Most Common Incorta Implementation Challenges

KareemK · ‎10-17-2022

Introduction

In a previous article, I wrote about Preparing for Incorta, and how to set yourself, your team, and your customer up for a successful implementation. In this article, I will list the most common Incorta implementation challenges, symptoms, potential root causes, and suggested mitigation or prevention actions. These actions may need to be altered based on the project or the customer's nature.

What you need to know before reading this article

We recommend that you be familiar with these Incorta concepts before exploring this topic further.

Preparing for Incorta

Let's Go

All the following challenges can be correlated or happen separately due to the nature of the project and the overall context. Therefore, you may see that there are 2 similar challenges but they can be due to different root causes which require different courses of mitigation actions.

Challenge: Late Project Start

Potential Cause/s:

The hardware sizing activity was not started on time
Issues in hardware provisioning due to lack of resources or budget
Lack of proper resource planning for the project from either side
The communication cycle takes more time than normal
The customer’s expectation was not set properly during the sales phase. This could happen if there was no Proof Of Concept/Value (POC/POV) to demonstrate Incorta's capabilities.
VPN access for the team is delayed. This can occur when access to sensitive data sources and/or secured server zones is required.
A major customer role is not engaged in the project or is the responsibility of a third-party company. We see this latter case sometimes for IT roles at non-tech companies.

Suggested Action/s:

Align with the team that supports the customer, often the sales team, if a contract amendment is needed
Communicate the project plan and all agreed upon timelines clearly to the stakeholders
If the deadline is tight and cannot be changed due to other dependencies then consider renegotiating the scope of the implementation or adding more resources
If you decide that resource assignment durations need to change, communicate with those in charge of the resources, whether owned by the customers or an Incorta implementer, as early as possible so that they have chance to adjust their own resource planning to meet the engagement's needs
If one or more of the major customer team roles are assigned to third-party companies, consider adding communication buffer time to your project plan

Challenge: There is no proper change management plan on the customer side

Potential Cause/s:

Not all companies are the same, each organization has different culture or style of work
Resistance to change from customer teams

Suggested Action/s:

Focus on the end-user by engaging them in the early stages of the project, make demos of delivered value frequently to them, get their feedback, iterate and improve
Emphasize the importance of the customer-driven approach and make sure that this concept is well understood by the project sponsor and the main stakeholders from the customer side
Over-communicate to avoid any communication gaps on the customer side, document these communications and agreements, and share them with the corresponding stakeholders
Provide both internal and external progress reporting from the beginning of the project till the end
If applicable, milestones with signed delivery notes are a good to guarantee multiple safety gates during the project and that you are building the right solution for the customer

Challenge: The implementation or customer’s team does not have the proper skills

Potential Cause/s:

The resource plan was created before defining the main use cases of the implementation
The expected roles and responsibilities were not clear to the customer or the stakeholders.
A major scope change to the project or the main use cases

Suggested Action/s:

Clearly communicate roles and responsibilities before starting the project, during the planning phase
Provide training to the customer team using Incorta Learn portal
Invite the team to recurring knowledge-sharing events
Consult with team members who are experienced with similar projects and use cases or domains.

Challenge: Change Resistance

Potential Cause/s:

The customer team may feel threatened by the new way of doing things. They may even fear losing their jobs
The customer team sees no added value in changing their current process or tools
Normal discomfort when using new tools that they are not familiar with
Lack of internal alignment on the customer side and incomplete or missing change management plan
There might be some features that exist in other tools and do not exist in Incorta

Suggested Action/s:

Focus on the added value that Incorta will bring; the time Incorta save them so that they can focus on other important work, the productivity gain they will benefit from, the return on investment they will enjoy, and the control they will gain over their data
Engage with the end users as early as possible

Challenge: Data Issues

Potential Cause/s:

Data quality issues that are related to the data sources and not having the right data in the right place, improper integration, missing data governance policies … etc
Missing technical subject matter expert (SME) who is an expert in customer data.

Suggested Action/s:

Agree with the customer on a standard way of providing the requirements by using a requirements template.
Add a requirement validation phase to the requirement elicitation process. All issues should be tracked. Tracking issue types, dates, resolutions, and resolution dates is a good practice.