There are few things more frustrating than watching somebody struggle to succeed when the key to their success is within their grasp. My dog Kobe (an 80lb labradoodle who thinks he’s a lapdog and acts like a toddler) will often exert enormous amounts of effort trying to retrieve his ball out from behind the couch, unaware that all he has to do is walk around to the other side of the piece of furniture.

I felt a similar way watching companies struggle with their digital transformations when I saw there was a way to achieve predictable results and repeatable success with the right process. It was so frustrating! Today I want to share with you my journey and why I believe that Victoria Fide Consulting holds the answer to the digital transformation dilemma.

In fact, I believe (along with the rest of the leadership team) so strongly in Victoria Fide’s goal to achieve a 95% project success rate, that we instituted a groundbreaking Client Success Guarantee. In conjunction with our proven Process for Transformational Change ™, this guarantee demonstrates our commitment to our mission, core values, and our clients’ success.

How can we be so confident? Join me and find out as I share my experiences with companies struggling and failing in their implementations, and how my dream for a better way became a reality and is on its way to radically changing the digital transformation industry.

Learning From Failed Implementations: My Entry to ERP Systems

Fresh out of college, I started working part time at a local manufacturing company as a documentation specialist. It wasn’t my dream job, but I was interested in getting my feet wet in the corporate world and figured I could apply for IT openings there as they came up. To my surprise, the opportunity to move into IT came quicker than expected and with a much different role than I had anticipated. They had started an ERP implementation project and needed a Business Systems Analyst.

Although I had never heard of an ERP system, technology came easy to me and I was excited to learn, so I jumped at the chance. The next six years were full of learning opportunities and growth. I experienced all sorts of ERP implementation challenges and experienced what worked and what didn’t. Many of those challenges are ones lots of you can relate to, including:

• Implementation consultant turnover
• Internal project leadership turnover
• Delayed timelines
• Unmet requirements and constant changing scope
• High amounts of customization and technical challenges
• Limited project team member availability as internal team members balanced their existing roles with their added project team roles
• Challenges with user buy-in

Ultimately, our first ERP project failed after 2+ years and we started over with a new ERP system, which took us the next 3+ years to get across the finish line. While those 6 years weren’t easy, I learned a lot, and by the end of that time I had become an expert in most areas of the system.

From there I moved on to an implementation consulting company and spent the next 7 years of my career helping other companies with their implementations. I filled many different roles including business analyst, functional consultant, project manager, and solution architect. During that time, I saw too many projects go through the same types of challenges, usually ending over time, over budget, and with less functionality than originally planned.

A Catalyst for Change: It Doesn’t Have to be This Way

Tory Bjorklund and I started talking about our shared experiences of seeing too many projects fail. We both believed that these projects could have succeeded, and we talked about the root causes for the failures. We also talked about the processes we had followed where we saw successes, and we realized that consistently following a proven process could guarantee a successful project.

I didn’t want to keep doing the same thing every other implementation company was doing, and I didn’t want to watch companies fail when I knew how to make them successful. It was apparent to me that to truly help companies be successful, I needed to sit on their side of the table. I got excited thinking about helping individuals be successful in their roles on the project and, in turn, helping the company be successful by completing their transformation initiatives within their self-defined success criteria.

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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 today to find out how Victoria Fide can equip you for transformational success.

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Shifting the Paradigm: The Birth of Victoria Fide

Over the early months of 2021, the three of us founders (Tory Bjorklund, Ramesh Singh and I) spent a lot of time taking our shared experiences and defining a proven process that would address all the common pitfalls of a digital transformation. We knew that we had the key to success and were excited to change the narrative around project success rates one project at a time. Our 10-year goal: to have at least 95% of our projects succeed as measured by our clients’ success criteria. Our passion: to change the industry and see the statistics of failed implementations drop significantly.

It’s been an exciting start to the journey. We’ve already achieved a high number of successful projects, and we have numerous client testimonies that reflect this:

One surprising lesson we’ve learned about challenging the norm is that it requires educating companies on what success could look like. People have become accustomed to seeing transformation projects fail and most just hope to eventually complete their project with at least 70% of the intended benefits. We hold ourselves to a higher standard and work to educate our clients that they should strive for a higher standard as well. Our definition of success is on time, on budget, and meeting 100% of the business success criteria defined at the onset of the project.

Exciting News: Ensuring Success for all Companies

We have implemented an exciting initiative in 2024: Equipping CXOs to be successful with their self-driven initiatives. The best way to change the status quo is for companies to take back control of their digital transformation (DX) projects. With this in mind, we are releasing regular free content that boils down our proven process into tangible, tactical guides to help CXOs be successful on their DX journey.

This content can be found here on our website, on our LinkedIn page, and our YouTube channel. By following these principles, you will be well-positioned to lead your organization to DX success. However, if you would rather entrust digital transformation experts with your success, our Client Success Guarantee offers you the assurance you need that your initiatives will succeed.

This contractual guarantee is our promise that you can experience a higher level of DX success than most people believe is possible, and we are committed to proving it to you. I am particularly excited about this guarantee as it is why I helped found Victoria Fide in the first place. If you have a transformation initiative in the works and you want to have assurance that it will succeed, book a meeting with me and I will share how our guarantee can give you peace of mind as you pursue your transformational goals.

About the Author

Adele Graser is the Chief Operating Officer of Victoria Fide Consulting. For more than 13 years she has worked to help companies implement complex solutions and make significant, disruptive business process changes. One of Adele’s greatest passions is to enable people and organizations to realize their full potential. Her approach with consulting is to not only help design solutions that follow generally accepted best practices, but to also help team members understand and take ownership of those solutions. She has a great mix of visionary, detail oriented, and communication strengths that allow her to see the big picture, translate that into a tactical plan, and communicate the vision to many different levels of an organization.