From our session with Nigamanth from Pando as part of the “Implementation Stories” series. Here's a summary of some of my learnings and takeaways for the community:

• We first discussed how their implementation and onboarding plans work. Pando has different versions of various line items like “light” vs “heavy” touch across the spectrum all the way to how they do the training, etc. Based on the kind of organisation, they take a call on what package combination is going to best suit the customer and offer that - instead of confusing the customer with options. So they end up offering a “silver” or “gold” implementation plan depending on the right fit for the customer.
• Nigamanth shared in detail how they realised that just taking a customer “live” doesn’t cut it. Change management, getting the results/outcome, etc cannot be left to the customer. So they actually changed the name of their team to “Value Delivery” - so there is an explicit orientation around value delivery. This means a focus on value delivery right from understanding today’s baseline and expected value from the implementation right at the kick-off, followed by various exercises along the journey to ensure adoption and recognition of value. Some of the ideas I noted from this included
• Giving early access to the product and holding contest for the “users” to gamify the initial usage and onboarding and get people accustomed to understanding what the product can do for them even before the integrations and go-live happens.
• The concept of making the customer “own” your product and outcomes. Make the customer side project team’s goal to be around a successful roll-out and adoption of the product, but also have the business team take on KPIs around realising the actual ROI from the product. If there’s cost savings to be realised, the business team is on the line to see those cost savings actually happen. The steering committee - which includes the key executives and sponsors of the project need to ensure that the functional owner is taking ownership of the metrics and KPIs. This creates a win-win, and there is alignment that ensures that everyone is focused on not just the project completion but also adoption and delivering results from it.
• There was an idea shared around including FAQs from all past integrations as part of the business requirements and scope templates so that every new customer benefits from clarity that has been shared with earlier customers, and the team doesn’t have to expend energy making the same clarifications over and over (this can happen even with the same customer over a period of time when they revisit some questions, etc)
• We discussed the push and pull that is commonly seen across Onboarding vs Product teams when a new implementation and go-live hinges on some deliverables from product. Nigamanth shared how adding a Product Council comprising product leaders, founders, and head of sales, success meeting on a bi-weekly cadence to discuss items has streamlined how you respond to customer asks during this phase.
• The value of having steering committee meetings with top executives on a bi-weekly basis - how it ensures commitment from the org, ability to resolve any deadlocks, etc was discussed.
• We also saw how the typical practice of “as is” process mapping may not work well when we are innovating on the product. Instead, introducing a new process that is more appropriate for your product to success should be the goal.
• Nigamanth shared what they typically cover in their kick-off meetings
• He also shared how they’ve crafted strong implementation and integration guide documents that are very detailed, cover every scenario and how that has helped them in working with third party integrators.

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