When it Comes to Deployment, An Ounce of Prevention is Worth a Pound of the Cure

Organizations seeking to engage a new solution for the management of their human capital may have differing motivations for doing so. For some it may be a matter of their contingent workforce costs simply being out of control. For others, impeded visibility may be hampering their ability to make appropriate staffing level decisions. Whatever the motivation, they all share one common desire: to find the solution that best fits their organization’s needs and get it deployed as quickly and as painlessly as possible.

The benefits of a managed service solution – cost savings, improved visibility, increased risk mitigation, enhanced process efficiencies – are so alluring and frequently so desperately needed that organizations fall into the trap of viewing a solution’s implementation as at best a necessary evil and at worst a mere formality to be dispensed with as quickly as possible. Many solution providers tacitly validate this perception by purporting to be able to successfully deploy programs in as little as six weeks using a phased approach to implementation.

As long-time practitioners of human capital management with scores of successful client programs worldwide, Volt Consulting - Managed Service Programs knows that nothing is more critical to the success of an MSP over the entire lifecycle of the program than proper planning and implementation at the outset. It is during this sensitive period at the inception of a program, that a multitude of customer processes, practices, and customizations must be fully understood and addressed. Failing to do so can have serious ramifications and significant consequences once the program has been launched and the implementation team has long since departed. Any number of errors during the critical implementation process can literally bring a program to the brink of failure, resulting in unacceptable expenditures of both time and money. Many times this leads an organization to come to the unfortunate conclusion that the solution to managing their human capital issues is worse than the problem itself.

The answer to this unfortunate happenstance is just what you might expect; that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. It is undoubtedly much wiser to spend a few extra weeks at the outset to ensure an implementation is performed methodically and with great attention to detail than to save those extra weeks at the expense of the entire initiative. This is why Volt Consulting MSP advises prospective clients to allocate a sufficient period of time to properly and comprehensively implement their program. Other solution providers, claiming to be able to produce the same results in as few as six weeks, are selfishly accomplishing two, self-serving goals. First they are telling the prospective client something they want to hear, quite possibly at the expense of the program’s success. Second they are saving themselves time and resources by selling the idea that the task can be performed without applying in-depth six sigma methodologies to the implementation process and without devoting the same level of the expertise and experienced resources that Volt Consulting MSP dedicates to the deployment of its managed services solution.

Visit our website today to download our latest white paper devoted specifically to this topic. Entitled, “Mind the Old Saw, ‘Measure Twice, Cut Once’ - Why a Meticulous Implementation & Solution Deployment Strategy is Critical”, the paper illustrates the dangers of short changing implementation. Learn about the best practices for implementation that our organization has developed over decades of service to global businesses and through scores of successful implementations.