Nicole Marie Smith launched Simplementation in February 2015, 10 years after beginning her career as an SAP CRM consultant with BearingPoint. Through her work on major ERP transformation projects, she discovered that clients often spent millions of dollars investing in solutions that did not end up satisfying initial project goals. Users were left disappointed with software that had less functionality than the one they had abandoned, and twice as complicated to use.
Working backwards she traced it to the root causes — the pre-project negotiation and setup phase. When vendor and partner decisions are made based on friendly referrals without strategic analysis, it can leave clients with a solution that doesn’t quite work for them, or with a consulting firm that does not have the expertise to implement. Further, when project scope and requirements set by executives and sales teams without technical or end-user inputs, it can also cause downstream headaches.
Early contract discussions that determine the solution and scope of work, are critical for setting up a project for success. Simplementation inserts implementation and product knowledge earlier in the sales cycle to avoid those common pitfalls, and help clients make smarter technology spending decisions.