The five phases of successfully implementing 365 Business Central

Martin talked to Bart Vanbelle from Belgium who is Business Consultant with the Belgian partner ESC. Bart’s background is different from all the guests in the podcast so far. He started his career with international experiences as a cocktail bartender. After shortly running two catering businesses for a few years, he first came into contact with Navision, version 2009. He was a key user in a Navision implementation. Surprisingly enough, being part of an ERP implementation enthused him more than mixing drinks. 

Hence, he decided a U-turn move for his career at the age of 30. He started studying supply chain management full-time, had his bachelor after 3 years and joined ESC. At ESC, he is mainly responsible for manufacturing implementations and just recently got promoted to being the team lead of ESCs center of manufacturing excellence. 

In the conversation, Bart surprised Martin with the ADKAR model and mixed a delicious "knowledge cocktail" of how to successfully implement Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central.

Phase 1 - A like Awareness

As Bart pointed out, every company that wants to implement an ERP, should be crystal-clear about the purpose for this step. Depending on the kind of company the answers to this will, of course, differ. Some companies want to gain some extra revenue, for example, others again aim at saving time. Just saying "we want it", would not be the right motivation at all.

Phase 2 - D like Desire

Once the purpose for the implementation is clear, the questions will get more specific. In the desire phase, the key users should learn the reasons why they are going to make the change and what will be in it for them, and, of course, how it will help the company in general.

As Bart related, he has often met key users that either didn't know the answers to these questions or just said, "because we have to". And again, this would not be the right motivation.

At this point, the implementation team not only needs to provide the technology and analyze and optimize the processes but also make clear to the users how they will benefit from the change.

Phase 3 - K like Knowledge

In the K phase, the key users will acquire knowledge about the new system. There will be trainings and workshops in which they will learn how the system works and see what is the best fit for their department and their end users. Depending on how the key users have adapted to phase A and D, the K phase will be more or less successful.

Or, as Bart puts it, the learning curve will be higher or lower, depending on the reaction to phase 1 and 2. When somebody isn't interested in learning a certain topic, why should he?

What makes Bart as a consultant the happiest is when he gets to a point where users are so interested in the solution that they start learning and doing research on their own initiative.

Phase 4 - A like Ability

According to Bart, a lot of knowledge is needed to work with Business Central and looking at it for the first time can be really overwhelming. But once users have acquired the knowledge, they can start to use the system independently and even try to challenge it.

And when users start challenging the system, Bart is sure he has done a good job. If users know more than him he is sure that they will benefit from the new system.

Ability, as Bart puts it, should be a consequence. If you have the desire to work with a system, the ability will follow automatically.

 Phase 5 - R like Reinforcement

Once the project is live, the implementation team's work is still not finished. Every couple of months or weeks they will go back to the company and evaluate the project together with the people on site. As Bart explains, there are always things that need checking or can be improved.