No matter how fantastic a job you did during the implementation phase of your MIS project, you may still come across products or scenarios that you forgot about when setting up the system and testing it. Often, the temptation from users is to temporarily ‘fix’ the issue, using workarounds, and then carry on with the task at hand without sharing this information with anyone. But this just causes issues further down the line, when the product or scenario is encountered again.
To find out more about this, I spoke to Peter Short, one of our Implementation Specialists at Tharstern and asked him for some insight into the type of issues that might be encountered after go-live, and what the best way to deal with them would be.
Here are 3 of the most common causes we see:
There are two things that you could do if you encounter an issue, which are...
When you're perfecting the set-up of your MIS system in these early stages after go-live, communication is key. At Tharstern, our Helpdesk sometimes get calls from customers reporting an issue that has already been reported to us by someone else in the business.
This is simply down to a lack of communication between users and something that’s easily corrected. The solution is to choose one user per department who has the responsibility of reporting issues to your MIS partner and creating a team from these people.
If users A and B encounter an issue, they would both report this to user C. User C would then report that issue to the MIS partner and work with them to correct it. Once the issue has been corrected, user C would communicate this with users A and B and explain what caused the issue and how it was resolved.
These designated users from each department will then form a team who’ll meet every month to review progress. Taking this approach will improve communication and reduce the number of issues encountered going forward.
The key takeaway here is all about communication. Make sure to communicate any issues you encounter with either your MIS Manager or MIS Partner and communicate internally about any unexpected scenarios and what to do in that situation.
And remember - never be afraid of contacting your MIS partner with any queries, because they’re the experts in this situation and will want to work with you to find the best solution!