Phased Adoption - Overview

Overview

Information Technology has revolutionized the way of working in organizations (Eason, 1988). With the introduction of high-tech Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (ERP), Content Management Systems (CMS), Customer and Supplier Relationship Management Systems (CRM and SRM), came the task to implement these systems in the organizations that are about to use it. The following entry will discuss just a small fraction of what has to be done or can be done when implementing such a system in the organization.

The phased approach takes the conversion one step at a time. The implementation requires a thoroughly thought out scenario for starting to use the new system. And at every milestone one has to instruct the employees and other users. The old system is taken over by the new system in predefined steps until it is totally abounded. The actual installation of the new system will be done in several ways, per module or per product and several instances can be carried out. This may be done by introducing some of the functionalities of the system before the rest or by introducing some functionalities to certain users before introducing them to all the users. This gives the users the time to cope with the changes caused by the system.

It is common to organize an implementation team that moves from department to department. By moving, the team learns and so gains expertise and knowledge, so that each subsequent implementation will be a lot faster than the first one.