Full Sail Partners Blog (54)

Full Sail Partners, Deltek Premier Partner, is pleased to announce the addition of Gina Stamper to the client services team. Gina has joined the firm in the role of West Coast Account Manager and will provide account services for Full Sail Partners’ clients in the Mountain and Pacific regions. She will work as a liaison between Full Sail Partners and clients, helping to build an openly collaborative community.

Gina joins Full Sail Partners with 15 years of accounting and finance experience in the technology, mortgage and telecommunication industries where servicing client needs is essential to success. Gina previously spent five years as a senior account manager servicing Deltek Vision Clients.

“I’m very enthusiastic about the opportunity to continue working hand-in-hand with Deltek Vision account holders,” said Gina Stamper. “The professional services market is rapidly developing and so are the needs of our end users. I look forward to this opportunity to help customers as their companies evolve.”

Full Sail Partners’ Account Management Program is designed to serve the needs of the Deltek client base and promote greater engagement. This position will serve as an additional resource to address client questions and provide a dedicated resource for those on the West Coast. Full Sail Partners now provides account management services from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. EST, extending its service availability an additional three hours.

“Gina’s work ethic, experience, and passion for customer service make her the ideal candidate for this position,” said Wendy Gustafson, Full Sail Partners’ vice president / general manager. “We’re confident in Gina’s knowledge of the Deltek Vision product set and her proven ability to maintain great relationships with existing customers, while helping to develop new accounts.”

For more information, please email Full Sail Partners’ Marketing Communications Department. Interested in meeting the rest of the crew? Check out the link below!

It’s that time again: year end.  No, not year-end resolutions, but the time of the year finance is stressing about year-end close and emphasizing that a 2015 marketing budget is needed.

So how many of you look at last year’s numbers and slap on an increase and submit? Be honest! However, how many things have changed since your last budget? The competitive landscape has completely changed for us and many of our clients. So we thought we might do a review to remind firms to get back to the basics when planning your marketing budget. 

Marketing Budget Methods

There are several budgeting methods when putting together your marketing budget. The Society for Marketing Professional Services (SMPS) Marketing Handbook for the Construction and Design Professional, 3^rd Edition by BNi Building News, 2014 highlights 4 different methods: 

1. Projection Method – is for steady businesses with well-established marketing approaches and which relies on costs from prior years separated into soft or hard costs.
2. Percentage Method – allocates a fixed amount of resources dedicated to acquisition and total net service revenue to fund activities that support getting work
3. Goal-based Method – bases “bottom up” budget based on revenue goals and the implementation tasks that need to be accomplished to meet them. 
4. Ratio Method – is a more complex method incorporating ROI mentality with a strong ability to meet revenue goals and with every dollar spent being tied to a return.  This is for more mature market segments and fairly large projects.

5 Practical Tips

Developing a marketing plan is more than what conferences will you attend and what cool promotional items can we buy this year. When planning your marketing budget for the year it’s important to think about the long-term financial success of the firm.  Below are 5 practical tips for professional services firms to help guide you as you develop this year’s marketing budget: 

1. Analyze the current state of affairs – Internal and external research should be conducted. This includes doing a SWOT analysis. The SWOT should be conducted with all leaders within your firm and is a great starting place to start your strategic marketing plan.
2. Tie your marketing budget to you marketing plan – The most basic mistake is not understanding what your goals are. Your budget will come from the tactics you plan to take to accomplish your goals. Be sure to translate goals into day-to-day actions. Here is more on how to establish goals or Key Performance Indicators and establish goals based on the SMART guidelines.
3. Budget for nurturing existing clients – Firms are always thinking about how to catch the next big fish and commonly overlook where most of their revenue comes from. At the end of the year evaluate where most of your business came from. What would happen if you lost that business? Firm should budget for client nurturing not only throughout the year, but on a daily basis as they execute their projects. It costs a firm 5-7 times more to gain a new client then to keep an existing one. One way of nurturing clients is to be proactive and institute a client feedback process.  
4. Execution is key – Communicating what is expected and following up monthly and quarterly helps you change course when something isn’t working. It takes everyone understanding what is expected and then executing on their part. This includes billing your time to the right code and evaluating your goals versus actuals. If it doesn’t line up then what needs to change? A budget isn’t set in stone, you can make modifications throughout the year when something isn’t working. Knowing it isn’t working is what is critical.
5. More is not necessarily better – Spending more does not equate to achieving more success. To prove this, Deltek conducted their annual clarity report among its clients and found that high achieving firms did not spend more on their marketing budget then those of their counterparts contrary to belief.  They found that high achieving firms however are able to differentiate themselves by focusing on executing more efficiently.

