Consulting Services
Project Readiness Services
Whether you are upgrading your HCM system or updating a single module, preparation is often the most significant contributor to success. The time between selecting your implementation partner and beginning system design is an opportunity to make the decisions that can avoid costly overruns once the project begins. Project teams don’t always recognize that certain assumptions made at the beginning can significantly increase the likelihood of more complexity, more time and more costs as the project progresses. Simply put– KSI’s deployment experts have been there before and know the questions to ask to get beneath the surface of the plan on paper. We’ll either confirm your solid plan or identify areas that pose risks to your timeline, costs, and/or degree of success.
We concentrate our inquiries in a few key areas that tend to most influence project timelines and costs, including:
Integrations – The number of integrations have direct cost, time, and effort implications. We know the questions to ask to determine whether, for example, some simple policy changes could dramatically reduce the number of integrations required.
Data – Who owns the data? Do they own all the data for a particular function or is ownership distributed across centralized and local owners? What are the downstream impacts on other systems or programs that result from your decisions about data?
Governance – Typically, project teams have already been formed but have you decided how decisions are made and by whom when there are multiple factors to consider? Identifying the specifics of who has input and who makes decisions can significantly reduce the time needed for your implementer to produce your design document. The less time they spend chasing answers, the less likely you are to incur additional costs.
Business as Usual activities – Are there any other company initiatives or regularly-scheduled events that could impact your project plan? We assess your project within the big picture to identify and avoid potential risks to your timeline, resources, and deliverables.
KSI is very familiar with the path ahead. Although each client path is unique, we help ensure you are aware of the the interdependencies that are needed to clear the path to success.
Technology Strategy
KSI has perfected the methodology to organize, evaluate, and select HR, Finance and IT systems– and we do it in less time and at less cost than our competition. KSI’s proven approach is different. Our focused approach zeroes in on the critical decision making criteria and our automated tools expedite the information gathering and market analysis phases to deliver comprehensive evaluations and recommendations in 13 weeks or less. Our innovative approach includes:
- Building a successful Business Case
- Requirements Definition for the elements that most directly correlate to decision making
- Intelligent vendor comparison data
- Market Analysis
- Functional and cultural Fit/Gap analysis
Business Case Development
KSI offers an industry-leading approach to developing and validating the business case that will satisfy financial, technical, and cultural requirements at your organization. We provide the following support to evaluate and select the best-fit technology while addressing future implementation impact:
- Vendor Side-by-Side Results
- Best Fit Vendor Comparison
- Projected 5 year Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and Value Proposition
- Recommended Transition Timeline and Considerations
Change Management
Driving Business Outcomes
Stakeholder buy-in, communication, training and organizational structure are essential to successful technology-based business transformation. KSI blends expertise, best practices and proven techniques with your internal resources to achieve seamless adoption of change throughout the enterprise. Ensuring projects are efficiently managed and successfully executed leads to sustainable results.
Our capabilities include:
- Stakeholder Engagement
- Change Audience Assessment
- Change Management Strategy
- Change Management Plan
- Training
- Communications
Digital Adoption
ADOPT is KSI’s leading digital adoption solution. It delivers integrated, in-application content that accelerates end user understanding of and activity in your technology system(s). ADOPT is an all-in-one solution that:
- Increases the ability of employees and managers to perform more of the self-services tasks designed in the system
- Significantly reduces training time and costs
- Dramatically reduces the number of support calls to your HR and IT support staff
- Enables immediate distribution of important messages within the application, where users perform their tasks
- Reduces data errors by providing guidance at the data entry point
In addition, ADOPT delivers built-in adoption analytics that measure the effectiveness of your online, automated processes and pinpoints the processes that are not performing as expected. Our clients apply ADOPT analytics to quickly develop actions to improve the efficiency of their system workflow. KSI’s ADOPT offering complements our range of Change Management services to inform, educate, train, and communicate with your end users.
