Most Navision NSCs will agree on two things; The first is that choosing the right NSC is one of the most critical decisions you will make in implementing Navision. The second is that they are that NSC.
Go-Live with Navision - NSC Review
Its up to you to decide who will implement your system, and its not an easy decision. First of all there is no magic NSC that is the best for every Navision implementation. Second, there are a few bad NSCs out there, but they really are a small minority. Most of the NSCs out there have survived the process of attrition, and can generally implement what they promise. Although I have worked at some stage in every level of the Navision chain, the area that I remember the most, (and the bit that makes this book interesting to me), is that of fixing Implementations that went wrong. And I want to say that of those implementations, its a 50/50 split of blame between the NSC and the client themselves for those failures. Well step one is to find the NSC that is right for you, and here we use the Goldilocks principle. You do need to find an NSC that is "just right". First lets look at an NSC in general, and see what you need to investigate.NSC Review
What makes one NSC different to another? Size, Experience, Stability, References, Methodology and The Right Employees. (these are NOT listed in order of importance).Size of the NSC.
In reality the size of the NSC should not be a major factor in your decision as a suitable vendor. You may find that if you have a $50,000 budget, then going to a vendor with 200 employees, may not be ideal, but in general, try not to think "bigger is better".An important aspect of an NSC, is there actual size compared to their perceived size. If an NSC has multiple sites, then you need to know why? If it is because they grew though acquisition, then multiple offices makes sense, if through evolution and natural growth, then you need to look closely at what that NSC is doing. If you have multiple sites, and the NSC has offices in those locations, then there may be benefit to you. But with the ability of remote support (me providing remote support on a train via Citrix), the ease of traveling etc. it may not add a lot of value to you. When you look at branch offices, then look at what those offices offer you. If a branch office has less than 10 people, then you need to make sure that there are actually people in that office that will provide you with support, other wise what is the office there for? Once and NSC started to branch out, you want to see that they have 25 or so employees permanently based at the head office, and 1 or so at each o the sites. Of course a company may only have 3 people at a remote office, but they ay just be the exact front line support people that you need. Keep in mind though that if there is only one person permanently located at an office, then its extremely unlikely that that person will be available at the critical time that you need them, so it really wont add value. Personally I would rather buy from an NSC that have enough resources located at each of their locations to be able to use the synergy to drive growth. If you need local resources, then locate a Freelancer that is able to offer you third party support and services as required. Clearly if an NSC has multiple sites, just to give a perception of size, then do a lot of investigating to make sure that this is the partner for you.What level of experience do they offer?
Experience of an NSC by it self does not mean a lot., but when it comes down to it, an experienced NSC will have references, a solid methodology, and a high level of employee loyalty, so it really does count. An interesting factor in ERP, is that even bad experiences are important, so long as those bad implementations were a/ solved, and b/ long in the past, they still add a lot to the experience level of an NSC. An experienced NSC is going to show you a long list of references, and will talk a lot of their solid proven methodology. But don't gloss over their experience. Get into the details, and investigate in detail how that NSC got there. Most NSCs will measure their experience level by number of years, and number of implementations. Make sure to break these down. It really is not important how long the company has been founded, important is how long they have been implementing Navision, and to a lesser degree, how long they have been implementing ERP in general. Any other history is pretty irrelevant, so if they used to assemble PCs or sell mortgages, just ignore that as filler. When we look at number of implementations, we need to look in more detail. I have taken a major role in 187 Navision implementations. There are very few NSCs that have done that. Don't count the number as a major indicator. You need to find out what actually they did. Do they have the experience that they have customers that they initially sold and implemented, or are these clients that they inherited. Neither is good or bad, NSCs get more experience from fixing a problematic implementation from another NSC than they do from implementing their own, but they still need to show that they have a sufficient experience of implementations, that they sold implemented and carried through the years. Experience is the ability of an NSC to be able to look at your requirements, and with confidence say "yes we can do it". A very good way to test the experience of an NSC is to ask them to deliver to an impossible time frame. An NSC with true experience will simply say "no", and will not want to push to that time frame. A less experienced NSC will try to do it.Stability.
