Tips for Implementation Success.
The power of an idea is in its implementation.
Ever heard that line? It’s one of my favourites. It’s great to come up with a grand plan, but unless you can execute it successfully it’s just a fantasy. At Expensify, the Success Coaches are here to help you implement successfully, but before you even get to that point there are a lot of key things you can do ‘pre-implementation’ to ensure success.
If you have used a similar expense management platform before, or you’ve used Expensify at another business, you may be up and running within hours. If not, here are a few tips from our Success team to get you up and expensing as quickly as possible.
1. Create an Implementation Team
A team of two is still a team. It’s great to have a sounding board and support when rolling out a solution which will, in reality, affect nearly everyone in your business. Decide who will do what and have regular meetings to ensure you stay on track. There will be information to gather, data to input, testing to be done, and the wider team to train.
2. Change Management
It’s important for team members to feel like they have some input in the early stages. If you let your team know what’s happening and when, and what’s expected of them, you’ll get better buy-in further down the line. Sure you may get the odd grumble at first, your team members are human after all. But keep them involved and listen to what they have to say.
3. Plan, Plan, Plan
When do you want to be ‘Live’ with Expensify? Work backwards from there. Your timeline will depend on how many decision makers are involved and how busy they are, so don’t forget to think about what Senior Management are up to in your timeframe. Be careful around busy times of the year – ideally, you want Expensify in place well before the busy season starts, not trying to implement as it hits.
The Expensify implementation process is relatively fast and you can be up and running within a few days, however don’t forget to allow time for your internal stakeholders to communicate. For a team of under 20 you can likely have everything up and running within two weeks, if not sooner. If you have 100 users, you may want to roll it out to one focused group first, refine your processes, and then launch to the wider team a few weeks later.
4. Process Management
Expensify will be a new way of doing things, and while you definitely don’t want to make the new thing into the old thing, you will need to think about process management. Will the team now need to spend 10 mins per week doing something they used to save up until the end of the month? Did they use to rely on the admin or finance team to do it for them? Think about what their new workflow will be and lay it out for them so they can plan it into their daily life. Where your old process may have started with the office scanner/copy machine, it may now start at the café. Maybe you have paper-based processes which can now be retired? You may have entire portions of the expense management process which are no longer needed or are done by a different person.
Trialling, setting up and implementing Expensify will go alongside your own internal planning and management. Our Success Coaches are here to help you with Expensify, and we can give some best practice advice, but the major changes internally will be related to your team: real people, not just software.
