Construction Software

Posts Tagged ‘Champion’

You’ve decided your company needs new construction software and have started looking at options. The question is: Have you designated someone in your company to be the software champion? Every company, large or small, needs someone to lead the charge for improved efficiencies through better software. This software champion must have certain traits to ensure that the company achieves the expected return on investment.

Here are 5 critical traits that your software champion needs to have.

1. Experience in Software Implementation Learning the ins and outs of software evaluation and implementation on-the-fly will jeopardize your initiative. That’s why your construction software champion must have prior experience evaluating and implementing software. For more details visit to www.scripts-to-sell.com Keep in mind that the scope of previous experience needed to make a sound decision increases with company size and complexity of operations.

2. Knowledge of Company Operations Your construction software champion must understand how your company operates. If he/she doesn’t, taking the time to learn the processes and operations well enough to know what questions to ask vendors during demos is crucial.

3. Full Support from Management Choose a construction software champion you can trust. Committing time and money to a complex evaluation, selection, implementation and training process is not a place for wishy-washy management that doesn’t fully trust their champion to complete the project successfully. When full support is provided to the champion, for more details visit to www.software-index-website.com you won’t be tempted to pull the plug when the going gets rough (which almost always happens at some point in the project).

4. Respect of Peers Without the respect and confidence of his/her peers; the construction software champion won’t get the cooperation needed to gather information and data to move to a new system. Choose a well-respected individual to lead your software initiative.

5. An Advocate for Change Most people don’t like change and implementing new software is about as traumatic as it gets for the company’s accounting, project managers and IT departments.

Your construction software champion should have the skills to properly prepare and motivate personnel for change, while helping them feel less threatened by the new system. This requires sensitivity to people’s needs within the new software environment, as well as the ability to make the evaluation, selection and implementation of new software a team effort. Without a sense of participation, many employees will not “buy into” the new software and may even try, in subtle ways, to sabotage the initiative. Summary Your construction software champion is critical to a successful software implementation. He/she is the person with the most software experience and, once chosen, deserves full management support while leading to a final decision. There are many potential pitfalls along the way; trust your software champion to know where the mines are buried and how to avoid them every step of the way.

You’ve decided your company needs new construction software and have started looking at options. The question is: Have you designated someone in your company to be the software champion?

Every company, large or small, needs someone to lead the charge for improved efficiencies through better software. This software champion must have certain traits to ensure that the company achieves the expected return on investment.

Here are 5 critical traits that your software champion needs to have.

1. Experience in Software Implementation

Learning the ins and outs of software evaluation and implementation on-the-fly will jeopardize your initiative. That’s why your construction software champion must have prior experience evaluating and implementing software. Keep in mind that the scope of previous experience needed to make a sound decision increases with company size and complexity of operations.

2. Knowledge of Company Operations

Your construction software champion must understand how your company operates. If he/she doesn’t, taking the time to learn the processes and operations well enough to know what questions to ask vendors during demos is crucial.

3. Full Support from Management

Choose a construction software champion you can trust. Committing time and money to a complex evaluation, selection, implementation and training process is not a place for wishy-washy management that doesn’t fully trust their champion to complete the project successfully. When full support is provided to the champion, you won’t be tempted to pull the plug when the going gets rough (which almost always happens at some point in the project).

4. Respect of Peers

Without the respect and confidence of his/her peers, the construction software champion won’t get the cooperation needed to gather information and data to move to a new system. Choose a well-respected individual to lead your software initiative.

5. An Advocate for Change

Most people don’t like change and implementing new software is about as traumatic as it gets for the company’s accounting, project managers and IT departments. Your construction software champion should have the skills to properly prepare and motivate personnel for change, while helping them feel less threatened by the new system. This requires sensitivity to people’s needs within the new software environment, as well as the ability to make the evaluation, selection and implementation of new software a team effort. Without a sense of participation, many employees will not “buy into” the new software and may even try, in subtle ways, to sabotage the initiative.

Summary

Your construction software champion is critical to a successful software implementation. He/she is the person with the most software experience and, once chosen, deserves full management support while leading to a final decision. There are many potential pitfalls along the way; trust your software champion to know where the mines are buried and how to avoid them every step of the way.

One of the most important things that every company must do when looking for and installing new construction software is to identify a “software champion.”

Regardless of the size of your company, you need to have one person designated to lead the quest to improve operations via new software. The software champion for your company must have a specific set of skills for maximum effectiveness.

Here are five traits that you want to look for in your company’s software champion:

Experience Implementing New Software – Evaluating and implementing new software is not an easy process and should not be undertaken by a novice with hopes to “learn on the fly.” Ideally, you want to find somebody in your company that has been involved in implementing new software. Their experience in the area will strengthen their ability to make good decisions on behalf of your organization. Also keep in mind that experience is somewhat relative. If individuals have experience implementing new software in a small, start up company, they may not be the best choice if you operate a large company that has years of data that must be transferred to the new system.

Familiararity with Company Processes – It is absolutely imperative that a software champion completely understands how your company operates and the processes that are used that will be impacted by the new software. Having this knowledge will allow them to know what kind of questions need to be asked of vendors during software demos and sales conversations.

Management Support – Since the software champion will be making decisions on behalf of the entire company, you must choose somebody that you trust. Selecting new software is a process that involves a lot of time and money. If you have a management team that is indecisive or unwilling to work off the recommendations provided by your software champion, you will be doomed to waste a lot of time and money in selecting new construction software. When the champion has the full support of management, you will not be as tempted to cancel the entire operation when the inevitable bumps in the road come up.

Peer Respect – The construction software champion will need to be able to get cooperation from peers within the organization. If you select somebody that is not respected by his or her co-workers, this process will be difficult if not impossible.

Change Advocate – Many people are averse to change. They try to avoid it when possible. Selecting and implementing new construction accounting software will be a big change and it is important that you select a champion that is comfortable spear-heading one of the biggest changes that the company will ever experience. Beyond the technical abilities to evaluate software, the champion must also possess the ability to work with personnel to make them feel comfortable with the new software. This requires an individual with empathy as well as a team-player mentality. Without a sense of participation and support from decision makers, employees will be hesitant to buy in to the new software and will make the process more expensive and longer than is necessary.

In conclusion, the software champion that you select to oversee your new construction software implementation will be one of the most critical aspects to the project’s success. Finding a person with the right background that will get support from management and peers will greatly increase your chances of success and improvement from the new software.