Before you can build a business solution, we must first understand the business, and the desired business results that generate real value for the customer. This is the first and most important step in implementing packaged software in such a way that we can provide maximum support to the customer's business value generation stream. Too often, Commercial Off the Shelf (COTS) software implementations focus on the individual functional pieces in silos and fail to validate that the end results — which are typically outside of the business software — generate the business value expected by the customer. Starting with the desired business results and working back to the value-added business activities that the packaged business software should support is an approach that will assist implementation teams in quickly focussing on what is important to the customer.
Alignment is key to being able to produce the desired business results. There are several key alignments that we need to develop...