In planning for the upcoming year, we hope these five tips help you develop your marketing budget. Be sure to check out our past webinar crafting a marketing plan and be sure to add a comment to share your tips! 

Are you ready? Year-end is upon us. As part of a yearly tradition, we are providing you with resources and reminders to assist your firm with year-end processing. Check out the information below, and let us know if you have any questions.

Don't Forget Your Deltek Vision Year-End Processes

As we come into the holiday season many of us in accounting face the coming season, not only with the joy of family and friends coming together, but with a sense of impending dread – YEAR-END and TAX SEASON are looming – ugh - have another drink.

W-2s - 1099s - journal entries - checking and double checking each number!  Auditors - shareholder meetings - endless explanations’ of what the results mean (even though you have been saying for the past 6 months) - Oh the joy of the season!

As we go through the year-end process there are mistakes we (and others) make that are easy to recover from like entering the 15 page depreciation journal entry “backwards” at midnight sitting in your semi dark office chugging your 15th pot of coffee.  Some are more difficult – like removing all the lower levels of your work break-down structure (did that once – glad our backups worked). So outside of deleting the database, what are some of the items in Vision year end processing that are hard to recover from?

>> Learn more

Is Your Deltek Vision System Year-End Process Stress Free?

Year-end is always a stressful time of year, but it doesn’t have to be.  As with everything else in the world of Accounting, planning and preparation is the key to a successful and stress-free year end. Check out this article talk provides a few tips to make your year-end close just a little easier.

>> Prepare more

Webinar: Stress Free Year-End Process - Yes You Can!

Join our on-demand webinar to see how you can make your year-end stress free.  Our panel will provide insight into best practices, tips to close your books with ease, and focus on those “gotchas” on year-end processes. See what our panel says about the following year-end items:

1. How to make your process efficient
2. Avoid disruption to production
3. Communication topics to provide your staff and management
4. Saving money by evading closing obstacles

>> View more

Deltek’s Year End Resources

Deltek Customer Care is working to assist you with year-end activities. You can now take advantage of year-end resources:

• Year-End Forums
• Phone Menu Guidance
• Year-End Info Center
• Quick Chat Guidance
• Year-End Guides & Videos

>> Know more

We hope these resources serve as good reminder. Best wishes from the Full Sail Partners' staff! Wishing you a prosperous 2014.

It’s Time to Upgrade! Regulatory and Year-end Updates Available ONLY on Vision 7.2 or 7.3

Working in the most recent release of your Deltek solution ensures your firm is benefiting from all the features and enhancements engineered into the latest versions of Vision. Your support and maintenance plan entitles your firm to download the latest version of your product here if you're not up-to-date!

Important Note Regarding Year-End Regulatory Updates in 2014

Year-end updates in 2014 will be supported only on Vision 7.2 and Vision 7.3. Regulatory updates for releases prior to Vision 7.2 will not be delivered.

Check out the Deltek Support Assurance Product Lifecycle on the Deltek Customer Care Connect website for the latest information on your product's status and definitions of the support delivered in the Active, Maintenance, and Sustaining phases.

Is Your Firm Prepared for Deltek Vision 7.3?

Because of Microsoft’s de-support of Windows XP in April 2014, Deltek can no longer support the Windows XP client operating system beginning with Vision 7.3 and extending to future releases. 

The following client operating systems will be supported for Vision 7.3:

• Windows 8 or 8.1
• Windows 7
• Windows Vista

Additionally, to use this new version you must ensure that .NET Framework 4.5 or 4.5.1 is installed. For more information on the .NET Framework and to determine how best to deploy the 4.5 or 4.5.1 release within your organization, please refer to the Microsoft web site at http://www.microsoft.com/net.

We have reached it, the exciting conclusion to our series on Management of Change.  It is here where we will reiterate our most important change messages and send you on your way to successful changes in your organization. 

