The Workflow Day

The first workflow day was held, as planned, on 26 June. Each member of the project steering committee (the ‘key people’) was charged with voicing the opinions and requirements of their respective teams. The steering committee had rapidly evolved from the initial project team in the light of the re-scoping of the project. The Sales Manager, Marketing Manager and Human Resources Manager and Finance Officer were now included. The steering committee agreed that all T.Co personnel needed to have the opportunity to be included in the project to ensure minimum resistance to change27. The day was organised to begin with an initial full committee meeting and then sub meetings for the various phases which would include the various members of the steering committee as necessary. The Consultant from Vendor E began the meeting with an introduction to his company and the package and outlining the purpose of the day as getting an overall specification for T.Co. He

was quick to point out within the first 20 minutes that although the package was highly customisable “sometimes the organisation has to bend toward the product as well” and “ you may transfer work practices from other organisations”. The meeting then moved on to looking at the product. The Consultant said that it was the groups decision as to how they wanted to work with the product and pressed the point that if “you don’t say it, you don’t get it”.

The Consultant asked for the committee’s requirements. This led to around twenty minutes of various members of the steering committee articulating their requirements in a rather un-orderly fashion. I intervened at this stage and suggested it might be a good idea to start at the beginning of the process. This meant starting with the generation of sales. The discussion then proceeded with various staff illustrating the journey. The Consultant would then configure the package in front of the staff (a projector had been linked to his laptop). As this progressed, T.Co staff refined and generated further requirements as they began to see what the application was capable of. Where requirements could not be solved by configuration, the Consultant made notes to investigate this further. It was very clear that the Consultant had not familiarised himself with the documentation sent to his company, as part of the tendering process as he had no concept of the basic workings of T.Co in terms of processes or terminology. For example, the nature of the business, the role of consultants, the nature of sponsors and of clients had to be explained to him by various members of the committee which frustrated them. At a coffee break, I asked the Research Manager, Sales Manager and Human Resources Manager how they thought things were going. As the quotes below demonstrate, they were worried about he capabilities of the Consultant and the package.

“He hasn’t read the documentation [T.Co’s requirements specification], he could have least have done that.” (Research Manager)

“I hope this is going to get better, it’s a bit of a waste of time at the moment. Is Goldmine going to do what we want?” (Sales Manager) “I’ve only just joined the company and I know more than he does, he’s just not prepared.” (Human Resources Manager)

Table 5.5 details some of the ‘highlights’ from the meeting. Table 5.5: Highlights from Workflow Day 1.

The Sales Manager wanted to be able to convert a client into a sponsor – it was discovered that Goldmine could not do this. A new record had to be created and this meant that the history regarding the sponsor (as a client) would be lost. She did ask if Goldmine would ever be able to do this and the consultant said, yes, if enough customers asked for it.

The Research Manager virtually swooned when she was offered the pipeline functionality in Goldmine for client-tracking purposes. However, it was not possible to construct individual pipelines that reflected an individual clients progress. Nor was it possible to create various standard pipelines which reflected various T.Co products and the points at which clients would normally be expected to have done things by as shown earlier in

Every member of the team got involved in some form of selling of the package in terms of trying to make it more appealing to T.Co. In effect, we helped the Consultant sell his product to us. For example, there were many occasions where staff agreed to change ways that they worked because the system could not facilitate the processes as they stood at T.Co at present.

The Sales Manager wanted reminders to be set automatically for follow up actions. That is for example, if a brochure was sent to a potential sponsor – a reminder would be set to follow up with a telephone call 7 days later. The Consultants initial position was that this was not possible, but I knew from a previous implementation that I had been involved with that it was. I asked the Consultant about this and he said it would take more time to configure the software – but agreed to do it.

The Consultant interpreted the staff being very specific about their requirements as ‘naval gazing’, stating that they were getting ‘into the detail’. He also took a ‘U’ turn in that he said the purpose of the day was to focus upon Sales, not other areas of T.Co.

By the end of the day, staff still felt very uneasy about the selection of Goldmine and these concerns were reported to the Managing Director. An email exchange also took place a few days after. The Managing Director had contacted Vendor E to express his concerns and had been advised to wait for the workflow document to be delivered. The Managing Director had also asked the IT Manager to write to the

Consultant at Vendor E outlining the issues. Before the letter was sent it was passed by the Managing Director who watered it down and sent it as an email himself. The email stated that he was disappointed as he thought that he had determined that Goldmine was the right product. Furthermore, he had assumed the workflow day would be about aligning T.Co processes with those embedded within Goldmine, rather than working out if Goldmine was the right product; and that he would wait for the documentation to be delivered before deciding whether to proceed. He then sent a further email to the members of the steering committee. In this email, the Managing Director made several points:

- He felt the problems had been caused by the attitude of the consultant. - He was convinced that Sage and Goldmine would work together. - Data cleansing was a necessity

- The consultant was the only project manager Vendor E had so they would have to work with him

- He suspected that the salesperson that came before had raised ‘our’ expectations; possibly, to unreasonable levels and that the Consultant had possibly moved too far the other way.

I responded in broad agreement with the Managing Director although I added four points:

- Data cleansing was not just about inaccurate data entry; it was mostly because they had eight pools of overlapping data.

- The Consultant did not get up to speed with how T.Co does business so he could not show the benefits of Goldmine in T.Co terms.

- Because of this, his focus upon getting T.Co to bend to match the software aggravated the situation as staff felt they had to change to something that was inferior. I pointed out that the staff had been very positive about learning new ways and working with the package to start with.

- In order to find out about the package, the team had found it necessary to report their requirements but the Consultant had interpreted this as getting into too much detail. I stated that this was very important to ensure that T.Co got the most from the finite functionality available. I also pointed out that, when pushed, the Consultant revealed functionality that he said was not available and suggested that Vendor E may want to implement the most basic model of the package with minimal configuration.

The IT Manager also responded to the email reinforcing the need for the data clean up and the ability of T.Co to develop a good working relationship with the Consultant and Vendor E. This exchange was followed by a meeting of the project steering committee, with the Managing Director, on the 5th of July. The purpose was to determine the best way forward. The main thrust of this meeting was the Managing Director got people to confirm that Goldmine could ‘broadly’ do what T.Co required. For example, at one point the Managing Director said “…we know there are problems with Goldmine, but can it do most of what we want – yes or no?”

The Managing Director really wanted a yes or no answer. The majority of the committee therefore acquiesced. On this basis, the decision to proceed with

Goldmine was made. However, this was not communicated to Vendor E, the Managing Director wanted to be completely sure Goldmine was the right product and wished to wait for the workflow document to arrive.