We sat down with our Implementation Director David Terry to understand what the effects of Covid-19 has been on clients joining Matrix SCM.  With four contracts due to go-live imminently, we are happy to report that we are functioning business as usual:

"We have seen no impact on meeting attendance, no impact on delivery of key tasks and completion of key milestones and no impact on their ability to make key decisions from our proposals."

The full interview can be found below, which provides insight into the Implementation process at Matrix SCM, an overview of what an Implementation project is, and what changes the team have made to overcome the challenges of Covid-19.

To start, please can you introduce yourself, giving a brief insight into your role and your teams role at Matrix SCM:

My name is David and I head up the implementation team at Matrix SCM. Our primary responsibility is to manage the customer transition from sales through to being operationally live on our web based technology platform. We ensure successful Change Management as well as completion of all critical path milestones within set timescales and scopes. In my day to day role I manage our team of project managers who, between us have a combined work experience of over 19 years, as well as the business’ System Administrator and Business Analyst.

What is an implementation and how important is it for our clients?

Our implementation process isn’t simply a copying and paste job of existing ways of work, it’s an opportunity for clients to re-evaluate their existing processes and explore new ways of working. For example, we come across multiple customers who use a paper-based approval process. With our web based technology platform we can streamline the process and make everything completely electronic with real-time alerts and notifications, there simply is no need for paper! We also offer integration between key systems, reducing risk, ensuring full compliance in line with customer policies and reducing manual intervention. More and more of our customers are integrating our technology with their HR, Procurement, Finance and Security systems to speed up internal processes and reducing workloads on their internal teams. The ultimate goal of our implementations is to make the working process and ultimately the working lives of our customers much better than they had before!

Can you talk us through a step by step example of what’s involved in a Matrix SCM implementation?

Our implementations begin with a kick off meeting. This is an opportunity for the key project stakeholders to come together and agree exactly what we want to achieve, how it will be achieved, who will be involved and when by. Our project initiation document (PID) then captures this information as well as current state and goals for the implementation, while our Project Plan lists literally every decision that needs to be made throughout the project. This also includes our issue log and risk register. The project is then split into four key workstreams of; legal, stakeholder engagement, data/configuration and policy. Within each of these workstreams, we cover all the key aspects and critical path items that must be completed to ensure a successful launch, for example that the contract between both parties is agreed and signed, that the system itself works with a suitable supply chain and, as part of our change management process, that internal and external stakeholders are aware of the change, have engaged with the process and been trained on the system. The process itself takes on average 10-12 weeks, but we can accelerate or elongate the process depending on the needs of the customer. We provide a full asset pack, or toolkit, to manage the project so our customers don’t need to create anything from scratch. We do try to make the process as fun as possible, too!

What changes have you had to make to your processes with the current working from home situation?

If I’m honest, very few. Our customers are increasingly busy or have limited time availability, so having an opportunity to have back to back meetings using technology, rather than face to face, buffered with travel time is a more efficient work process for our customers and us. Technology is allowing better communication and information can be passed in seconds rather than days if gathering manually. Webinars and screenshares have been extremely successful for the provision of training for some years now, with attendees increasingly opting to attend a time that suits them from the comfort of their own work environment than travelling to and sitting in a room. Remote working is becoming the new norm.

What’s the impact of any changes made during this time on the organisations going through implementation?

Again, to be completely honest, none. At the time of writing we have four implementations underway; one a customer in Yorkshire, one north of London and then two in Wales – all based in completely different geographical locations in the UK and each with their own challenges and individual goals. Our customers have been extremely quick to react to the government imposed working from home guidelines and are embracing technology to enable them to do this. We have seen no impact on meeting attendance, no impact on delivery of key tasks and completion of key milestones and no impact on their ability to make key decisions from our proposals. Each project is still set to be complete on the original date agreed at each respective kick off meeting.