Making the plunge as ainless as possible

Convert your computer system with minimal disruption

By John LaFave Trainer/Consultant

Spruce Computer Systems

Latham, N.Y.

VOU know you're going to have to I make the decision at some point. You need a new computer system and maybe, just maybe, another vendor offers a system that looks better than the one your current vendor has.

The world does not have to fall apart just because you have to switch systems, but to be honest, it can. How can you avoid catastrophe on your live date? Here are a few thoughts, using the examples of "Together Lumber" and "Fireman Lumber." Hopefully after reading this you won't have to ask which would be the successful company and which would have problems:

Appoint a strong manager to oversee the transition. If you already have one, give him or her the time needed to get the job done right. Sorry, but no matter what system you choose, someone will have to spend time planning, learning, training, and checking conversion data. The personality of the person matters more than you may think, too. If they are reluctant to step on toes, if they tend to let things slide, or if they are disorganized, you'd better be prepared for problems on your live date.

The owner of Together Lumber decides that their controller. Ann. would be the best person for the job. She is not squeamish about pushing stragglers, whether they are Together employees or late-paying customers.

She commits to accomplishing tasks and, though you might not like her initial estimate of the time it will take, she always gets the job done when she says she will. She is smart and she knows everything about the customers and a fair amount about the store's inventory as well. She tries to

Conversions are a great work saver. This does not imply that they are, or should be, workjree, learn things on her own but only to a point, after which she asks someone who knows. Employees don't always like her, but they do respect her. Ann will be delegating some of her normal payables and receivables duties to her assistant and a few selected others during the transition period.

Fireman Lumber comes to the conclusion that they need to hire a systems person. They have needed one anyway, and no one among their current employees will have the time to devote to the transition. They hire a recent Data Processing graduate, Tom (good GPA, good school, good recommendations). Though he doesn't know the business yet and he hasn't earned the respect of anyone on the staff, he does know PC technology and networking, he interviews well, and he is their largest customer's son. Make a list of things to do and use it. Your vendor may supply you with a "Things to Do Before Going Live" checklist, so ask for one. If they don't, then ask them to look through the one you create and let you know what they would change-they have presumably been through it a lot of times and can really help with your preparations.

Ann gets a list e-mailed to her from their new computer vendor so she can edit it, deleting things that don't pertain and adding things she thinks of. She also adds a column for an expected completion date and check boxes to mark when each task is completed.

Tom figures he can write down things to do as they come up in training. Take advantage of your trainer. Make it clear to your people that you expect no down time while the trainer is on site-arrangements should be made so no one is interrupted with phone calls or "emergencies" while a person is being trained. If you are saying to yourself, "Hmmph, this guy doesn't understand that in real life the customer demanding delivery this afternoon is more important than the suit from the computer company telling me how to run my business," then you will be paying good money for a trainer to wait for people, and the end result is that people won't be properly trained.

Ann sends training schedules to involved employees and tells them that they will be totally unavailable during the training sessions so they should make arrangements to have other people available to answer questions about existing issues. She feels that the best way to take care of customers is to know the new system when they go live, and she plans on making sure every employee gets the message.

Tom is really busy setting up the network and the new cable Internet connection, but he's smart enough about computers to figure out what he needs to know. He certainly doesn't need to be in all of the training sessions.

Ask, don't assume. If you don't get the answer you want from your vendor's documentation within a few minutes of looking, ask your trainer, who can often answer you in a twominute phone call. Ann becomes adept at doing searches through the electronic documentation her vendor has supplied. When context-sensitive help on the test system and a documentation search fail to come up with the answer she needs, though, she calls and getsthe answer. There's spending time and there's wasting it, and she pays attention to the difference.

Tom is a real cando guy. He never stops to ask for directions and he never calls his trainer. It's a matter of pride and principle even if it takes all day to come up with the answer to a question.

Try real transactions on the test system you are given (or Test, Test, Test). Every employee should be spending time on the new system every day for several weeks prior to going live. No exceptions. I like to see people taking real transactions from their "old" system and running them through their new system's test branch. This will result in questions, the questions will result in answers, and the users will be ready when the transactions become real. Never assume things will work the way they do on your prior system just because it makes sense-there is more than one way to make sense, and such assumptions are just ways to avoid having to test.

Ann requires that everyone work 15 minutes per day putting through a variety ofthe transactions they had on their active system that day. She places special emphasis on transactions that are somehow out of the ordinary, since she knows they are the ones least likely to be remembered from a training session that may have happened weeks before.

Tom understands that people on his sales floor are busy. He tells them to practice in the test system whenever they get a chance, and he sincerely hopes they will get lots of chances since it is January and things are slow.

Check the dan. Conversions are a great work saver. This does not imply that they are, or should be, work-free. It is imperative that you check converted data for potential problems. Are the customer names in the appro- priate format for the new system, or will Larry Smith and Angstrom

Construction be converted to LarrySmith and Construction, Angstrom? Are barcodes working on the new system? Is that the phone number in the phone number field, or the fax number? Will units of measure work, or will the price of a stud be $247,000 due to a problem with conversion factors? Will vendor terms carry over to the new system?

Ann spends lots of time on each converted file. She checks a wide variety of items (lumber, hardware, moulding, insulation, roofing, etc.) and customers (balance forward, open item, single-job, multiple-job, cash, charge, large, small, retail pricing and special pricing). She runs statement examples. She asks that the converted data be put in her test branch so she can run sales through. When she has come up with a list of potential problems, she informs the conversion people. Once they reconvert, she does it all again, just to make sure. Then she calls her trainer and goes through several examples from each converted file, knowing that someone familiar with the system may well see potential problems where she didn't know they existed.

Tom checks a t'ew items and a few customers. He doesn't know some of the fields, but things look OK from what he can see. He has to get a new laptop, so he makes a mental note to later review the data in more detail.

Tom can, and will, go live some day. It probably won't be when he hopes, and it probably will verge on disaster. His customers will have weeks of headaches due to processing and procedural errors, and ultimately he will spend more time chasing problems than Ann spent avoiding them. Ann, of course, will have a few problems, but they will be quickly solved.

Successful conversions take time and effort, but that time and effort is expended in advance and it has no negative impact on customers. Is it worth it? You be the judge.