We started our series defining crucial concepts, i.e. change includes anything that takes a company from its current state to a new, desired state and that it takes the buy-in and adoption of the people in the company in order for change to be successful.

This statement encompasses several ideas and focused areas, each of which we explored during this series.   

• The executive piece focused on the leadership required as company change agents – establishing goals, creating clear direction and modeling the new, desired behaviors.
• Our financial commentary focused on the numbers of change: establishing numerical baselines, checkpoints, and the financial ranges indicating success.
• The project management information recognized your company’s project managers as those best suited to manage and evaluate the change process, since that’s what they already do for your clients.
• The marketing article acknowledged the multifaceted role marketing plays: the industry researcher who sees the need for change; the communicator/positioner for your company, your clients and your employees; and an area that needs to embrace the change themselves.
• Our final focused blog piece from the human resources perspective really explored the people – the most important part – of change.  If the people in your company aren’t clear on change, all the spreadsheets and tools in the world won’t make it work.  

Information Technology – yet another key aspect of change

We investigated, at a high level, about each area and their responsibility toward change and the adoption of that change.  We also made reference to some of the tools that can contribute to this change process. For example, in the executive focus we made reference to an executive dashboard to help leaders keep abreast of their company changes.  Furthermore, project managers are very technically savvy with their project management software.  Marketing, also, has technology that they have to employ to keep abreast of changes in their jobs.  The common denominator to all this and more is … technology.  Partnering with your IT department allows for smoother change.  And, like all the other roles, technology plays a dual role offering technology that empowers employees in potentially two ways: 

1) As a new technology that companies can now use, changing the way they do their work.

In Aaron Jones’ article, “Change Management: 8 Tips to Successfully Implement a New Technology” he states “Companies that have been through successful implementations of new technology understood employee concerns and addressed those concerns early in the process” and offers the following steps for successfully integrating a new technology.

• Select the Right Technology
• Check References
• Involve Employees  
• Get all Personnel Involved Once a New Technology is
• Focus on Training
• Document Everything
• Create Short Terms Wins
• Demonstrate No Fear  

2) As a technology that helps manage the change process itself. 

In Henry Hornstein’s article, “Using A Change Management Approach To Implement IT Programs” he explains, “The importance of managing organizational change effectively has compelled a growing number of organizations to incorporate the discipline into major initiatives of all sorts, from the introduction of IT software packages to business process and organizational structure changes. The contribution of effective change management/leadership to the achievement of positive results cannot be ignored … when combining high usage of innovative Human Resource Management (HRM) practices with high usage of information and communication technologies (ICT), in change initiatives.” 

The single most important thing to keep in mind when implementing change is to understand why the change must happen.  There are three steps to implementing change:

1. Un-Paralyze your Organization - Develop a persuasive reason both why the change must happen and if it weren’t to happen, what would the negative impacts be. This creates a motivating reason why the change must happen. 
2. Show Benefits to Individuals - Individuals that are impacted by the change need to understand how it will benefit them. People want to be in the know. So communication and managing expectations are key.
3. Re-establish Standards – When employees feel they are constantly in flux and don’t know what to do, it creates uncertainty. Implementing change in a phased approach with continued reinforcement of those expectations helps people feel they know what is expected. Change will happen once you have a good QC process and a well-established protocol of what is expected.

Change in the end

It all leads to one conclusion.  Change is never done alone.  It takes the interactivity of every aspect of an organization (leaders, individual contributors, tools) to make change management successful. 

Gone are the days of five year plans.  Today’s speed of business requires an agile organization who can change even as frequently as 12 – 18 months.  Having a comprehensive and thorough management of change process is the only way businesses can survive … and flourish.

And remember that friend who asked about the investment return from the beginning of our series?  After reading each blog piece and taking the time to process each area’s responsibility toward the success of change, you can now tell your friend that the initial investment may indeed be huge, but because you have been given the necessary information for effective change management, we will ALL be able to prove enormous returns!

 

 

This series has been exploring how change management is viewed by a variety of perspectives: executives and finance to date with marketing, HR and IT yet to come.  We’ve advocated that change must be understood and handled differently from each department’s “normal” day to day activities.  However, for our focus on project management, this series will take a somewhat different turn.  Project Managers already have, in their very work DNA, the ability to see, to scope, and to manage change.  It’s what they do on a daily, weekly, and yearly basis: it’s what project management is all about.  

