Our on-going 9 user V14 upgrade at Wolverhampton was successfully completed today after a lot of hard work and effort from all involved with Clinical Lead Sally Horton
“really pleased with the outcome and how smoothly it has gone during the Go Live”.
We held a Dummy Go-Live 3 weeks ago – something we recommend to all sites as it allows sites to further test whilst having the support of our training and development team to find and resolve any outstanding issues in advance of the actual Go Live day which in turns allows for a much smoother transition.
Due to Covid-19, all training and Go-Live sessions were web based, something that has been the case for most installations over the past year.
We spent many hours with Sally, Shirley and Matt during this project working through processes, with any issues and change requests logged on our SOS reporting system. Trainer David was on hand throughout the project not only to fulfil the training needs but to also spend time with users analysing ticket requests and working together to ensure users will get the most out of their upgraded system going forward.
“Communicate! It’s definitely the key to success, don’t struggle away trying to work things out, talk to the experts.”
Sally Horton, Clinical Lead
Process Mapping is critical to project success and we encourage sites to spend adequate time at the beginning of the project reviewing existing processes to allow us to then demonstrate how they can be updated in the new version. We often find that processes tend to evolve during the upgrade process as the newer screens of v14 are explored in more and more detail. Speaking from experience Sally Horton offers a great piece of advice for any site looking to upgrade –
“Know your processes inside out before you start, and be open to looking at things from all angles, just because you’ve always done things one way, doesn’t mean another way won’t work for you.”
Data checking is a central task of Go Live Day. This vital step makes sure users are happy with the data that has converted across from the previous version into V14. The staff at Wolverhampton really got on board with this and grasped the importance of this task, spending a lot of time checking their data.
“The biggest piece of advice I can give to anyone looking at doing this is to allow time in bucket loads so that you can get through all the data checking.”
Sally Horton, Clinical Lead
By late morning, the project was signed off and the remainder of the day and the whole day after was spent with the Soft Options team supporting users to ensure they are able to carry out their tasks as expected with confidence and allows any questions and issues that may arise to be dealt with immediately.
Despite the initial unavoidable set back Covid-19 forced on the project it has since ran very smoothly and it is credit to the efforts of all those involved which enabled The Maltings Mobility Centre to successfully transition to BEST V14. We are very much looking forward to catching up with the users over the next few weeks to see how they are getting on.