One of the hardest things to measure. Also a hard thing to define. In the earlier days you could buy Navision from a "one man band". That person would do everything, and you may have been their only client. Those were a very stable source of implementation skills, they just did not have the business to be able to loose you, and the service was often excellent. Of course, these people eventually employ a sales person, get more clients, and then they join the club. These days you are buying from a larger entity, and most people look at stability as meaning financial stability. i.e. Will my NSC still be in business when we have to do our upgrade? In earlier days a larger concern was if the NSC would stick with Navision, but now with Microsoft behind it those fears have largely disappeared. Still stability is important so make sure that you are working with a company that you feel confident is there for the long term.References
If you are a Navision user, then you probably do not want new potential clients calling you up to find out what you think about Navision and your potential NSC but references are a necessary evil in this business, so please consider acting as a reference for you NSC at a later stage. Of course some buyers will go to extremes to Always check your references. If you are going to ask you NSC for references, then you need to have a clear plan of why you are doing it, and how you will use that information. Firstly, unless you are buying a vertical solution then it is not critical to find a client that is in the same business as you, you really need to look at references that have a similar size and structure to you. Most important is to make sure that the reference client was taken live by your NSC. Its good to have references from clients that bought Navision from one NSC, then changed to your NSC. Though for your purposes, you really want to know how this NSC is going to take you through the go-live process. Once you have you references, decide if you need to visit them, or if just a phone call will do the job. That's your decision, but keep in mind, that no matter what, the NSC is not going to give you a problematic client as a reference. This does not mean that NSCs have "prepared references", it just means that you need to factor certain things in to your decision process. If you are lucky enough to be able to go on a site visit to meet the reference and discuss things with them, then do as much preparation in advance as possible. Always when meeting a reference, keep in mind that they are doing this as a favor, so please be value their time, and try not to take too much of it. Being prepared in advance will make life easier for you and for them. So what to do in advance? Research in advance. Go to the internet, and search, knowing what they do, will help you see where the NSC and Navision have helped their business. Find out from the NSC three or four problem areas that the client had with their business, and see how the NSC resolved them. Always look to see if the NSC found a simple work around, or did they do some huge programming solution. Try to get some basic costing information. Of course this is confidential information, so your NSC is not going to say too much, but at least try to get some ball park ideas, such as just getting to know their cost relative to yours, e.g., "their system was about twice what we expect your's to be", don't expect this information to relate in anyway to the final cost of your system, but just keep it in mind when discussing with the reference. If the NSC just refuses to talk costing, then don't push, since this is a good sign of professionalism on the part of your NSC. Always have your questions prepared. If you are selecting between multiple NSCs, then you want to be sure to ask the clients the same questions. Even if you are comparing other products, the reference visit should still concentrate on the ability of the VAR to deliver, with product suitability as a secondary concern. Meeting the reference, and some questions to ask : Firstly will you be going alone, or is the NSC coming along? It really does not make that big a difference. Some reference clients do not like site visits unless the NSC sends a representative with you, if so, then try to have them send someone that knows the implementation, ideal would be the project manager, or the senior implementer than brought them live. Try to avoid having a programmer or a sales person along, as they tend to cloud things. From the reference side, idea would be to have their project manager from the implementation, but that person may no longer be there, and in any case, the reference may not want to tie up a senior person for this, that is fair and understandable. Budget. You want to find out how close the implementation is to budget. If the reference does not know, then alarm bells should ring at this point. Assuming of course that you are speaking with someone that should know. When we get to project management, we will see that one of the most important parts of managing any ERP implementation is close monitoring and reviewing of the budget. Thus anyone closely involved in the management of the project should know very well if they over ran the budget, when and by how much. Ask the reference this, if you could do it again, then where did you spend too much time and money, and where did you not spend enough. Then ask "which areas of the budget went a lot over, and which came a lot under. You will almost certainly find that the NSC will agree with these comments, and