Are You Managing the Project or Is the Project Managing You?
In the early stages of a startup business things can get crazy with everyone wearing multiple hats. There is a “just get ‘er done…” culture. But as the business grows, formal processes need to be developed and smart businesses look for systems that can help support their growth. In a 3PL operation, Business Management Solution (BMS) is the term given to a software application that often provides at least 2 key components, a Warehouse Management System, and an Accounting System. A WMS is important to manage inventory, process receipt and shipment orders and provides data for billing purposes. The accounting system handles the entire company accounting from AR/AP, Financial Reporting and Bank Account management.
The implementation of a BMS, or each of the sub-components can be daunting for some companies who run lean on resources and who are devoted to daily operations. Not only is an implementation challenging enough to answer the right questions and configure the settings in the system to provide the optimal software solution, but managing all the moving parts that go along with inventory management, such as EDI, barcode scanning, 3rd party software integrations, and report customizations can be overwhelming.
The best way to mitigate the risk of a slow or costly implementation is to utilize a formal project manager. The primary roles of project management are to:
- Understand the goals of the Key Project Stakeholders
- Gather requirements from Key Project Stakeholders
- Gather requirements from other affected business units
- Gather requirements from end-users
- Coordinate Project Planning with Vendor Resources and Consultants
- Prioritize Key Requirements
- Facilitate Communication and scheduling between Project Stake Holders (Sponsors), primary end-users, and Vendor subject matter experts
- Provide constant reporting of Budget, Milestones, Timelines, Priority changes amongst all parties.
Having a Project Manager Creates An Environment For Success
Through the use of Project Management, Camelot has witnessed impressive results with aligning expectations of all Project Stakeholders, achieving realistic and sometimes aggressive timelines, and preventing large budget overruns. As a project team works together for a long period of time, the resources can get comfortable and feed off of each other and this in turn creates a synergy which allows a project to prosper and achieve the most optimal results.
During your next Implementation, consider hiring a project manager from your vendor as they are experts in requirement gathering for your industry, familiar with the resources who will take care of you, and will hold all parties accountable, including themselves, for moving an implementation along the quickest and most accurate.