Lisa Stearns, Manager of Retail Implementations at ADD Systems, outlines the ADD Systems implementation process by offering a comprehensive overview full of invaluable insights, from initial planning to post-implementation support. Lisa emphasizes the significance of communication, adaptability, and collaboration between ADD Systems and clients.
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Brian Cohen: Welcome to ADDcast! I’m ADD Systems Multimedia Specialist Brian Cohen, and I’m joined today by Lisa Stearns, Manager of Retail Implementations at ADD Systems. Lisa, thank you so much for joining me today.
Lisa Stearns: Thank you for having me, Brian.
Brian: My pleasure. Can you start by telling us a little bit about your role at ADD Systems?
Lisa: Sure, I’d love to! So as you mentioned, I’m Manager of Retail Implementations – so, what does that really mean? I’m the project manager on all projects related to eStore and Atlas, on new and existing business. In addition to that, I manage our eStore support team, and that team handles the day-to-day eStore support calls, as well as training for new and existing users.
Brian: Can you talk about the initial planning for an implementation? What are some of the considerations that help define the plan?
Lisa: Sure! It’s really important to understand all the preparation that happens before we actually even meet with a customer. There are typically three meetings that I have with internal folks at ADD Systems. One is with Sales, one is with Hardware, and one’s going to be with the eStore Trainer. In each of those meetings, we are going to discuss what Sales has provided for us. They will have documentation of what’s actually sold to the customer, and an overview that’s also supplied by Sales. And, within that, you may have some history of the company – if it’s a smaller company, is it family-owned, who are the players that are involved, and what are their relations? Has the client identified any concerns upfront? Do they have any deadlines? Do we need to coordinate with other projects? How many stores do they have? What have they actually purchased? Did they purchase Pricebook to go with their eStore? How many vendors do they have? What vendors will they be using for EDI? All of this information, as well as all the configuration for their servers, will be in that documentation from Sales. From there, we’re going to have a discovery meeting with the customer. The main purpose of that meeting is to introduce myself and the trainer, and then really take a deep dive into the project, and begin discussions. We want to confirm what’s been provided by Sales; we want to know if there’s any big changes they’re going to be implementing. If we sold them Pricebook, have they not had a Pricebook in the past? That’s a big change. Have they used hand-held scanners before? If they have not, that’s going to be a big change, a behavioral change as well for the folks at their stores. Do they have any timing concerns? Are they located near a busy vacation spot? We might have to avoid July and August if that’s the case. Little intricacies like that. Are they also a fuel customer? Do they provide heating and oil for homes, and propane? If they do, that’s a concern we want to be aware of for the winter times, in certain areas of the country of course. One other item we need to consider is if we will be on site for either the discovery and/or the go live. There are benefits to having our team on-site, and we do encourage it when possible. So you can see there’s a lot of different pieces that come in to play when you’re trying to define the project plan, and there’s numerous other ones as well, but I’ll go with that for now.
Brian: Well let’s talk about setting implementation goals. How do you set realistic, measurable milestones with the client?
Lisa: When I’m developing that plan, I’m going to consider what their goals are, along with the resources they have available, and many other factors. We want to set obtainable goals, because if you don’t, it’s just going to lead to frustration and added stress for all those involved in the implementation. And we also want to share that plan regularly, to ensure that we’re tracking, and meeting our goals. I look at the project plan as a team effort, a collaboration between the customer and ADD Systems, and everybody needs to be comfortable with it in order for it to succeed.
Brian: So can you talk about creating and implementation team, and how the responsibilities might be split among the client and ADD Systems?
