Blogs No Data Left Behind…
Once again it has been a long time since my last post. The biggest thing still taking up our time is helping our clients deal with the economy. Our clients along with most of the solid companies in the industry have already made all the cuts they make. They have stabilized their businesses by sizing their cost structure to deal with the realities of their revenue streams.
So what’s next? The smart contractors are preparing for the future. Economies cycle – it’s a fact. Truly strong businesses are built to survive in a downturn and have the systems to really thrive and grow when the market is growing.
One of the key systems a contractor relies on is their accounting, job costing and project management software. Today these are often found in integrated packages that minimize duplicate data entry and speed up data flow from one department to the next.
While we find these systems extremely valuable we are also know they are very difficult to implement and create a huge disruption to the business. We often caution our clients against the implementation of these systems unless there is a very strong business case and their team is truly ready for the challenge.
There are hidden challenges everywhere that typically surface within the first year. There are also tons of hidden opportunities but those don’t usually present themselves or provide any substantial return until year two or three. When it comes to big investments that have delayed gratification system conversions have to be near the top of the list!
One of my biggest personal frustrations with system conversions is the loss of relevant historical data to run analysis on. Typically one of the key drivers for a business to upgrade their software systems is that the current system lacks the management reporting required to support decisions effectively.
When you buy a new piece of software it should come with all kinds of detailed analysis tools and a great database structure. The rub is that without the historical data being there many of these tools are relatively useless for the first couple years until you really get comparative historical data.
Our financial and technical teams have been working hard during each conversion we manage to preserve as much historical data as possible. The focus is not just preservation but also having that data ‘Cleaned & Organized’ to reflect the current business model the contractor is working with.
This is a time consuming process and requires a lot of commitment up front but it absolutely can be done. The additional commitment up front definitely shortens the implementation timeline as well as providing a higher-quality conversion. There should be two primary focuses during a conversion:
- 1. No Data Left Behind: Including all the details from the prior system(s) and as much of the data that is stored in various little databases and spreadsheets throughout the company.
- 2. Minimal Disruption: Ideally this conversion process should provide an absolute minimum of business disruption. The learning curve for a new system is difficult enough to go through for the team. The faster the actual conversion happens the faster the learning curve can start.
When we see most conversions the data portion is OK at best. The historical data is usually brought over in summary and many times the structure remains the same even if the new system works completely differently. Why? There are two general reasons – (1) bringing over all data in detail that is cleaned and completely re-organized to match the current business model is VERY difficult. It requires a ton of up front planning; a lot of skill and a lot of desire. The second reason is also just as simple – many of the conversion consultants and the teams leading the conversion are accountants. Accountants typically works at a much higher level of summary than operations does. The data that is appropriate for accounting to be able to do their jobs effectively often leaves operations a little short.
We are by no means perfect at this however our technical and financial teams just managed our first conversion that was done ‘database-to-database’ where they cross-referenced all of the client’s data back 8 years enforcing their new business model on the historical data. During the process they combined data from two companies; two separate systems and a variety of spreadsheet data.
The point of ‘database-to-database’ is critical so let me describe briefly – the data was extracted live from the multiple databases. It was then run through a central database that ran a variety of the conversions and cleaning functions on the data. From there it was pushed into the new system in detail. Because the data never left a database we were able to work with it live and test right up to the last minute.
This allowed the conversion to happen quickly over a weekend with the contractor being able to leave their business for the weekend and come back on Monday morning dispatching service, writing POs and running their jobs from the new system.
The lessons learned were valuable for anyone involved in the system conversion process. We will be touching on more of the lessons learned in future posts but please don’t hesitate to ask any questions. We will post responses in the comments section of this post.
