It is critical for Life Sciences companies to upgrade to the latest version of their CMMS software on an incremental basis. Many new releases include critical patch updates, may improve current business processes or offer additional software functionality. Upgrading also offers the ability to maximize return on investment with the software.
With a critical upgrade looming, it is vital for companies to reduce the amount of risk that they may have when transitioning through the upgrade process. That’s why we collected the 5 necessary steps to upgrading to a new CMMS or EAM in your facility. These 5 steps will help to you to establish a successful upgrade process. They will also provide the necessary, on-going support for the upgrade.
By following these steps you can:
- Identify and resolve any potential issues in deployment
- Utilize additional functionality
- Address all platform and hardware requirements
- Establish a plan for continued ROI after upgrade
- Minimize risk
Step one is the project assessment:
You want to assess the overall impact of the upgrade by identifying current infrastructure components, business processes, document models and potential data migration issues. With the collection of this information, you will set up the success of the remaining components of the upgrade process.
Step two is to define the upgrade strategy:
By utilizing the information gathered in the assessment conducted in step 1, you should now build out a technical and functional strategy. This will identify issues with the current system and how to best address them when upgrading your CMMS.
Step three is to establish the implementation and validation process:
In this stage, you should define a smooth roll-out process with built in scheduled timelines. This step is vital to minimize disruption to users and to establish a backup plan to guard against any unforeseen issues.
Step four is to gain user acceptance
Gaining user acceptance is one of the most important steps within the upgrade process. In this step, you should encourage early user involvement with training and demos to view new features. All user guides should be updated with new functionality and processes. In addition, by preparing a list of common issues or frequently asked questions, you can ward off any delay in user acceptance. Make sure that you provide a temporary sandbox where users can access the system.
Step five is the project launch and post deployment plan:
This step is also crucial in regards to a successful upgrade. You should lay out a plan to include user acceptance testing, post deployment support, production go live support and on-going support. This will help guarantee the completion of the CMMS upgrade.
By utilizing these steps, you can minimize errors and guarantee that return on investment is carried forward with your new CMMS upgrade.