Implementation Data Planning

Start-up or Reference Data for a new system is often readily available, but resides in a variety of sources, some computerised, some not, some accurate, some not, Often there is nominally a duplication of sources, and one has to decide which is definitive.

Minimise Vulnerability
“Going Live” nearly always involves a period, such as a weekend, or a period of extended-hours working where extra computing and manual tasks have to be carried out to achieve success. Extra records have to be input quickly; reconciliation checks may need to be carried out using unfamiliar, one-off reports. This is a vulnerable period where everyone is under stress. We aim to spread this last-minute activity and be able to do more earlier, by correctly sequenced, pre-prepared data loading.

Raise Awareness
Because the assessment process involves users and clients, they realise that they have a stake in the new / modified system. They begin to appreciate the implications of their own actions and sphere of influence even before “going live”, and generally have a more positive approach

The way we do it
We apply an assessment technique to determine:

how important each category of data is to the business

It may not be worth collecting and reapplying data which has proved unreliable or which is known to be out of date; conversely it may well be worth paying attention to, say, customer preferences in the last two months

how volatile the various pieces of data are

long-standing, relatively stable items can be collected as early as possible, and data which is determined very late is collected at the last opportunity. In this way the data gathering task is rendered as efficient as possible, spreading the load over the maximum available period. If data already resides on computer systems then every effort is made to provide an automatic bridge to a common pre-implementation data store.