Large technology projects: what you should consider to make them successful

We refer to a full service contract when it contemplates not only the functionalities and benefits of the new solution to be implemented but also the proposal and design of the main strategies to achieve the project.

The organization needs to prepare for the project to manage new needs and skills, temporary support during the project in different areas and the construction of teams with the best capabilities to be able to develop this fundamental stage.

We face a high impact on the application map: Analyzing the evolution strategy of the solution map, its integrations and support infrastructure allows us to determine the strategy for selecting a solution that balances the particular needs of the business and a robust and scalable application architecture.

There is an asymmetry of strengths and a high commercial complexity between client companies and technology providers. Companies carry out these types of projects every 15 or 20 years.

On the other hand, technology suppliers and partners sell and carry out these projects as a common basic practice. There are too many differences between capabilities.

The contractual management of a large project must mitigate its risks. Designing contracts accurately and appropriately makes it possible to manage economic impacts, for example, in terms of the use of technological components and licenses, or to ensure good management of responsibilities during the execution of services.

The difficulty in establishing the amount and return of the investment

Preparing an adequate business case that includes all the costs and benefits in each of the purchase and licensing alternatives allows you to negotiate the most convenient and flexible solution for the organization's roadmap.

Adopting a balanced evaluation model, which considers costs (fixed and recurring) and benefits (functional and technical) for the alternative that best suits the needs of the organization is one of the key pillars of the success of the evaluation process.

The project itself involves high complexity

Managing the project requires being able to attend and respond with agility to scope changes, definition needs, and unforeseen events that affect and compromise both the project focus and the organization's future roadmap.

To ensure results and reduce project risks and costs, the sooner you can complement your own work team with the assistance of an experienced team, the better.

These processes are usually undertaken in five stages:

• The definition of an application strategy that frames the new solution.
• The selection and acquisition of technological solutions and the key actors in the implementation.
• The project engineering, the “roll out” strategies, integration, testing, data migration, training and start-up, and post-conversion support and reinforcement, and the organization and start of the project.
• The execution of the project, the start-up and stabilization.
• The reinforcement of adoption and the assurance of the result.

Our experience shows that an additional investment of 3% to 5% of the project cost can avoid deviations of more than 20% or 30% of the budget and ensure that the transformation does not lose focus, is achieved and even ends up being adopted.

Conditions for success

In summary, for the transformation process to be successful it must have strategic lines and a clear direction, it must be comprehensively governed, ensuring quality, it must have visibility and internal and external impact, with a modular implementation, in phases, coexisting with the existing, etc.

Determining the need to hire an external consulting service to accompany the different stages of a large project is a decision resulting from the company's own capabilities to face the following challenges:

• Have methodological tools and a team of professionals (especially supervision and management) who have concrete experience in having participated directly and recently in similar projects.
• Have an independent view of software providers and implementers, which ensures objective control and allows mitigating the contractual management asymmetries mentioned previously.
• Prepare and mobilize the organization to prepare it for the implementation project, through communication and involvement in initial planning, development and implementation activities.
• Turn the project into an area to promote and agree on improvements to (operational and management) processes, taking advantage of the capabilities of the new solution.