The specifics

Let’s first take a closer look at our terms – project management and change management – in order to make the clear connection.  Tim Creasey, Director of Research and Development for Prosci Research takes us through this process.  

From these terms, he offers next the vital connecting visual and description.

“As shown in this image, both project management and change management support moving an organization from a current state (how things are done today), through a transition state to a desired future state (the new processes, systems, organization structures or job roles defined by 'the change'). Project management focuses on the tasks to achieve the project requirements. Change management focuses on the people impacted by the change.

Any change to processes, systems, organization structures and/or job roles will have a 'technical' side and a 'people' side that must be managed. Project management and change management have evolved as disciplines to provide both the structure and the tools needed to realize change successfully on [both] the technical and people side[s].” 

But there’s more

In our first piece, we offered a definitions of change management with user adoption as the important second step in the management of change.  Once again, project managers are well positioned to ensure that not only are the processes of change implemented correctly, but that the people involved in the change are empowered to take full advantage.   

As we’ve discussed, both project management and change management have as their leading characteristic, a specific focus on the people involved in the change.  Also we stated in beginning of our series, user adoption requires a clearly defined and financially measured goal with training, clear communication/marketing and leadership buy-in as necessary parts to be successful.  Each of these attributes is an important part of ensuring that the people part of change is not only smooth but wholly embraced:  there is, after all, good reason that the company utilized valuable energy scoping out the change that will take your company from its present state to its future, more desired, state.  And since a company is really the embodiment of the sum of its employees,   

The company will only change

 when the individuals fully and entirely

commit to the change.

Final phase

No project would be complete without this all-important final phase - project review.  We all well know that no project would be complete without really looking at those phases which were well executed and which were not:  it is here in the post-mortem where real learning occurs and where there is a final determination of success and of change. 

Full Sail Partners, a Deltek Premier Partner, is pleased to announce that Kevin Hebblethwaite, FSMPS, CPSM, has joined Full Sail Partners in a full-time capacity as a Senior Consultant. Kevin is familiar with what it takes to help firms improve information sharing and develop reporting capabilities across departments. The recent expansion of the Full Sail Partners’ staff is a reflection of the firm’s dedication to providing clients with the most talented professionals the industry has to offer.

As a Senior Consultant, Kevin will continue to help firms leverage their investments in the Deltek Vision platform to track, manage, and monitor results for their marketing and business development initiatives; streamline the proposal process through automation; and improve their client relationships. He will lead and expand Full Sail Partners’ consulting services for the Client Feedback Tool, which helps professional services firms manage expectations and improve the overall client experience.

“I am thrilled to be a part of the Full Sail Partners’ team," said Kevin. “I’ve spent most of my career developing professional service relationships, helping people improve their systems and processes. I look forward to continuing that tradition with Full Sail’s current and future clients who seek to elevate the value they can extract from good information management.

Kevin Hebblethwaite has been involved in the Deltek community and the professional services industry for more than 15 years. Kevin served as the National President of the Society for Marketing Professional Services (SMPS) in 2012-2013. His previous experience as an engineering firm executive and familiarity with Deltek Vision across departmental functions allow him to effectively assist professional services firms in taking a more comprehensive and integrated approach to managing their marketing and business development information. According to Kevin, “Marketers have a unique opportunity in the professional services environment to become more data-driven contributors to their firms’ strategic direction, and Deltek Vision provides a great platform to do so.”

“Kevin is an important strategic addition to our team as we look to expand our service practice,” said Sarah Gonnella, Full Sail Partners’ Vice President of Marketing and Sales. “We are excited to have him take the lead in bridging together our consulting services for Deltek Vision and the Client Feedback Tool. His unique perspective, knowledge, and persistence make him the perfect fit to deliver the best possible results.”

For more information, please email Full Sail Partners’ Marketing Communications Department or visit the Full Sail Partners’ website at www.FullSailPartners.com.

About Full Sail Partners 
Full Sail Partners provides client-focused technology services and solutions for more than 1,000 professional services firms nationwide. As Premier Partners for Deltek and the Client Feedback Tool, Full Sail Partners helps project-based firms fully integrate their business processes by connecting their front end and backend systems. We seek to help organizations identify the critical resources needed to create a faster, more efficient, and cohesive business infrastructure. 