may already have pointed them out to you earlier in the sales process. This is after all why NSCs have a Methodology. In general you are trying to find out if the NSC has a methodology that allows them to create a budget and work to it. Keep in mind that a good methodology allows for the unexpected, such that those items do not affect the core budget. What you are looking for is visibility and accountability. Personnel stability. By and away the biggest red flag that you can find from an NSC is changing staff. You will want to check with your reference that the Project Manager was involved in the sales Process, and was there to do the post implementation review. If the project manager did change through the implementation process, then you will want to know why, and expect that your NSC will explain this to you in the presence o the reference. An NSC with nothing to hide will explain this to you before you arrive at the reference, since they really do not want you to meet any surprises. Most users of Navision expect to have a dedicated programmer to their project. In reality don't expect it to happen, and don't get too concerned if the reference tell you that they had a different programmer for each phase of the project. You are concerned about the project manager, the senior implementer, and the senior trainer, these are going to be key. Also the implementation will be managed by a team, minor changes to the team are not a major issue, but ask the reference if they ever found themselves explaining the same thing to multiple people. This definitely should not happen, and generally only does if people leave suddenly. Are the reference's users really using Navision? There are a number of tell tale signs as too weather Navision is being used efficiently, you should be able to find these out. Try to get a chance to sit with a couple of typical users, and watch them do their job. Look for the warning signs. Full Screen - To use Navision at its fullest, you must use multiple windows, this enables users to have much less clutter on their screen, yet still see all the information that they need at any point. If the users have not been trained to do this, then you will probably find large very cluttered forms with a lot of fields all over the place. These forms would change all the time, and add to the direct cost of the project, as well as increasing maintenance. More significantly, using the table relations and opening related forms, helps the users to understand the Navision database structure much better, this again reducing the whole cost of ownership issue. I don't mean to imply that there are not times where full screen is usable, just look to see if the forms have been heavily modified to use full screen mode. Colors - Navision was carefully designed to be simple. Adding a little color can be useful, but overwhelming a user with colors is not a way to make their work more efficient. If the NSC has designed the system to work for the client, then they would use positioning of fields, and other design components to aid the user in navigation, NOT by adding bright red boxes, to remind them what to enter. If you see screens with bright colors, it generally means that someone from upper management (from the reference client) got involved in the design process. The NSC should have had the management skills to get them out of it. Managers generally know what they need the system to do, but are generally not the right people to decide on user ergonomics, since they don't normally spend 5 hours a day hitting the keyboard. Be political here, and carefully ask the reference why they have the colors. Keep in mind that the user will learn their task in a day or so, so adding complications to the system that are useful only for the first day for a user, are a waste of money, and of valuable training budget. Navigation - This is Navision's forte, remember the product was originally called Navigator users should be able to Navigate to find documents easily, and when going from screen to screen, they should know where they are at every step. If not, then there could be training needed. Users fighting the system - If the users have not had the correct level of training, then they will tend to fight the system, they will want magic buttons that do everything including brew the morning coffee. This generally means there was not sufficient project buy in by the company, and maybe even implementing Navision was a mistake for them. you want an NSC that is confident and tough enough to say "NO", and in spite of yourself, deliver a good system. If they just give in, and write code instead of training, then maybe they are not going to be able to stick to your budget. How does it compare to the old system - the answer you want here is "its totally different, no comparison really". You really don't want to hear that the system was modified to be like the old system. That shows that the NSC just gave up, and just coded what they had. Your Navision system is new, and your business WILL have to change to work with it. If that reference client was not willing to change, they should not have bought Navision, and the NSC should have told them that up front. In general, you are looking here to see if the NSC has enough experience and strength to tell you the client the correct way to do it, and not give in at every point, and just do it your way. References are a very important part of the sales process, but are only of value if you correctly interpret the information you get from them.Methodology
