Our five top tips on what you need to consider
A strong resourcing strategy is vital in ensuring your business transformation projects are completed successfully. Whether that’s working with the right specialist recruitment partner or ensuring your own internal processes are set up for success, it’s important you pay attention to the role a well-prepared resourcing strategy can play in improving your chances of success.
Choosing the right recruitment partner
For organisations looking to resource complex tech projects, I can’t emphasise how essential it is to be able to call on a Specialist ERP Recruiter. Organisations often assume their long-standing IT recruitment agencies will easily deal with requirements but end-up onboarding specialist recruiters further down the line when they struggle to deliver.
A recruiter capable of supporting cloud transformation must have:
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Maximum access to the relatively elite pool of local specialists within this area
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A high-level knowledge of the various ERP roles within the project team
A specialist recruiter with the ability to provide volume as well as a rapid response makes all the difference.
Other factors that would make your life easier are whether the recruiter has more than a superficial understanding of the technologies involved. Typically, this would be the case where recruitment firms also offer consulting services or have evolved from such. Recruiters from these firms are generally more capable of holding informative conversations with both the hiring managers and the candidates and the result is a more efficient delivery.
Deploying your own key resources
In almost all cases you will be commissioning one or more System Integrators (SI)/consultancies to deliver the solutions. However, it’s equally important to deploy your own key resources – to monitor and keep things on track and to pick up on any diversions from your envisioned path early. Example: you commission a side extension to your house and deploy and instruct a reputable builder. Would you leave them to it and only step in in the last minute when the construction is nearing completion or would you be making regular checks – are the right quality materials being used, will the dimensions meet your minimum requirements, are the doorways being cut out in the expected positions?
Typically, in a cloud transformation, you would have in place your own Programme/Delivery Manager, Solution Architects and Technical Architects. Don’t hold back though fear or lack of internal capability or budget – use experienced contractors. You may also consider keeping some of the less complex technical development tasks, such as reports development, in-house. Here, you will find opportunities for cost-savings, particularly if you are prepared to source from an experienced offshore resourcer.
Expect the Unexpected
Can you cope with surprises along the way? Be prepared for unexpected tasks and challenges, which require a temporary but rapid bolstering of resources to keep the project on track. For example, if late in the day a large batch of existing reports are identified by the business and are critical for go-live will you be able to boost the technical team capacity quickly enough with specialists who can hit the ground running or will you be forced to push out timelines?
In 2021 a significant change in legislation relating to tax liabilities of contractors (commonly referred to as IR35) was enforced.
Like many companies at the time, a major, high-profile client of ours was in the final phase of a lengthy and highly-complex transformation when they underestimated how their existing team members would react to this legislation change. Several key members of the team simultaneously gave notice and quit, with the project coming very close to being derailed as a result.
As a key supplier for the project, NU Concept Solutions, being a specialist provider in this area, were able step in and utilise our high-volume database of ERP expertise to offer a rapid response and minimise the impact of the mini-exodus.
The end result was that the project was successfully delivered and with minimal adjustment to delivery dates.
Don’t take shortcuts in the testing plan
Whether you assemble a testing team yourself or outsource it to your SI, you will want to ensure you have completed key test scenarios in your final pre-production environment before giving the green flag. There are many anecdotes to be told about organisations that didn’t do so and even though they recovered from slip-ups, the old adage “first impressions last” holds true and can result in disastrous implications for user acceptability of the new system.
It doesn’t end with go-live
When you move to the cloud, you will no longer need to physically host the system, nor will you need to maintain or upgrade the software. But you will need to make arrangements for ongoing enhancements, development requests, system administration activities and monthly or quarterly regression testing for key processes and functionality. These tasks will need to be handled either in-house or by a managed service provider.
NU Concept Solutions specialise in tier1 Cloud ERP, Business Intelligence and Infrastructure resourcing and are an established provider of offshore and international talent. If you would like to learn more around how we can support your resourcing strategy, simply reach out to us via the button below.