You are the authority on finance:  You speak in numbers using  words like “return on investment,” “profit,” “revenue,” and, of course “results.”  In this third installment of our Management of Change Series, we explore change management through the eyes of the financial experts who prove the attainment of goals with reliable, empirical evidence … bottom line numbers.  

But how?

Many professionals are capable of creating and clearly defining goals, not the least of whom are the executives in your company, as we explored in our Management of Change – Executive.  But as the financial wizard, your job is to establish clear, numerically defined, indicators of success which start with a distinct baseline.   After all, to know where you are on the journey, you need to know where you have been.

So, back to our initial question:  How do you prove goal attainment once goals have been clearly established?  It is best to use a defined, multi-step program.

1. Establish a baseline – This is not about finding bottom line numbers, somewhere, as some sort of false starting point.  Your baseline must include the numbers which clearly support the defined objectives. 
    
2. Define financial checkpoints – Change is a time intensive process and must therefore be managed as meticulously as the most important project, since implementing change is, in fact, a project.  Your firm’s success is dependent upon this project.  Financial objectives must be managed throughout the change process, through project status reports, so that there are no financial surprises at the end.
    
3. Determine final success numbers – We certainly know that success isn’t always defined by dollars but also by numbers indicating things like percentage increases or decreases.  But, and this is important, don’t be tied to a specific number, instead determine a tolerance range as your indicator of success, your ROI.  Remember, that management of change is not just about processes but also about the people in your organization, and, as we all know, change in people is difficult.  This speaks to user adoption, i.e. how your employees adopt, accept and embrace the changes being proposed. According to “The ‘harder’ side of change.  The What, Why and Ho of change management’” The consequence of not managing the people side of change, i.e. employees and customers, has “tangible and real financial impact on the health of the organization and the project.” Therefore, set an acceptable level of success and celebrate when you’re within a good range of your numbers.
    

Here is your softare toolbox for managing the above steps.

Even more numbers

Management of change for “finance types” is unquestionably about the numbers.  But all good number crunchers know that numbers reflect all sorts of things:  More than just bottom line profit/loss, percentage increase, or improved customer satisfaction numbers. Financial repercussions also must be measured for change that doesn’t occur to account for potential adverse effect of not making a necessary change.  Therefore, numbers have to be analyzed reflecting the “opportunity and efficiency costs of NOT making the change both of which also directly impact ROI” as we discussed in our introductory piece to this series.   

Bottom line

The financial side of the management of change is really where cold numbers meet the warmth of the human ability to accept and adapt to change.  The purpose of this piece is not to immerse you in ROI calculations, number projections, or columns of dollars – all of which you’re thoroughly aware – but, instead, to ensure that all involved in the change management process are aware of the steps to proving the financial effect of change as well as to speak to the financial ramifications NOT making changes.  Those numeric bottom line steps are the solid evidence of change management success.  Our next installment features project managing your change.

You are the leader of a company.  People look to you for establishing goals, creating direction and for driving the company’s success.  When looking at managing change, your perspective is from 5,000 feet … but with all the responsibility of the minutiae.   This second installment in our Management of Change series focuses on how you, the executive, must navigate your employees through the rough waters of change to the calm seas of success.  Here are the important steps.

1. Establishing goals

In order to effectively manage change, an important first exercise is a goal setting session with the entire leadership team.  Unfortunately, we hear too often, “I know it’s important, but we don’t have time for goal setting meetings with all the other meetings we already have.”

Without goals, though, here is what you’re doing.  Let’s say you want to take a vacation.  Great, now book your flight(s), reserve a hotel room, and schedule some activities.  But wait – where are you going?  Is your hotel room in the same place as where your flight landed?  How much is this trip going to cost?  Are the activities in the same area as your hotel?   In your personal life, of course you know all the answers to these questions, because you already had your goal, your destination in mind and your family buy-in before making decisions and actually spending money.  But do you lead your company with this same clarity of purpose?  Do you have clear and specific goals and the consensus of the management team before making decisions and sending money?  Too many, regrettably, do not. 

