Pivot to Customer Success – Our Oracle Cloud Playbook

At MIPRO, we focus on this very question and continue to evolve and mature from past experience.  As part of our Oracle Cloud practice development programs, including training sessions and aligning to the solution-driven approach, we strive to simplify the customer experience in their journey to transform their business on SaaS Cloud applications. It is hard to generalize some of the customer success ideas and apply them across the board. Having said that, the one commonality is that customers expect improvements in Cloud adoption that significantly prove to be better than what they have realized in the past.

Let’s broadly classify these expectations and see how best to objectively address them and offer solutions. 

• In the early 90’s to the better half of 2010, software implementation consultants would start the projects by documenting the ‘As-Is’ business processes, and then create the ‘To-Be’ business processes in a conventional Requirements Gathering approach to the chosen product they implemented. After several months and lots of interviews and documentation, the designing and developing of customizations based on the new To-Be processes would begin. This spanned across all industries’ business processes around HR, Payroll, Finance, Supply Chain, Manufacturing, etc. As you can imagine, the end result was a lengthy, costly, highly customized implementation that barely resembled the software application they purchased. As we all know, this resulted in high maintenance costs of such implemented products, coupled with the overhead of ensuring the changing regulatory and compliance protocols, meant you needed a separate team to manage these changes over a period of its life. 
• As we move on with changing times, the way we implement a software solution to adopt to industries’ business processes is evolving. As a software implementer, these changes require an approach to be agile, to no longer be running design to development for months or even years for some. In this customer-centric and technology-advancing age, implementing a project that begins with requirements gathering, then creating To-Be business processes, then developing the application…well, by the time the application is in production, it is already outdated. We must get into a different mode of preparing the customer to adopt and, at the same time, meet their expectations. 
• At MIPRO, we have a credible and proven solutions expert for each Oracle Cloud process area, by that I mean HR, Finance, Supply Chain, etc… and more importantly, the world they have seen and lived in made them adapt to customer-centric solutioning rather than application/technology-specific solutions. As a customer, when you have such a group of people to work with, it offers a path to trust, confidence and success. This trust and confidence enables the customer to know that the Oracle Cloud solution adopted will help enhance the overall objective and not just replace their existing applications carrying the same pain points. We begin with a solution, prebuilt in the product, designed around a customer’s business processes.
• By starting with a solution-driven approach, trust, and the customer’s willingness to adopt the solution, you are able to see what you are getting at the beginning of the project rather than at the end. You, the customer, can visualize your business adopting the solution as your own from the beginning of the implementation, as you’re able to “see with your own eyes” how it works and how it will work for your business. Sure, there may be some changes here and there, but your business processes are being driven by the solution. As you adapt to the cloud application solution rather than it adapting to your business (i.e., significant customizations so that it functions just like your current application), you have less risk of extending the timeline because there is much less development effort and all that comes along with new development. You can also incorporate the supporting collateral and documentation into your own testing and training materials, which is a huge head start from starting with nothing.

At MIPRO, we focus on bringing the best value to our customers subscribed to the Oracle Cloud Application. We drive our projects using a solution-based approach instead of a requirements-driven approach and, more importantly, explain the reasons (as mentioned above) to our customers as part of our Oracle Cloud kick-off meetings. It is important to encourage their willingness to adopt the standard processes based on best practices by explaining the options and challenge deviations. We encourage our customers not to replicate what they do today just because they’ve always done it that way – doing something the same way for years doesn’t mean you should keep doing it the same way in the future. The nature of a SaaS solution means you will benefit from new features quicker and stay current with industry trends, the product is inherently more flexible, and the solution is easier to adapt while live.

MIPRO’s Oracle Cloud Playbook means working together in partnership, embracing and planning for change on an ongoing basis – not waiting until go-live, ensuring knowledge is retained within the business and training models adopted, and providing support so you have what you need after go-live.  

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