Implementation and go-live with a new provider

Workstreams with named owners on both sides

A workable plan separates systems integration, master data, physical stock transfer, operating procedures, labour and training, transport arrangements, and customer communication. Each needs an owner on the client side and a counterpart at the provider, with a joint plan showing dependencies between them. The frequent failure is a plan that lists the provider's tasks in detail and the client's as a single line, because the client tasks are usually the ones on the critical path.

Data migration is the long pole

Product master data, dimensions and weights, packaging configurations, customer records, delivery constraints and open orders all have to arrive in a form the receiving system accepts. Most operations discover during migration that their master data has been quietly wrong for years, because the old site compensated by knowing better. Cleansing takes longer than expected, so it should start before the physical planning rather than alongside it.

Dual running, and the cost nobody budgets

Overlapping the old and new operations reduces the risk of a hard cutover, at the price of paying for both, splitting stock and confusing order routing for a period. Whether it is worth it depends on how reversible the alternative is. Where dual running is chosen, decide how stock is split, how orders are routed between sites, and what triggers the end of the overlap, since these arrangements tend to persist far longer than planned.

Go-live criteria agreed before, not during

The decision to switch should rest on evidence agreed weeks earlier: interfaces tested against real message volumes, stock received and reconciled, procedures signed off, staff trained and present, transport booked, and a rollback plan that someone has actually read. Writing the criteria late invites a decision made on optimism and a schedule, with the consequences appearing in the first peak.

Frequently asked questions

Should service levels apply from the first day of live operation?

Most agreements provide a stabilisation period during which performance is measured and reported but remedies do not bite. The period should be defined, with a stated end date basis and an agreed review, so it does not become an indefinite exemption.

Who pays for implementation work?

Practice varies: some providers absorb it into the operating rate over the term, others charge it separately. Both are defensible, but a rate that recovers implementation cost silently makes early termination more expensive than it appears, so ask how the cost is being recovered.

What is the most underestimated task?

Reconciling stock at handover. Counting what leaves the old site, agreeing what arrives at the new one and resolving the gap takes real effort, and any discrepancy left unresolved becomes a permanent argument about which operation lost it.