It is time consuming and difficult, but absolutely necessary to establish clear goals that also have the buy-in of every member of your leadership team. 

2. Creating direction

Now that you know where you’re going, how are you going to get there? As we discussed in our first piece, “change management requires a structured approach for lasting benefits”, that structured approach is the direction, the roadmap that the executives of companies need to create in order to reach company goals. 

Of course, you know all this already; you spend hours of your valuable time in seemingly endless business planning sessions.  But this is a bit different.  When looking at change, you are not just trying to reach a goal, like higher profitability or increased revenue, but you’re working to reach a goal of minimizing any negative impacts change might bring.  Change is usually required most often as a result of

• External forces like politics, environment, or technology

     OR

• Internal requirements like a major reorganization or change on offerings

Another thing you are already quite aware of … change is hard.  It effects not only your established company processes but, more importantly, the people in your organization. 

Process Changes

When change impacts your processes, every area in your organization is impacted:  Finance impacts HR which impacts Marketing which impacts IT which impacts … well, you get the picture:  Your company is an interrelated amalgamation of interactive expertise.  Although executives often speak in department silos – “Let’s work with Finance on that new report” – we all know that the report depends on information from every other department in the company which means that “new report” is not just Finance’s responsibility but every department’s responsibility.  And why?  Defined as a series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a particular end, process is what drives your company’s every day activities which ultimately lead to the achievement of your company goals. 

People Changes

But there’s more.  While change impacts your processes, it’s the people in your organization who are actually running those processes, and it’s the people who struggle with change (yes, even you executives are people who struggle with change too).  Peter Drucker, Wikipedia tells us, “whose writings contributed to the philosophical and practical foundations of the modern business corporation, says that ‘We now accept the fact that learning is a lifelong process of keeping abreast of change.  And the most pressing task is to teach people how to learn.’” Change is indeed a hard and necessary evil but can be abated with training which is the next most important part of company-wide user adoption of change.

3. Drive Company Success through Powerful Tools

So what are the tools to allow you to be an effective, involved leader of the management of change process?  Quite simply, an executive dashboard in a technology solution from a company like Full Sail Partners who can customize software for your change management project.  Dashboards, like the one pictured here, can allow executives to get a snapshot of activities taking place during the change process ensuring that you have a pulse on your project.  

Bottom line

As the executive, you have many roles – not the least of which is company change agent.  A tremendously important role necessary to allow your company to continue to flourish in the wake of ever-changing internal and external environs.  The leadership team must clearly define goals and create a clear plan for reaching those goals keeping in mind:

a) The impact of the changes in process and the people who are required to do them

b) The tools and the allies, like Full Sail Partners, Inc., that you have access to which will help manage your change. 

Now is the time for company executives, like you, to accept the challenge of change! 

Full Sail Partners, a Premier Partner for Deltek and the Client Feedback Tool, is pleased to announce the recent hire of Peter Nuffer who will join the Full Sail team as the Director of Product Development. In this role, Peter will manage the build-out of next generation integrations that provide advanced functionality like the Client Feedback Tool integration with Deltek Vision, and work with Full Sail Partner’s client’s on initiatives that require development of reports, BI, workflows and integration with other platforms. With a proven record of developing innovative custom solutions, Peter has previously been employed with Full Sail Partners for five years, and spent the last two years focusing on software product management.   

“I am extremely excited about rejoining the Full Sail Partners team and taking on this new position," said Peter Nuffer, Director of Product Development. “I look forward to making an immediate impact for Full Sail Partners, as well as the Deltek ecosystem. We have many innovative extensions to the core product’s functionality that will help professional services firms streamline processes, engage clients, and capitalize on opportunities to build their business. Our development team is committed to providing best in class service and product offerings that will help clients get the most out of their Deltek Vision system while leveraging other technologies crucial to their operations.  The focus on extensibility of the already comprehensive Deltek Vision core product will help the Deltek Vision ERP product remain competitive within new market verticals”

Peter Nuffer rejoins Full Sail Partners with over 20 years of experience in the software and technology field. A creative technology professional, Peter has an enthusiastic focus on developing technology solutions and working with business leaders to identify efficiency centric process improvements through technology. His extensive experience developing solutions that automate, simplify, and improve operations makes him a value-added partner to any professional services organization.

