System Deployment

M4 Systems Implementation Approach

We use a well-defined and proven methodology based upon PRINCE2 principles, modified by our own extensive experience and from interaction with other implementation partners and from advice from Microsoft.

Because of our extensive experience with numerous implementations at a wide variety of companies we will have a good feel, quite quickly, for how much assistance we believe will be required from us.

A successful implementation naturally requires as much cooperation as possible between our staff and the customer’s staff. We will always aim to be as flexible and as fair as possible in order to maintain a spirit of co-operation. We will make clear at the beginning what preparation work we expect to be performed by the customer, so as to try and prevent any misunderstanding.

We will discuss with senior staff at the customer the importance of leadership from them, to sell the adoption of change internally, especially for CRM systems where they are often involved in a new way of working. Naturally internal co-operation between, for example, accounting and IT staff is valuable to assist with a smooth implementation and to avoid wasting valuable time. We will discuss our experience of such issues and offer our advice.

Depending upon the size and complexity of the project and depending upon the skills and resources available internally within the customer, there will be a big variation in the amount of assistance required from M4 Systems. We are pragmatic and we are always conscious that our consultancy days must be adding value. We do not try and sell days just for the sake of it since this just breeds resentment and goes against our philosophy of always aiming to develop an excellent long-term mutually beneficial relationship with all of our customers.

Documentation and knowledge management – both Dynamics GP and Dynamics CRM come with excellent online documentation which we always install with the system. For training sessions special training manuals are also available. Our consultants use internally developed checklists which we use in addition to the online resources. All our consultants carry laptops with extensive knowledge bases and they have access to several web-based comprehensive knowledge bases. Our customers also gain access to a similar knowledge base as part of their support contract.

We will also produce a comprehensive system design document which is based upon a template we have developed over the years. For larger projects this will involve workshops and interviews with staff to ensure that we fully understand all of the business processes and that we map these to the system’s method of operation and to the configurations that we have used.