Project Management
Client Side Project Management and Advocacy
KSI offers a wide range of capabilities that help you run, manage, track, and deliver successful project outcomes. We bring a comprehensive, experienced, and analytics-driven approach designed to keep projects on time and on budget. At the same time, we recognize that success is more than data flowing through a system as expected. Effective Project Managers must consistently negotiate competing priorities, resources, and requirements to arrive at the solution that delivers on the project mandate within the context of the overall business.
There can be a tendency to rely on the Systems Implementation (SI) partner to manage large, technology-driven projects. However, technology projects often involve systems, vendors, and services far outside the experience and scope of many SI teams. Rather than “putting all their implementation eggs in one basket,” clients have shifted to using experienced consultants who represent the client’s best interest. They recognize the need to have an experienced PM who can successfully focus on the broad project objectives as well as the detailed deliverables. KSI’s team of senior Project Managers are seasoned experts in:
- Project planning and management that clearly sets and maintains expectations
- Program Governance that clarifies and expedites decision making
- Integrated project collaboration tools designed to spend less time reporting information and more time developing and delivering solutions
- Real-time project management and analytics tools reduce administrative time while increasing the ability to look ahead
- Resource Planning to help ensure the right skills are available at the right time
As Project Managers, we represent our client’s interests but we know and have worked with many Systems Implementers on projects from large, global implementations and smaller projects to address specialized needs. In any situation, our focus is clearly on client success and we expect to achieve it through thoughtful leadership that capitalizes on the combined skills of client, vendor and KSI expertise.
Service Delivery
Operational Service Delivery is defined as:
The manner in which the support organization provides user access to a system. Service Delivery defines the people, processes and products involved.
Support organizations tend to evolve over time. The evolution, however, is often caused by reaction to changes in business goals, mergers and acquisitions, divestitures, system changes… and the list of causes is long and ever-evolving. Does your support organization have the ability to provide the types of fast, accurate, and timely support that your customers demand? Are you under constant pressure to deliver more with fewer resources? Do your support teams take full advantage of the technology systems in place today? Do they consolidate the processes, data, and rules to not only resolve immediate issues but also supply the information leaders need to make proactive decisions?
KSI specializes in developing realistic service delivery solutions that address complex needs today and anticipate changes in the future. We have seasoned specialists with expertise in quickly assessing and designing modern, efficient, and effective service delivery operating models. Our work is focused on defining/refining roles, processes, and products that directly address your target business outcomes and metrics. Our expertise includes:
- Operations review (functional and technical)
- Process assessments
- Functional role assessment and alignment
- Sourcing and vendor review
- Service Delivery metrics assessment
- Global/Regional service delivery model design
Our KSI team uses a proven set of online and on-demand tools and templates to expedite the collection of specific data that clearly illustrates the service model options to address your most immediate needs and anticipate future demands. Contact us to find out more about how KSI can help save time and costs while improving customer satisfaction.
Business Process Documentation & Design
Business processes are the foundational elements that drive system, data, role definitions and decision criteria across organizations. Processes are often based on, “that’s the way it has always been done.” The implementation of new systems can dramatically alter existing processes. Sometimes the transition to the new way of working results in poor data and/or poor performance for specific functions or across business units.
Understanding how to optimize processes while maintaining a “real world” perspective about which processes drive the most efficiency and data accuracy. Many of our process team experts have been corporate leaders. They have been responsible for improving quality, increasing speed, and lowering costs through process redesign. KSI’s Process Design and Documentation approach quickly defines how and why the processes need to work in the future. We build on the knowledge and experience within our client teams and add our process effectiveness analysis to define, document and deliver sustainable processes that create value within your organization.
Shared Services & Service Center Design
As clients continue to look for ways to provide more efficient and effective operational services within their organization, Shared Services/Service Center delivery is a key focus of business transformation. Whether improving and optimizing your existing service organization, changing as a result of a new technology, outsourcing your services to a third party, or creating a Shared Services/Service Center support team, KSI can help.
We have a comprehensive approach that addresses People, Process, Technology, and Governance to provide the most effective user experience. Our Shared Services expertise includes:
- Organization Design
- Process Design
- Resource Planning
- Shared Services Metrics that Matter
- Service Center Technology
- Case Management Systems
- Document Management
- Governance and Reporting