Achieving a successful system implementation is only the first step in any digital transformation journey. Many CXOs view go-live as the finish line, but in reality, it’s the starting point of a much larger effort. Simply having the right systems and processes in place doesn’t guarantee that your desired business outcomes will naturally follow.

In this article series, we’ll examine the common challenges businesses face after go-live, why these issues arise, and how to effectively sustain your transformation to realize the full potential of your implementation investment. If you’re a CXO interested in ensuring that your transformation will deliver measurable, sustainable results, this series is for you.

Why Go-Lives Are the Wrong Finish Line

Most implementation plans end shortly after go-live. We’ve seen it time and time again: Once a company reaches go-live, there may be a plan in place for enhanced support and possibly additional end-user training, but there are seldom any plans to assess the business impact of the implementation. As a result, after spending millions of dollars and many sleepless nights, a company seldom knows if their implementation realized the intended benefits.

This reality stems from a few assumptions about digital transformation:

Assumption #1: Once users are trained, they will follow the process.

The truth is change is hard. Even with the best training and communication efforts, there will still be a learning curve for end-users as they adjust to new systems, processes, and ways of working.

Assumption #2: After Go-Live, all that’s left is to fix minor bugs or optimize a few areas.

No matter how much testing and preparation is done, there will always be unexpected issues and areas for improvement that arise after go-live. It’s important to have a plan in place to address these issues and continuously optimize the system.

The reality is, using a new system does NOT automatically mean a business has been transformed.

Go-live is not the finish line, but rather the starting gate for transformation.

When leaders fail to understand this and neglect to continue fostering the transformation well after go-live, several problems can occur:

• Team members don’t understand why processes have changed and revert back to previous practices.

• Team members spend time mapping old procedures onto new systems rather than spending time savings on new, value-add tasks.

• The new systems or processes don’t function as well as expected, leading to a loss in ROI.

• Little to no data measurements are implemented, so the company is not aware if they’ve achieved their original goals or not.

If you want to experience true transformation and know whether you’ve achieved your desired outcomes, you must put into practice activities that will monitor, measure, and maintain the results of your digital transformation initiative. At Victoria Fide Consulting, we call this the Sustain stage.

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Transformation is not easy, but it doesn’t have to be impossible. Take control of your project’s success today and schedule a free 30-minute consultation to find out how Victoria Fide can equip you for transformational success.

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The Sustain Stage: The Key to Long-Term DX Success

After preparing and executing a large transformation, you must take proactive measures to sustain the changes. This process rests on three core pillars: Monitor, Measure, and Maintain.

First, you must put into practice activities that will monitor and measure the results of the initiative. Then, if your implementation has not achieved the desired outcomes, you must implement changes until you do achieve them. Finally, you must regularly continue this process in order to maintain the outcomes and become a truly transformed business.

The Sustain stage helps organizations implement a culture of innovation and continuous improvement by shifting the focus from a project methodology – implementing an initiative – to a product methodology – maintaining and continuously improving your transformed business processes and capabilities. Moreover, activities in the Sustain stage empower your team members to truly understand how to be successful in their role and encourage them to look for ways to innovate. Empowered team members become excited for change and limit the risk of change fatigue.

This critical stage of digital transformation provides leaders with a clear and measurable ROI for the initiative, demonstrating not only that you have met your goals but also that you are positioned to exceed them and drive ongoing growth. It’s during this stage that companies become truly agile, adapting quickly to changes, and staying ahead of their competition.

Is the Sustain Stage Really Worth it?

You may wonder, “Is it really worth the extra effort?” We hear you. After finishing a long, arduous project, the last thing you want to think about is continuous improvement. Your team may be burnt out and just want to coast for a while. Maybe you have other initiatives waiting in the background that you don’t feel like you can keep putting off. While these are real concerns, take a minute to consider what the cost is of NOT taking time to sustain your transformation.

If there are pain points from the implementation that go unresolved, your team will become more burned out. Moreover, if there are issues and users aren’t following the process, it generally takes months to even realize it without active monitoring, at which point resolving the issues is much more difficult and costly as it requires breaking bad habits that have already set in, not to mention the loss of efficiency over those months.

Finally, jumping into the next initiative without properly sustaining the initiative you just completed likely means you will never fully realize the benefits of that initiative and your ROI will be significantly lower if not completely non-existent.

Take the Next Step Toward Sustainable Growth

If you’ve invested the time and resources to implement a large-scale digital transformation, why wouldn’t you invest an additional – yet relatively smaller – amount of time and resources to ensure it delivers on its expected promises?

Over the next few months, we will be introducing and dissecting the activities within the Sustain stage of our proven Process for Transformational Change to help CXOs like you ensure the long-term success of your transformational initiatives and create a resilient company equipped to thrive in the quickly evolving business world. Stop treating your post-go-live activities as an afterthought and start treating them as the essential keys to success they are.

Have questions? Drop a comment below or contact us to talk to our digital transformation experts. Stay informed by subscribing to our newsletter for updates and future articles in this series and visit our website for more information on our proven Process for Transformational Change.

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