Wednesday, August 5, 2026

The Advantages of the Incumbent Vendor – Part 2: Solution Implementation – More Costs, Time and Energy Investment

 

The previous post explored selection, now let’s look at implementation!

 

Solution Onboarding: It is likely that you and your customer invested significantly in the process of implementation. It’s another, different expedition:

 

-       Assembling the implementation team

-       Implementation kickoff, strategy and planning meetings, and assignment of resources

-       Identification of Value Realization Events

-       Pre-installation or implementation assessment

-       Installation, as necessary

-       Administrator training

-       Customization meetings to determine and agree upon fields, configuration and profile parameters, dashboard layouts, processes, rules, approvals pathways, alert thresholds, etc.

-       Data migration; data loading; QC

-       Implementation of configuration, profiles, processes, rules, alerts, dashboards, etc. 

-       Interoperability testing with the customer’s existing software and communication with those vendors

-       Pre-rollout QC

-       User training

-       Go Live and initial rollout

-       Tuning and changes as needed

-       Broader rollout

-       Internal progress reviews and updates

-       Old system shutdown and removal (and termination of license agreements with the old vendor, as necessary, by Legal, Purchasing, and Accounting)

-       Periodic internal progress meetings

-       Periodic meetings with your Customer Success/Account Management team

 

Again, there was a terrific investment in time, people and money to bring your solution aboard, similar to staging an expedition into the Himalayas. It was an enormous effort, including numerous side-trips, solving problems with supplies and provisions, unanticipated challenges, injuries and other difficulties. 

 

Most customers really don’t want to go through that effort again, particularly in the short term!

 

Resources:

 

Part 1:

https://greatdemo.com/the-advantages-of-the-incumbent-vendor-part-1-vendor-selection-sunk-costs-time-and-energy-investment/

 

The Incredible Value of Value Realization Events

https://greatdemo.com/the-incredible-value-of-value-realization-events/ 

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