Early indications of loosely defined Quote-to-Cash process flows and how to handle them

Quote-to-Cash automation and especially order processing are difficult projects and often deliver results below expectations.

One of the key reasons for that is inability to define clear business processes within customer’s organization. This usually happens due to the following:

• Immature Processes/Organizations — organizations are young and their processes have not been yet well established
• Strongly Siloed Organizations — where departments are separated, and inter-departmental communication is limited

This is a huge problem for project managers on both customer and vendor sides: on one hand they want to move the project forward, on the other it does not make sense to implement processes that are not firmly defined.

The methods for handling loosely defined processes outlined below worked well for Nextian across multiple customer engagements. The key to success in — our opinion — was utilizing a combination of Salesforce platform features, implementation architecture and agile project delivery.

Warning signs

The following are typical indicators of upcoming challenges with nailing down process flows:

Language

Phrases heard a lot during analysis / discovery:

Most of the time, but…
But sometimes…
If, then, else, unless…
We will have more discussions about this…

Different versions of the same story

In general, it’s OK that every department / stakeholder is focused on a different part of the process and can provide more detail in their area of expertise. It is also expected that slight variations will be present. However, if contradicting versions of the same process are presented, it is a problem.

Difficulty with visualization

An effective business process is elegant and can be easily understood at the first glance.

If a process cannot be simply explained and visualized, it will be impossible for developers to implement it.

Meetings with few conclusions

The following are characteristic of meetings that are not productive:

• Digressions
• Delaying answers even though all subject matter experts are in the meeting
• Deliverables that are never final
• Jumping to the distant future without taking care about issues at hand

Risk mitigation strategies

The risks outlined above must be mitigated from a technical as well as project management perspectives.

Leverage object-oriented design

Rather than come up with large, end-to-end flows:

1. Define & implement lowest level objects actions / methods
   
    

   These should be lowest level transactions and serve as building blocks for more complex flows. For instance, for a Subscription object representing a subscription service, whatever the final end-to-end business processes will be, actions like StartService, EndService, ReTerm, etc. will be needed.

2. Expose the actions in the UI
   
    

   This will be later useful for administration, but more importantly these will be great for flow prototyping with the customer.
   

3. Use actions as building blocks for process flows

The objective is to have building blocks that can be easily re-arranged, rather than big monolithic process flows.

In Salesforce, API methods / actions can be built as APEX APIs, lightning quick actions can be used to make them available in the UI — in fact, this is exactly how Nextian was implemented.

Using car manufacturing analogy: rather than building a production line (workflow) build a workshop and tools to manufacture any type of vehicle.

Use true agile project delivery

Some consulting companies claim to use “agile” methodology only in a sense that they just break a project into bi-weekly sprints (“agile-fall”).

But in the face of uncertainty, it is hard to plan work even for two weeks ahead.

So, rather than Scrum, use Kanban board and schedule tasks with highest “certainty” as far as need and functionality are concerned.

Break delivery process up into very small chunks

• Move forward in small steps: propose and prototype small pieces of functionality — these are easier to review and approve, and customer doesn’t perceive approving them as a huge risk
• Post prototype stage, fully develop and test only what has been approved or is highly likely to be approved — this way the chance of spending resources on a functionality that will be discarded is low
• Rely on a lot of short, daily reviews rather than big meetings with many stakeholders — this is an effective way of moving forward while keeping the customer engaged
• Write documentation and unit tests after the functionality has been approved by the business. An actual JIRA Kanban board for a project reflecting this approach is presented below:

Control the budget

• Make sure that customer is aware of project burndown hours in the status updates
• Indicate any owed action items and pending approvals
• Communicate status weekly via a conversation, in addition to email

Conclusions

Capturing business process flows is essential for any successful Quote-to-Cash project. However, it might turn into a difficult task that has to be helped from both technical and project management angles.

Nextian is a vendor of Quote-to-Cash (QTC) software for cloud and communications helping providers accelerate growth and increase customer lifetime value.

Contact us today to find out how we can help you!