ERP Go Live Planning - Ready to go ?

ERP Sherpas
Jan 17, 2024
6 min read

Introduction

You have done all of the hard work to prepare your business for the Go Live event on your ERP project. And now you are ready to go live on the new system.

A formal review process needs to be undertaken with all the key stakeholders to satisfy everyone that;

The data is ready – you have been through multiple iterations of test migrations to gather, cleanse, transform and enter or import your legacy data into your new ERP system, and have tested out the results as part of your overall test plan.
The system is ready – you have completed your testing program successfully – Unit testing, Integrations testing, End-to-end process testing, performance testing – and the business has signed off on the test results and any outstanding items or issues from that.
The People are ready – the end user community has been fully trained on the new system and have signed off that they are happy to start using the new system.

The objective of this review is to collate all the information regarding the state of the project prior to going live, in order to feed into the Go / No Go decision-making process prior to Go Live for the project.

It follows the key Business Acceptance Criteria checklist to allow the leadership team to assess whether the project is ready to go live.

Go Live Acceptance Criteria

Unless all the criteria below have been signed off by the leadership team, the Go Live should not proceed.

Going live with any significant issues still open can cause problems after go live, and while you always expect that there will be some issues arising after go live, it is really important to ensure that these are small issues that can be easily and quickly fixed, as against significant issues that could stop normal operations within the business and hence contribute to project failure.

The checklist below will help to tease out any major issues.

Infrastructure

The following criteria must be met in order to proceed with Go Live;

Production server(s) have been commissioned and tested, with all standard software components, all customized components, master data and open transaction data (as per the pre-agreed cutover plan).
Failover server(s) have been commissioned and tested with a successful Disaster Recovery test undertaken and signed off. These need to be a mirror of the production server(s).
The software has been installed and tested on all devices where it will be required (ie. PCs, Laptops, Mobile devices)
A copy of the final Production environment, including data, needs to be copied and an updated User Acceptance Test environment built from that to provide a working test area to resolve issues after go live.
User profiles have all been set up and tested to ensure that everyone can log on to the new system with the correct level of permissions.

Software Configuration and Customization

All software configuration and customizations have been completed, installed and tested and signed off as part of the testing program.

ERP software core modules and components.
Agreed list of customizations, integrations and reports from Project Charter and subsequent workshops.

Data Migration

All data has been loaded (either entered manually or imported) as per the agreed Data Migration Plan.

A trial (mock) Go Live has been executed and signed off in the final days before Go Live.

The full list of data elements migrated is available in the Data Migration Plan.

As an example, the following criteria must be met from that plan;

1. Full reconciliation of all Master data being loaded into the live environment, compared against expected record counts (taking out the obsolete records not being migrated).

2. Full reconciliation of Open Vendor Orders and Invoices, comparing results (record counts and values) against final equivalent reports from legacy system

3. Full reconciliation of Open Customer Orders and Invoices, comparing results (record counts and values) against final equivalent reports from legacy system

4. Full reconciliation of Open Production Orders (if applicable), comparing results (record counts and values) against final equivalent reports from legacy system

5. Full reconciliation of Inventory Valuation, comparing results (record counts and values) against final equivalent reports from legacy systems.

6. Each data element should be signed off by the Business Process Owners, Data Migration Manager and the appropriate member(s) of the leadership team for business verification. This includes signoff for any discrepancies found.

Testing

The Testing phase must meet the following minimum exit criteria;

Integration testing is signed off by the Business Process Owners and Key users as part of the overall testing program.
End-to-End process testing is signed off by the Business Process Owners and key users as part of the overall testing program.
Performance Test has been undertaken and is signed off. This test should aim to simulate a day in the life of the new system in order to determine that the underlying infrastructure is capable of supporting the transaction volumes.
No High Priority issues remain outstanding from Integration or End-to-End Testing.
Any remaining Medium Priority issues from Integration or End-to-End testing must be reviewed and signed off by Business Process Owners and Leadership team (as appropriate) to allow Go Live to progress. These must have an agreed plan and timescale for resolution.

Business Process Changes

Any significant process changes must be communicated properly to all affected parties and stakeholders.

For areas where there has been significant process change introduced with the new ERP system, show that there has been an assessment made of the impact in those areas and that a plan has been executed to ensure all affected users are adequately trained to cope with those new changes.

In addition, process documentation will be available for all key business processes.

Security

Business Process Owners and key stakeholders are comfortable that access levels on the system are correctly defined and implemented, and that all corporate security and GDPR policies are adhered to in terms of system access and data access.

Detailed Cutover Plan

The Detailed Cutover Plan that has been prepared for transition to the new system must have been pre-agreed by all key stakeholders, and then executed fully during the transition process and signed off.

This plan should highlight the rollback points available to the business during the cutover process, in the event that there is a need to abandon the go live for any reason.

Training

Users must have received training in the use of the system for the processes that they will be using the system for in their daily roles. Department Managers should be comfortable that their team is ready to run the operations using the new system.

Evidence and signoffs for the training undertaken should be documented.

Communications

The cutover plan should include communications planning within it to ensure that all users, any affected external vendors, customers or other third parties are fully aware of the upcoming system change. If external forms (ie. Invoices etc) or any other documents are changing this needs to be communicated externally to the affected parties.

The plan must include communications well in advance of the go live event to give everyone the information they need to prepare for the cutover in good time.

Support

Ensure that there is excellent support structures in place for the initial post go live ‘Hypercare’ period.

Business Process Owners, Project Leads / Subject Matter Experts / Key Users should be in available on-site at the Go Live locations on the first Go Live day and for the Hypercare period.
The Implementing Software Vendor should plan to have their core project team (Functional and Technical Consultants) available either on-site or remotely on the first Go Live day until end of the first month, including cover for the first month-end. They will provide 2nd level support for functional and technical issues as they arise. Project Management support should also be available either on-site or remotely during the Hypercare period.
The IT Helpdesk and IT team should plan all be available on site or remotely and manning the helpdesk lines from first Go Live day until Hypercare support is no longer needed.
The support systems and processes should be in place and with clear instructions provided to all users and the project team on how to log any problems with the new system from Go Live onwards.

Documentation

The following documents should be in place prior to Go Live

Documentation	Status
Training Documents / Videos	Should be uploaded on a defined intranet site for all users to access.
Maintenance Contracts for Hardware and Software	Signed off and forwarded to Vendors.
Configuration and Customization Report	To be updated by the software vendor prior to Go Live.

Internal IT Audit Acceptance

There should be no outstanding IT Audit points or actions on the project, unless mutually agreed between the Internal Audit Group and the project leadership team.

Restrict Access to Legacy System(s)

Once all locations are off the legacy systems, access to these systems should be restricted to ‘Read-only’.