“We welcome Peter back to the Full Sail Partners team and are excited about the opportunity to further enhance our clients experience with Deltek Vision through Peter’s development efforts,” said Scott Seal, Full Sail Partners’ Vice President of Consulting. “Peter is a long-time ally of Full Sail Partners, and is one of the leading developers for Deltek Vision customization solutions. We believe that Peter offers our professional services user base the ability to take their ERP system to the next level.”

For more information, please email Full Sail Partners’ Marketing Communications Department or visit the Full Sail Partners’ website at www.FullSailPartners.com.

About Full Sail Partners
Full Sail Partners provides client-focused technology services and solutions for more than 1,000 professional services firms nationwide. As Premier Partners for Deltek and the Client Feedback Tool, Full Sail Partners helps project-based firms fully integrate their business processes by connecting their front end and backend systems. We seek to help organizations identify the critical resources needed to create a faster, more efficient, and cohesive business infrastructure.

Full Sail Partners – Keep Your Business on Course. | For more on Full Sail Partners profile and background on the Full Sail Partners crew, visit us at http://www.fullsailpartners.com.
 

A friend comes to you and asks for your advice regarding a great investment they discovered with a huge money down initial investment but with – and here’s the kicker – no idea of the ROI. 

Your advice?  Never invest unless you know what you’ll get in return, right?

Yet, thousands of companies today are operating their business without knowing if there will be any return on the investments on initiatives or significant purchases each day.   

WHY do companies do this and HOW can they realize the necessary ROI?

They answer is right in front of us - effective management of change.

This article is the first in an exciting and informative series where we focus our attention on this invasive corporate conundrum and how an effectively run Management of Change Program can positively impact your bottom line.  What’s even more engaging about this series is that we will look at the benefits of change management from a variety of perspectives:  Executive, Finance, Project Management, Marketing, and HR. 

In this introduction piece, we will concentrate on two key definitions including change management and user adoption.

Change Management

Change Management is a term often bandied about as the vague yet intended scapegoat for why things don’t go well in an organization.  While many people certainly understand the concept, there is in fact a real definition.  Generally, change management is the process of moving an organization from its current status to a defined desired status.  However, few understand the importance or the specifics as to what makes an effective management of change program. 

According to mindtools.com’s article “Change Management Making Organization Change Happen Effectively,” “Change management is a structured approach for ensuring that changes are thoroughly and smoothly implemented, and that the lasting benefits of change are achieved.  The focus is on the wider impacts of change, particularly on people and how they, as individuals and teams, move from the current situation to the new one.”  I’ve added the boldface font to make two very important points:  1) that change management requires a structured approach for lasting benefits and 2) change management requires not only a change in process but a change in the people involved. 

User Adoption

Which brings us to our next definition regarding the people involved in the change, User Adoption.  Broadly, it means the people in the company using and taking full advantage of the changed environment.  We all know that getting people to change is always a difficult task:  people are naturally resistant to change - even if change means their work lives will be easier - because the initial adjustment to their lives seems too big a barrier.  Now, taking that broad definition into a more specific level, we can clarify it as the following:  successful user adoption requires a clearly defined and financially measured goal requiring training, clear communication/marketing and leadership buy-in in order to be successful. 

Management of Change and ROI

Now, let’s get back to ROI.

For a change to be considered advantageous, there has to be a compelling business case which will look at the cost of the project weighted against the benefits the company will gain. If the benefits outweigh the costs, the ROI is positive.  The formula for calculating Return on Investment (ROI)[2] is:

NATALIE PETOUHOFF, PHD, TAMRA CHANDLER and BETH MONTAG-SCHMALTZ, “The Business Impact of Change Management,” 2006 Volume 9 Issue 3.

In other words, the difficulties of change must be overcome by the positives, i.e. an ROI both financially and personally for those involved. 

Two other important items that many people forget when calculating ROI are a) the amount of resources and time change takes as well as b) the opportunity and efficiency costs of NOT making the change both of which also directly impact ROI

Looking forward …

We have established our key terms, change management and user adoption.  Now let’s look at management of change programs - which reap the benefits to your organization’s bottom line - from the different perspectives mentioned above through focusing on user adoption.  Next week, An Executive’s User Adoption Story.