Last week I spent some time at the GT Nexus Bridges User Group Conference. This is the second conference I attended this year where project management fundamentals were highlights of the program. The other was JDA’s Focus conference, where I was treated to a session on capturing business requirements.

This particular session featured Vantage Operations Consulting in collaboration with Crocs and was somehow included in the track called “Innovations in Supplier Collaboration. “

The task at hand was the integrate GT Nexus with SAP’s Apparel Footwear Solution (AFS). One important output of the integration was the ability to have multiple price label formats depending on the retailer being served. I wouldn’t have thought this is a new feature, but I heard it mentioned in enough sessions to believe it’s a big deal efficiency requirement.

The advice given was fundamental, and important.

The first rule is to understand the problem you are trying to solve, and then decide what solution you need to solve it. This sounds ridiculously simple, but it turns out that companies often try to “boil the ocean ” when selecting a new technology. This is especially true when the solution set is very broad, and contains “bright shiny objects ” of fancy functionality.

RSR certainly understands this challenge. There’s a reason why we use The Boot Methodology^© to inform our benchmark research. It helps us contextualize technology enablers with the business challenges retailers face and the opportunities they perceive they have. As we’ve noted many times, Retail Winners in particular focus their tech investments directly on those challenges and opportunities.

The second rule was is to define success. This is very important for technology providers and retailers both. Sales under-performers (called laggards in our parlance) often have over-inflated expectations for technology. Or they peg success to a difficult-to-quantify metric like “comparable sales increases. ” Of course, comparable sales increases are important…but isolating sales results to any one particular event is fraught with peril. The merchant will say “I bought better product, ” the marketer will say “I marketed the brand better, ” and Operations head will say “My people got it out into the right locations, to the right people as quickly as possible.

Therefore, the goal of any project team should be to define success right up front, with a clear metric for success.

Third, Vantage undertook the often overlooked topic of “organizational inhibitors ” challenges within the enterprise itself. And so the third rule is understand change management: the people and processes that are going to be involved in the new state. It’s all too easy to take a “my way or the highway ” approach to change management. And it’s a prescription for project failure. Rank and file employees can subtly undermine any new system management puts forth. So the strong recommendation is to find a balance between agreeability and being demanding. Specific tasks are:

• Identify people, processes and tools
• Create an approach and have a vision
• Put communications channels in place
• Define phases to go live

Perhaps the best slide in the entire presentation showed all the needed pieces for successful complex change:

Vision+skills+incentives+resources+action plan=successful change!

A lack of any one of these ingredients will inhibit transformation.

As a former IT practitioner, I’m really happy to see the vendor community coming together to educate its users on how “real ” IT projects are done. Too often in today’s world, people think technology implementation is just the downloading of an app, or using “the hacker way ” for continuous change.

This just isn’t how things work in the real world of industrial strength Information Technology. There are real skills required beyond the technical. Never forget that people are involved, and never forget that the business must continue running while transformation is occurring. Changing the tires on a bus while it’s navigating the Amalfi Coast is no mean feat. It takes a LOT of focus and concentration.

Thanks to GT Nexus for having this kind of session.