In our last post we discussed the first few steps of replacing your CIS. First, you want to start with identifying your requirements to determine what you want. Next, you want to publish an Request for Proposal (RFP) to solicit vendors. Third, you want to shortlist and select your vendor. Now, let’s talk about the next few steps of the process.
Budgeting
One important step throughout the whole implementation process is budgeting. Ideally, you would establish a budget prior to publishing your RFP, but these are generally only estimates. Remember to add a buffer as your project requirements may grow and increase during the project. Millennium Consulting LLC advises their clients to always take into consideration the known and unknown aspects of the project including infrastructure requirements, reserves for unplanned mandatory requirements, future interfaces, business process re-engineering, training costs, and reporting needs while conducting budget planning sessions. The goal is to ask your Board for the approval of funding just one time and include all project requirements. The Journal of Accountancy offers tips on how to properly budget the first time around and account for all of these extraneous factors that may cause your overall spend to go up.
Agreeing with the Scope of Work
We’ve discussed the purpose of a Scope of Work (SOW) in a previous post. As a reminder, the SOW is a document that outlines exactly what is going to be performed for a project and helps to set expectations for the customer and the service provider. There are various things to include in an SOW depending on your circumstances, such as deliverables, scope, schedule, and management. Most importantly, though you want to make sure that all parties are in agreement with the SOW. This will help to alleviate any issues or concerns that may arise.
Risk identification, tracking, and mitigation
In a perfect world, a project would go smoothly from start to finish – but as well all know that is not always the case. That’s why identifying risks is a crucial part of the process so there are no surprises. It is important to not only identify these risks, but track and prioritize them as well as categorize these. This will help you to determine the best way to mitigate the risks and identify the probability of occurrence. To learn more about risks, MITRE discusses in-depth how to identify and manage risks in a project.
As you can see there are many steps to consider, and more we will discuss more in future articles. Our firm’s experience in these areas are priceless and we encourage you to call us when embarking on a large project. We’d love to hear from you.