Lisa: Yeah, of course! So right off the bat, we’re assigning one trainer, and one project manager who’s dedicated to the account. The trainer and the project manager, who’d be myself, will be their primary contacts throughout the whole implementation. We may from time to time introduce other folks from the ADDs Teams throughout the meetings. Maybe we need to bring in someone from Hardware for working on some VPN connections, but their primary contact will always be myself and a trainer, and I think that’s really important to have – two vocal people they know that they can always go to. They’re not calling in and getting a different person each time, they have dedicated people who are on their account. So for the majority of the tasks, we work right beside the customer and guide them. Of course, each implementation is unique, and some require more, some require less, some a lot more, some a lot less, and I’ll talk a little more later about communication but I think it’s a key part. I’ve had customers in the past who are – one in particular recently, I was following up to make sure we were going to meet a deadline, and I was maybe being a little pester-y, I’d call it checking in, and she finally said to me, “Lisa, I will let you know on Friday when I have this complete,” and I thought, okay, she needs less, right? But then there’s other times we have customers who want more. They’re very busy, and they know that if I don’t check in, AKA pester them, they’re not going to meet that deadline because they’re going to get sidetracked by five other things on the way to getting that task completed. They welcome that check in. So it’s really about just having the temperature check of your customer, knowing what they expect and what they need. There are certain tasks the client will need to begin the process on. For example, when we begin the building of their Pricebook, they will need to make that initial outreach to their vendors for a listing of all the items that they purchased from them. We ask them to do that because they have the contact with that vendor. Of course, if they are having an issue getting contact, getting any response from them, we will be happy to facilitate and jump in there as needed, but we do ask that they make that initial contact. But again, we’re side by side with them. If they have any issues, we want them to reach out to us. We never want the client to feel as if they’re on an island. We are always there to help them.
Brian: So what are some of the best ways a company can prepare for an implementation?
Lisa: That’s a great question, Brian! So I encourage customers to take time to review what they currently have set up. So this is a great opportunity to review your current processes and the data that you have; it’s a great time to have members of your team going through their daily activities, and taking note of the processes that they currently use. Is there something that can be enhanced? Now is the time to take a deeper dive into that, and look at what you currently have, how you currently process, and maybe where you could make some improvements. If you’ve been meaning to implement some changes, now’s the time to do that. If you want to make changes to your GL accounts, maybe tighten up categories in departments, maybe add Pricebook or move to an item level, now is the perfect time to do that. Another thing that I encourage folks to do, if you have time before we start the implementation, a great thing to do is identify your vendors. If you have a Pricebook, identify those vendors and start reaching out to them. That’s probably the most challenging part of an entire implementation, is the Pricebook and obtaining that information from your different vendors. There’s no reason that we can’t start that before we even kick off the implementation, if you’re comfortable with it. And if you’re comfortable with it, we can have a quick meeting before, I encourage it, and we can walk them through the process, and again, if you’re comfortable, I think it’s something that can really give you a leg up on the entire process. The other thing that I will say is, be sure that your staff is aware of your expectations. Lay out the plan for them beforehand. Let them know who will be needed for training, how long those training sessions will be, how often those training sessions will be, and identify their roles so they can plan accordingly.
Brian: Now let’s talk about transitions from a previous system. How do you handle this process?
Lisa: A lot of what I mentioned in the previous question would apply here. Whether you’re a brand new company, or you transitioned from another system, the process is quite similar. So we’re going to “build” your eStore, we’re going to build your Pricebook, and I think it’s really beneficial because it ensures that we’re reviewing every aspect of eStore with you, and training you on it. I think the biggest challenge for people overall is change, right? So people are apprehensive about change, and how do you handle that? It’s important to be upfront with them, from the beginning, all the way down to your store managers. Let them know that this change is going to be coming. Don’t keep them in the dark. Keep them aware of the target dates, the go live date, maybe even discuss how training will be held, and how they will be trained. Will they be trained directly? Will it be a train the trainer type of situation? I feel like the more you can share with them, the more that will help ease their anxiety.
Brian: Lisa, do you have any best practices for communication during an implementation in terms of best tools, meeting frequency, or team members?
Lisa: Yeah, absolutely! So this is again something we touch upon in discovery. I think it’s important to ask the customer, what works best for you? We may have some that prefer a text, phone call, or an email. I have some customers that would say point blank to me, “Do not email me. You will not get a response from me. You have to call me,” because they are just that busy. A lot of them are working in the stores, or they’re multitasking. It could be a smaller company, you know they wear a lot of different hats, and they’re not at their desk all day long, or looking at their phone, so a phone call for some people does work best. But again, we discuss that with them in discovery, what best works for them. So as far as frequency, it’s important in the beginning to set the stage for what the training sessions are going to be like. Do they have the ability to meet once a week? Do they really want to push along the implementation? Do they want to meet more frequently? Twice a week? So, I think it’s important again, check in with a customer, know what’s best for them. We can adapt to anything, eventually it will affect some of our target dates, possibly, but we can adapt to anything – once a week, twice a week, however you’d like it. We also want to discuss with them, what are the best tools for the meetings. Is it Teams? Is it a GoTo Meeting? Do they have microphones on their PCs? Do we need a call-in number? There’s nothing worse than getting on a call for a meeting and nobody can hear each other, because the other side doesn’t have a microphone on their PC. We want to just clear up those things in the beginning, and again, all of that is covered in discovery so we don’t have to worry about that being an issue later on.
