Introduction
This document offers guidance on preparing for the Go-Live phase with Mercury. As Go-Live approaches, Mercury will be loading your final data cut and making sure your users have access. However, it is essential to develop a collaborative internal plan addressing several other areas as well.
Preparation Phase
Consider the following:
Final Data Delivery – To ensure the success of the Go-Live you must ensure that your old provider will deliver an uncorrupted version of your data in the correct format to Mercury at the agreed date/time. Without this we cannot ensure that users have their most recent data in the system for Go-Live so it is the single, most step of the Go-Live plan.
Go-Live Support Team - establish a dedicated internal team to provide support during the Go-Live period. It is possible to book Mercury staff to do floor walking in your office locations, but you should also ensure you have enough super users around to support the rest of your users.
“Catchup” Training – did anyone miss their planned training sessions and require rescheduling with a Mercury trainer or a colleague. Users that miss training will not have the best experience of the new system. Some of our customers run an internal “test” to ensure that all staff are at the right level of knowledge by Go-Live to ensure the best possible experience for all staff.
Instructions for the “between” systems stage – most customers cannot get the last cut of their data as close to Go-Live as they would like and as such there will be a few days where staff must work without a CRM system. Ensure you give your staff clear guidance on what to do after the data cut off point. A good option is to make your old system “read-only” and ask users to capture data in a preformed spreadsheet template which they can use to populate the new system once it is available.
Integrations and Automations – with your previous system you may have automations and integrations that need switching over or switching off. For instance, if you had automated emails after each placement going to finance from your old system, you will no longer need this, and you should plan to shut it down.
Ensure great Communication – Ensure that all staff are aware of what is happening before and after the Go-Live date and include details like:
- When the old system will be inaccessible or read-only
- What to do with data in between old and new system cut-over
- How they report issues found in the new system
- Who will be available for help and support in their office or remotely
- What to do if they have an ‘emergency’
- What they do for key transition processes such as re-posting adverts so the responses come back into the new system not the old one
Go-Live Week Activities
During the final stages of getting ready for Go-Live, consider the following possible actions you may need to take:
Notify Third Parties - Inform third-party services and partners of the system change, especially if you initially expect a slowdown in normal business processes.
Divert Job Advert Applications - If you current use a job board aggregator such as Broadbean, then you will need to ensure that they are notified of the change to Mercury, and that the email any applications are sent to is the correct one for the new process and that the adverts posted are cancelled, ready to be reposted from Mercury to ensure the applications come back with the correct IDs.
Manage the CV/Resume Parsing Transition – if you have a previous parsing service then you should ensure this is paused and redirected to the new Mercury service for Go-Live morning. For our Daxtra parsing integration, this is an email address that you will have setup and there may be multiple spools for different CV/Resume sources. See your Project Manager for specific guidance.
Access Checks – Mercury’s team will ensure all staff have access to the production environment, but you might want to make sure that they have the web address and understand that they are logging into to the environment with their normal credentials. Ensure they know the difference between the Production environment and the training one they may have been using until now.
Post Go-Live Activities during Hypercare
Once you Go-Live, you should expect the following activities throughout the Hypercare period:
Issue Collation - Collect and log any issues encountered during the cutover process and report them back to Mercury following our predefined process. You will need your own method of end user reporting as we only allow key users to contact our team to ensure we don’t receive duplicate reports and your team can prioritise any issues. Your Mercury Project Manager will also run daily Hypercare call to collate this information.
Mercury Portal Access – to get ongoing support you should ensure the users who will log Mercury issues are setup with access to our portal.
Client Services Handover – ensure you meet your dedicated CSM and arrange regular catchups with them.
User Feedback Collection – Mercury will run some feedback but you might want to run your own data collection surveys or user groups on perceptions of the rollout.
Shutdown the old System – once your Go-Live is underway successfully, you should consider the point at which you remove access from users to ensure they do not rely on it.