ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses site preparation, documentation preparation, personnel training, system cutover, and system release. A complete set of user documentation, systems documentation, software documentation, and operations documentation must be available to support the implementation process. In-house training is suitable when the system is developed internally. The training can be tailored to the system and the organization’s environment, touching on the relationship between the new system and existing systems and stressing user interests and needs. Parallel operation is less risky than direct cutover, but concurrently running two systems is expensive. The idea is to run the new and old systems concurrently and gradually increase the number of transactions handled by the new system. In a pilot implementation, the new system is first released in a single site, such as a branch office or a warehouse, thoroughly tested, and then ported to the other sites.