Every successful NSC will have a fully documented Methodology. Basically if they don't, and are just going to make it up as they go along, then you are entering into a high risk project, and would be advised at this point to walk away. I have said number of times that I do not have a preferred methodology, there are many different ways to implement Navision, and so long as they have a solid set of procedures, then you should be OK. In the methodology chapter in this book, I am basically discussing components of any methodology that must be covered. The first and most important part of the NSCs methodology, has to be that it is proven. This will either be through a process of trial and error with past clients, that has now evolved it to a working process, or by the NSC taking on an already proven methodology such as the Navision Implementation Methodology, Six Sigma, The PMI process etc. Expect that one of the first things your NSC wants to show you is a presentation of "their" methodology. It needs to be something that is simple enough for everyone in the company to understand, and complex enough to cover all the situations that you may encounter. Be prepared to throw questions at the presenter that deviate from their standard presentation path, an make sure you feel comfortable with how they handle this. As you meet people in the company, Analysts, Project Managers, Trainers, Developers etc., ask them about the Methodology, and where they fit into it. Basically you are looking for an NSC that has a proven Methodology, that all the employees live by, and that they are confident will deliver the product to you.Employees
This is what it all really comes down to. Without the right employees, the company is nothing. When looking at the experience and stability of the NSC, nothing is more important that the skill set of the employees. Many of the larger NSCs are moving to a model of having very high end team leaders, and a lot of mid range staff working under them. This provides for a very stable method of delivering the methodology, and in these NSCs, their methodology is probably them more important that individual employee skill sets. These NSCs will deliver consistent results, BUT the end cost will be substantially higher. On the other hand, the danger of an NSC that has very high end delivery personnel, is that your implementation may become dependant on them, and it may end out costing you if a key employee leaves. To this effect, be sure to have a clause in your contract to cover this. This should also cover the situation of changing key players mid implementation. If an NSC has a lot of new employees, then you really want to find out why, if its growth, great, if its because of high turnover, then probably the environment at the client is not good, and thus its not going to be good for you. But that is all pretty obvious, so lets look at what you are after in looking at NSC personnel. Microsoft certifications have become a necessary evil, but even though they are important to the NSC, they have no benefit to you at all, so don't concern yourself by the number (or lack off) employees with various Navision certifications. Look for employees that have done a number of implementations, even a failed implementation is a great learning exercise for a consultant, so long as it wasn't on your project. Remember to ask the reference clients about employees, and make sure those people are still at the NSC. In terms of development, NSCs have generally divided down one of two paths. that of high end analysis and "coders", or that of high end analytic developers. The path will be explained to you in the methodology presentation. High end analytic developers will deliver better code at a lower total cost, but on larger projects, the "coders" will pump out deliverable practical solutions much faster, though at a much higher cost of analysis. Generally an NSC taking the "coder" approach won't want you meeting those coders, and if you do get to have presentation of coding ability, it will be by one of the team leaders, which will have no realizable value to your implementation. If you do meet with a member of the development team, then ask them to demonstrate solutions, WITHOUT touching the code. A good analytic, will show you a manual work around before they look at code. The coder will just start typing code faster than you can follow what is going on. Again I need to emphasize that both these methods work, but you need to know which path you will go down. The major advantage of the "coder" approach is that it will be totally irrelevant which coder you get, and more importantly, if time is important, they will be able to scale up development by adding more coders. Working with an Analytic developer means you re limited to that person, and you never know if a more "important" client may draw their resources, and leave you out there waiting. If you have a coder working on your project, then the NSC will make it very clear that the coder is not going to be on site, nor be involved in the analysis stage.In Summary
Be aware that it is very common for Navision Implementations to have problems, and it is also common for the client to want to blame the NSC, and even consider changing NSCs. Most of these issues are resolved, and it is rare that a client changes NSC mid stream during an implementation. You are not going to find the perfect solution, but try to find the NSC that can match a suitable affordable solution to your requirements.
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