Implementation Assessment
The challenge
A Connecticut based Toro distributor proving commercialand retail turf products, and irrigation solutions engaged RSM McGladrey’s CFO Advisory Services Group to performan assessment of its Financials and Distribution implementation that has beenongoing for over two years, and to develop a roadmap for the completion of theeffort.
The Company has hadmultiple, and sometimes conflicting business priorities. This has included the divestment of adivision, finding solutions for the decline in growth, and alternative foci ofthe Accounting department. In addition,the effort has faced several day to day challenges including a lack of projectmanagement, a lack of accountability, poor communication, and resource constraints. These issued coupled with the failure toutilize a proven methodology led to several misguided attempts to go-live, allof which resulted in a two year unsuccessful effort.
The solution
RSM McGladrey’s CFO AdvisoryServices Group performed a detailed assessment of the implementation activitiesperformed to date. This included thereview of all project documentation, such as the current configuration, businessrequirements, development specifications, conversion routines, testingdocumentation, and training materials.
This roadmap provided theCompany with a clear path to success. The solution also included the following critical success factors:
- Leadership - Strong projectleadership and executive sponsorship.
- Accountability - Measurableproject performance metric, greater communication of project objectives, andaccountability by project team members and stakeholders.
- Focus On Execution - Clearset of project goals and expectations, proven methodology and tools, identificationand management of issues, dependencies and risks, and a well definedcommunication plan.
- Team Work - Develop plan toretain key team resources and get buy-in from the team, increase the level ofend-user / field participation, develop a “teaming agreement” to get buy-infrom all teams such that everyone is equally committed to the success of theproject.
The results
RSM McGladrey’s CFO AdvisoryServices Group provided a detailed roadmap to successfully complete the applicationimplementation. This plan included aproven implementation methodology that would guide the organization through theproject tasks and activities. Thesolution also provided details on remediating the project deficiencies and inefficiencies.
