Exploiting further opportunities and realising benefits

DTI statistics confirm that a high percentage of system implementations do not deliver the expected benefits.

“Completing a project” is not the end of the project management process. Simply finishing doesn’t ensure that the organisation benefits from the project’s outcome.

• CCL’s Post Implementation Review is a formal review of a programme or project. It is used to answer the questions:
• Did we achieve what we set out to do in business terms? If not, what should be done?
• Did the project fully solve the problem that it was designed to address?
• Can we take things further, and deliver even bugger benefits?
• What lessons did we learn that we can apply to future projects?

Projects and IT Implementations fail for a vast number of reasons that would include:

• Your business has moved on since you made the decision to implement or change
• There was an underestimation of the effort required to enact the changes
• The project team was not ‘a team’
• There was no real ‘buy-in’ to the new system or planned changes
• Inadequate training
• Your business processes do not map appropriately onto the systems or vice versa
• The software cannot do what you expected (without extensive and/or expensive modifications)
• There was a poor or non-existent support from the solutions provider

If any of the above has applied to a project or systems implementation within your business, CCL’s Consultants with their vast amount of implementation and project management experience will be able to assist.

The key to a successful Post Implementation Review is recognition that the time spent on the project can be a small part of an on-going timeline. For people and organisations that will be working on similar projects in the future, it makes sense to learn as many lessons as possible, so that mistakes are not repeated in future projects.

And for organisations benefiting from the projects, it makes sense to ensure that all desired benefits have been realised, and to understand what additional benefits can be achieved.