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Rolling Out the Red Carpet

Your customer has been won over by your superior technology and has placed an order. It is an exciting time with high levels of interaction and everyone involved is in a positive frame of mind, anticipating, perhaps impatiently, the deployment of the solution.

The implementation team has been
involved – to varying degrees – throughout
the decision making cycle, but now they are front and center. All eyes are focused
on them, and on how they will deliver what best-laid.

In many cases, this is where things
may start to go wrong. The assurances made during the sales process may seem like
stuff of fantasy when real-world issues are staring you in the face.

At 1touch.io, we understand that a successful deployment is fundamental to laying the foundation for a strong partnership for many years to come. This is one of our core values, and we achieve this by:

  1. Having a realistic
    plan that meets the timeline of the customer, with achievable milestones that reflect true progress.
    Each milestone must show increasing value to the business;
  2. Ensuring that the customer
    deployment team and the supplier deployment team act as a single team, despite
    potentially differing priorities. When you establish an equal partnership,
    you create a smoother working environment;
  3. Always remembering that this
    project is just one set of activities in which the customer is engaged.
    Therefore, advance warning when milestones are at risk is critical. No-one
    likes to receive bad news, especially at the last minute, and no-one enjoys sharing
    bad news. However, timely and pro-active updates provide an
    opportunity to demonstrate the necessary integrity, and they allow the customer
    to adjust their plans as required;
  4. Sharing our expertise for
    the betterment of the deployment. We teach, we don’t just do. For example, the customer might wish to
    accelerate a phase of the plan to show value sooner; but experience shows that
    the consequence of that change may be to push other phases past
    their deadlines. If the customer insists despite the cost, the changes must be
    explained, understood, and mutually acceptable;
  5. Providing periodic updates to the project sponsors that are
    consistent, accurate, and actionable where necessary. It is very tempting to
    create separate update notes for the different stakeholders, but this never
    works. The supplier and the customer are one team and must have an open
    dialogue.

But even these best-laid plans do not always succeed. Why do some deployments not work out as well as hoped? Find out here.

The post Rolling Out the Red Carpet appeared first on 1touch.io.


*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from 1touch.io authored by Mark Wellins. Read the original post at: https://1touch.io/blog/deployment-plan-rolling-red-carpet/