Sure Step Adoption – A Marathon for Achieving Core Competence
September 1st, 2010Sure Step is a widely applied and proven methodology for Microsoft Dynamics implementations. Its flexibility offers possibilities to adopt parts of the methodology that partners find useful and applicable. Yet, in order to achieve full benefits of Sure Step, it is essential to apply a subset of options that must be used in a given implementation.
Many of the partners that use Sure Step still face issues in their implementation projects and the principal reason for that is failure to fully adopt the procedures and make Sure Step their Core Competence. What is Core Competence? A Core Competence is:
- Something that you do very well
- Something that delivers unique customer benefits
- It is hard for competitors to imitate
- IT IS CONSISTENTLY USED IN YOUR COMPANY
Achieving Core Competence requires continuous effort throughout the Company with substantial Change Management.
Microsoft has offered priceless assistance to companies that want to achieve the core competence in Sure Step. The methodology of adoption is a systematic approach that leads the team to a successful end of the adoption. The adoption process may be facilitated by specially trained facilitators who are trained to make sure the process is well led (never by the facilitator her/himself).
The adoption process begins with the Diagnostic phase that has to confirm the business need first. Then it is necessary to assign a “Champion” who will lead the adoption of Sure Step. The Champion should be selected amongst senior managers and must possess the credibility to lead the initiative. The next step is to form the “V-Team” that will be responsible for assessing, configuring and deploying Sure Step.
The Champion and the V-Team must attend a Sure Step training after which they must be assessed for their proficiency. Finally, the CEO announces the importance of the adoption process and officially assigns the Champion and the V-Team.
The process continues with the Analysis phase during which the V-Team takes the Adoption Self-Assessment provided by Microsoft. The Assessment will indicate the current level of adoption of Sure Step and what needs to be done during the adoption process. It will also indicate what skills must be developed by V-Team members to fulfill their responsibilities.
During the Analysis phase it is also essential to identify the risks during the adoption, to review required investments, to define the expected rewards and return from the adoption along with the ROI plan that will help the CEO to decide whether to continue with the process or not.
The Design phase begins with the redesign of current processes for sales, project implementation and performance management. The Champion and the V-Team explore the Proof of Concept for mapped processes. They also prepare a handbook “What is Sure Step and How to Use It”. The HR manager has to define the learning plans and job descriptions for all the roles defined in the new processes.
The IT department defines the requirements and then has to configure systems and migrate sales data and documents.
Sales readiness is achieved through activities of the Sales and Marketing teams. The Marketing team updates the customer messaging to reflect Sure Step as their new engagement process. The Sales team, after the Sure Step training, runs a pilot of the new Sure Step processes using real customer situations.
Marking the end of the Design phase, the CEO should communicate internally to summarize new processes and stress the importance of Sure Step.
During the Development phase, the custom development work should be completed – configuring existing systems. All the database development for customer data storage must comply with the privacy plans (that also must be created if they don’t exist). All the remaining data and documents must be migrated finishing the work begun with the sales data and documents.
The V-Team now can perform a pilot using real projects uploaded into the system. The Sales team should recommend which projects should be used for the pilot.
The Deployment phase should be started with the CEO’s communication signaling readiness to go live with Sure Step. Now the training is deployed across the company and everybody is ready to apply Sure Step. All the roles who have taken the training should prove their knowledge by using the Sure Step Proficiency Assessment. The HR manager should continuously monitor the ongoing effectiveness of training.
At the very end of the process, the adoption maturity can be measured by re-taking the adoption assessment taken at the beginning of the process and comparing the results. The Company can also measure the customer satisfaction after the adoption.
And don’t forget to communicate through the Company about the progress made to date, the results of everyone’s efforts and the future goals for Sure Step Partner Adoption.
