Your organization has put countless hours of work and research into your new AMS, and now it is time to introduce it to members and stakeholders.
Go live day usually begins calm, but soon gets hectic and turns into a stressful few weeks. We warn our clients that AMS go lives are something that an association goes through once in 8 – 12 years, so approaching it with patience is crucial. The teams that have prepared rigorously obviously fare better. So, prepare, prepare, prepare!
Choosing the right core team at the very beginning, with adequate representation from all the various departments, will serve you well during the go-live weeks. These team members will be the champions helping their co-workers get acquainted with the new AMS and help relieve stress.
The weeks surrounding the AMS rollout can be stressful, and ensuring you have a defined system that is well publicized amongst the stakeholders is very beneficial. Here are some tips.
If an established system is not devised, go live weeks will result in chaos, with people reporting issues to people who cannot bring it to a close. No forward momentum will only to lead to frustration and dissatisfaction with the new AMS platform.
Most go lives do not go exactly as planned. Our experience has led us to believe that a larger association can take up to 3 – 6 months before everything settles down, with the first 4 weeks being the toughest.
Setting the right expectations with the executive team and the entire staff helps tremendously. Sometimes letting the constituent base know in a limited fashion can be an option.
For most associations, the core team that is part of the implementation has a full time job in addition to the implementation. That is difficult to manage. It has worked well when executive management has appreciated the efforts of the core team in tangible ways. This tends to keep morale up.
We frequently see situations where certain items are pushed to be completed immediately after go live, since they could not be achieved during the execution phase. This approach needs to be thought through carefully.
If there are minor adjustments that are required for the go live to occur, that is acceptable; however, major changes or additions are discouraged. The staff has just learned a new way of operating on a new AMS, and changing things on them usually results in anxiety or feelings that the implementation process will never end.
The end of Your AMS Journey is almost here! Stay tuned for our final installment of the series in upcoming weeks.
In the meantime, don’t hesitate to reach out to fusionSpan for assistance with all of your AMS/CRM questions and needs!
Noel enjoys collaborative environments and is driven by the challenges of a growing industry. He values putting client goals first, explaining, “When we enable clients to be the best they can be, the company automatically benefits; it’s simply the by-product of fully enabling passionate human beings.” Noel heads up the Delivery Team and is constantly working to strategically move fusionSpan forward toward its vision of bridging gaps through technology.
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