3. Don’t underestimate transition
This is a key one, and it’s particularly important if you are doing what our man above was doing and changing your back-office system. Transitioning from one system of fundamental importance to your practice to another is like nothing else you’ve done before. It takes an intimate knowledge of the thing you’re moving from and the thing you’re moving to. It requires serious project management skills, and it requires sponsorship from the most senior levels of your business – big or small – to ensure that everyone is clear an orderly transition is job one, two and three for the business during the project.
In the nicest possible way, it is my observation that financial planning businesses are amazing at giving advice and creating plans. But the conducting of large IT migration programmes? Not so much. This is one area where either freeing up a really organised member of staff from their day job, or bringing in some external project management help, will make a world of difference.
4. Engage with the detail
Sort of related to point two, this is about looking beyond the brochure or what the well-turned-out business development person sold you on. I know a number of companies that have changed back-office systems from one of the two biggest out there to the other.
The things that got them to change were, frankly, ephemera. The new system looked more modern, was more open, felt more user-friendly, and so on. But underneath, the leading back-office systems are incredibly similar. Not because they want to be, but because if you’re pulling in data from 60 or so different sources in predetermined formats, there is only so much you can do. If you have to deal with legacy protection and mortgage business, there is only so much you can do. And so on.
As a result, once the shock/pleasure of the new system has passed, companies are asking themselves why they went through that pain. Things are probably better, but by a far smaller margin than they imagined. That’s because the stuff that matters isn’t cool, or user-centric, or any of those things. It’s about data structures, and the boring stuff that no one wants to engage with.
When you keep that word obsolescence in your mind, and think about what the life of any system you decide to use is, your perspective can change dramatically. It’s all about buying in services as a business with the emotion taken out of it, and a cold eye on what may need to be done in future.
A summary? Own your technology stack – or it will own you. And, for the love of all that’s holy, don’t make weird biscuity sandwich stacks on your flight.
