle the needs of the grower’s specific business model or situation so that the use of the software will improve the grower’s business processes.

To assess the grower must ask key questions like:

• Does the software do what a given grower needs in the key areas of
  • Inventory
  • Production
  • Purchase orders
  • Sales orders and availability
  • Grower Product Pricing
  • Customer SKU data
  • Load and delivery data
  • Reports and analytics
  • Accounting and payroll
• How do those areas work and how will the grower staff use them?
• Does the grower know what functions and capabilities they need?
  • Have you mapped out each process you need to implement in the new software so you can assess what is there and what is missing?

The grower must be able to show what they need and how their business operates.

The software vendor must help map the grower’s business needs to the capabilities of the software, both now and in the future.

The vendors must work with the grower’s staff to make clear business process mapping.

Training

Training, whether direct, online, or through various materials will help improve both the implementation and the grower’s staff use of the system.  

From the grower’s perspective the key questions are:

• How will my employees become competent to do their jobs more efficiently in the new system?
• When new employees arrive how will they be trained?

Any new system will require training and practice so the employees will develop confidence and competence.

Training must be available to fully realize the improvements the system promises for the grower.

Support

Any software provider needs to make sure the grower understands and agrees with the support plan.

The grower has to assess whether the vendor will provide the needed support in a manner that is advantageous and helpful for the grower and in a competent and timely manner.

Key answers that the grower needs with respect to support are:

• How does the grower initiate support?
  • Call, email, text, carrier pigeon?
• Is the support in the same time zone or do time zone offsets need to be considered?
• How competent is the support?
• Is the support responding in a timely manner?

All the aspects of the support model and costs need to be clearly shown and understood.

On-Boarding

On boarding involves getting the grower’s employees, data, processes, and needed historical data setup and functional in the system.

The grower needs to understand and be confident in how the vendor will help the grower get their operation going on the system including data migration and setup.

Effective onboarding allows the grower to see their business data in the system and use it as they learn and verify functionality. This makes the system more real and understandable to the grower and their staff and improves the return on the grower’s software investment.

Reporting

Data reports are the keyway to see what the system contains and should represent the reality of the business (if records are up to date). Growers have a wide variety of needs for reports to ‘see’ what they need to see from the system for operational and analytic questions and metrics.

The grower needs to understand:

• Will the system show the grower the reports they need to see?
• What are the native reports in the system? Are those native reports worth anything to my business?
• How are new reports added or existing reports changed?
• Can reports be automated if so, how?

An effective reporting system should make it as efficient as possible for the grower to see what they need statistically and operationally from the system. Grower beware – most software packages will not come with the exact reports your organization needs. So, ask.

Budget

Budget deals with the cost of the system and the implementation and training.

Key questions that the grower will need answers to:

• What is the grower’s budget, now and in subsequent years?
• What is the fee structure?
• What is the implementation cost?
• What are the ongoing costs?
• Is support included?
• Will the grower get an impactful return on investment from the change?

A full understanding of the costs and the total cost of ownership is crucial to the grower’s decision.

Results

The grower has to decide what ‘success’ looks like. It could be that success is just getting away from another undesired vendor or success is getting better support or more capability from the system. Success could be better automated reporting and analytics or better inventory control.

Whatever the grower’s situation the grower has to assess will the grower and staff get the results they need from the system, its capabilities, and data by going through the purchase.

Bottom Line

Choosing a new grower software system is time consuming and expensive.

A grower needs to plan on spending the time to get it right. Hopefully, these seven areas can help improve the quality of the software decisions growers make.

If you need a 2^nd opinion on your decision and plan AGS does Grower System Assessments. We also employ a consultative sales process to help you make the best decision for your operation and goals. Contact us to learn more.