One of the best ways to measure if a software implementation has been successful is whether employees 'love' it, according to William Tincup, CEO of HR consultancy Tincup and Co.
"You may leave here thinking I'm a crazy Texan, but you shouldn't aim for adoption; you should boldly shoot for love," said Tincup, speaking at a breakout session at HR Tech World called 'Exploring the Successful Implementations Checklist'.
"You want people to be saying how much they love your new software. We'd never considered that people could love software, but that's more important than just getting them to use it."
Tincup explained that many professionals avoid discussing implementation. "I used to joke I could say one word that could make people curl up on the floor and start sucking their thumb," he said. "That word was implementation. However, if it is possible to have a bad implementation we knew that somewhere there must be such a thing as a good implementation."
The importance of the relationship between the implementation team and HR was also discussed. "Things will go wrong," Tincup pointed out, sharing research that found 32% of implementations do not encounter significant problems, but 68% do.
"Something will get criss-crossed, you will forget something, someone will say something in Spanish but you heard it in Latin. You need to know how you fix things when they get twisted. We've acted for years like problems just won't happen. It will happen, so ask what you'll do when things go badly."
The research also discovered that 68% of 'rip and replace' implementations fail. "If you look at processes as well as outcomes you will succeed," Tincup explained. "It is that stark of an analysis. You can have mediocre software and superior processes, but not the other way round."
He also warned against software claiming to be 'easy to use'. "Don't look for software that is easy to use. That should be a given. If it isn't easy to use then it is on the way to being bankrupt," he said.