Brian: Can you tell us about the project management and the check-ins on progress throughout implementation? Is a continuous monitoring done jointly with the client and what’s the frequency?
Lisa: So this is also pretty client-specific. It depends on the depth of the project, and what level of involvement they want. Understand that the eStore implementation isn’t very active implementation, so we have approximately 18 training sessions, and within those training sessions are multiple topics. We could say, “Alright we’re going to cover session three.” Session three may take three meetings to cover, so it’s not just 18 touchpoints with that customer, there’s going to be several meetings with them. However, on a higher level, I like to have a check-in with the overall team to review the project plan, because not everybody is involved in those training sessions. Some of you are team leads, or you’re project managers on the customer side, and you aren’t going to be involved in those sessions, and it’s important to keep everybody on the same page, and know where we are in the project plan. I like to review it, show them where we are, where we expect to be, where would they expect us to be. Are they comfortable with that? What are the milestones? Is Pricebook complete? Things like that. Are there any hurdles we need to get past? Have we had anything that’s kind of delayed the project a little bit, maybe someone on the customer side had to be absent for a while, take a leave of absence for a few weeks, someone was ill, all of those things are going to impact our project plan and our dates. And the best way to handle that, I feel, is to work with your client. Let them know what’s happening, let them know what impact that’s going to have, and let them make some of those decisions with you. I look at it as a team effort, and not just a team effort within ADD Systems, it’s a team effort with our client as well. We’re all together.
Brian: So let’s talk about the end of the project. How does it transition away from ADD’s Implementation team?
Lisa: So once the account is live and eStore training is complete, the stores are live, everyone is comfortable, we are ready to transition the account to support. So what does that actually mean? So the client will submit their request to the ADD Support team in various ways – it may be a phone call, an email, or through our portal. That call is analyzed and dispatched to the appropriate team, whether it be Hardware, eStore, or eCommerce. So this gets the support call to the appropriate area in the fastest time. And how do we handle that transition? So I’ll set up a call with the client and the manager of the Support area, walk them through the entire process, how to submit a support call, and what happens after that. They’re able to log in to the portal, check the status of that call, see where it is, and follow up if they want to send another message and say, “I need immediate attention to this – just following up, wondering where you are.” They can also add events to that call as well. We’ll also provide documentation on the process, so they can take that documentation back and share it with various people on their team, whoever they deem will be able to submit a support call.
Brian: So Lisa, what is your top advice for a company planning an implementation?
Lisa: I’m actually going to steal this and I have two, so I’m going to be a little greedy, Brian. My first one, is communication, from beginning to end. So that’s number one in our real lives, and our work lives. Communication – be open with us, tell us what your goals are, have those conversations with me. Let me know what your concerns are. Anything you can share with me and the team in the beginning will help. If it’s too much training, not enough training, too fast, you want it to go faster, tell me, have that communication with me, and believe me, it will help immensely in the project. My second thing I would say, join the ADD User Group. So at the end of implementation, once you’re live, you’re ready to go, we have a fabulous group called the ADD User Group. It’s a group comprised of peers from all other ADD System eStore customers. They meet monthly, and discuss different topics, and it can be an ADD Systems topic, it can be an eStore topic, it can be totally unrelated. So they will have conversations about who they use for their payroll provider, or who they use for advertising, things that are totally unrelated to eStore. They also do discuss eStore as well. Some will get out a question on a certain area of lottery processing, and they can bounce ideas off of each other. It’s a great group and I really encourage anybody who has eStore/Atlas to join that group.
Brian: Well, Lisa, I thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today.
Lisa: Thank you very much, Brian! I appreciate it.
Brian: To keep up with the latest happenings at ADD Systems, you could visit addsys.com/blog or connect with us on social media by following ADD Systems on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter/X. If you have any questions about ADDcast, feel free to reach out to us at ADDcast@addsys.com. Thanks for listening, and have a great day!
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