Introduction
To avoid the negative business effects mentioned in Planning for Successful Adoption, all outcomes and expectations should be clearly documented and agreed upon with all involved parties. Before any post-sales implementation work there should be an internal handoff meeting (See the 🤝 Smooth handover from Sales to CSM section in 1. Pre-Sales - Preparing for Adoption for more details). Use the Outcomes and Measures of Success Template to document learnings in the sales process and identify any missing information.
Thorough understanding of the customers needs allows us to map them to outcomes which drives the platform configuration.
You can use the Essential Topics Reference Guide to help determine the appropriate governance level for the customer and drive the implementation and adoption strategy that should be prescribed.
💲 Paid Services
Customers needs will vary from basic cloud storage to complex change and approval processes, even the most basic data management will require configuration decisions, potentially workshops, and individualized support during the implementation process. Because of the amount of effort required, all implementations from Store & Revise to Manage & Control should be treated as paid services. Some standard offerings you may want to consider include Out of the Box (Basic Store and Revise), Configured Quick Start and Bespoke (Manage and Control).
🏁 Customer Prerequisites
👮♂️ 3DEXPERIENCE Platform Administrator
The 3DEXPERIENCE platform Administrator is a person identified by the customer who will play a critical role in the implementation and needs to be an overall advocate for 3DEXPERIENCE. In most cases the champion becomes the 3DEXPERIENCE platform Administrator. Usually a senior designer or engineer will take on the responsibility of 3DEXPERIENCE platform administrator:
Understanding of company’s procedures and practices
Understanding of the company’s engineering process specifically its CAD products and how the company uses it
General understating of IT tasks - Installing software, MS Windows, services, creating users, groups and permission
The customer will ensure a dedicated resource is available to act as the 3DEXPERIENCE platform Administrator. He/she will need to be completely involved during the entire implementation period.
In addition, the customer should be prepared to have additional resources available if necessary, to assist in the implementation and to answer questions such as IT, Engineering and Management.
Note - IT are often required to help with user and group security when installing 3DEXPERIENCE SOLIDWORKS and Collaborative Designer for SOLIDWORKS native client apps.
It is important to identify all the appropriate personnel up front to avoid slippage in implementation time due to the lack of customer availability.
✅ Customer Expectation Check List
The customer understands the scope of the implementation and is satisfied with the limited goals as defined in this document and the Statement of Work (SOW).
A Statement of Work (SOW) has been delivered and signed by the customer.
The customer has ‘ready to go’ hardware that meets the 3DEXPERIENCE platform Eligibility requirements.
The customer has received and consented to the Customer License and Online Services Agreement (CLOSA).
The customer has allocated a resource to act as the 3DEXPERIENCE platform Administrator and this resource will be 100% available during the implementation.
The customer understands that part of the implementation involves training and that the end users of the system will need to be available to participate in the training.
The customer will ensure other resources such as IT, Engineering, etc. will be made available if required to assist in the implementation.
At the end of the implementation the 3DEXPERIENCE platform will be operational and the customer should be prepared to start using the SOLIDWORKS and the 3DEXPERIENCE platform
🧱 Elements of Implementation and Adoption
This section is an overview activities that can be used to achieve successful customer implementation and onboarding. In an ideal world all customers would be willing to work with you on each but that it unrealistic so the order and amount of engagement will vary depending on the customer. Specific examples of onboarding roadmaps are presented in the Customer Scenario Examples section of this guide.
There should always be some form of a 🎬Kickoff meeting, for suggestions on how to lead a productive kickoff meeting see 4. Ongoing Engagement - 🎬 Kick-off meeting
🚦 Readiness Assessment
In order to ensure that outcomes and expectations are met, readiness assessments should be completed and used to set realistic milestones. We've created two different readiness assessments for your convenience.
📄 Statement of Work (SOW)
When engaging with a customer to implement 3DEXPERIENCE Works, DS SolidWorks strongly recommends that a Statement of Work (SOW) is developed for customers requiring any platform configuration. The SOW should detail:
The scope and tasks of the work to be performed
Assumptions made regarding the implementation
Customer requirements – what will be required by the customer in order to complete the tasks Such prerequisites from the client may consist of IT related issues, project related requirements (i.e. availability of respective personnel, etc.)
Estimated Time for each task
Acceptance criteria and any deliverables if applicable
Agreed price for the Implementation Program delivery
Once a SOW is created, it mostly can be re-used for other customer implementations as the basic fundamentals will be similar for most customers. The SOW is a key document to ensure that you and the client agree on the scope of the implementation as well as all the resources required to deliver it. Changes that are requested during the implementation should be clearly discussed as to their impact on the deployment timeline as well as any additional cost that could be incurred. Proper project management principles should be followed to document the approved changes.
🎓 Training
Training is a critical element when implementing or learning any new topic. A discussion with the customer should be had early on to determine what is the best fit for them. At minimum, an admin should be identified and go through fundamental platform training so they understand how to configure their platform and are able to make changes if needed.
There will always be customers unwilling to go through training. Because it is so important, it's recommended to make sure they are aware of any public webinars, lunch & learns, etc.
🔧 Workshop
Workshops are typically sessions that can range from 1 hour to multiple days (or longer) and have technical representatives from both the partner and the customer. Ideally workshop sessions would happen after the customer has gone through training. This is the bulk of the time spent working out the platform setup ensuring that all of the defined outcomes are met. This is a big opportunity to build strong lasting relationships with customers as a trusted advisor.
The effort and time spend workshopping may be significantly less for basic needs customer that is flexible and can make changes on the fly. While customers requiring more complex setups might require validation stages, define rigid 📄Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) and require custom training development.
✈ Pilot Project
Depending on the size of the roll out of 3DEXPERIENCE Platform, it may make sense to first conduct a pilot before a complete production roll out.
The Pilot Project of the implementation sets time aside for a select group of users who intend to use the system to work in a pre-production, or limited production environment. The customer will usually determine how long the pilot should last and what functionality and operations should be addressed during the pilot. The implementer’s involvement is minimal during this time, to obtain feedback from the customer as to the customer’s progress and, or any issues they encounter with the pilot. After the pilot is complete or during the pilot, the implementer will help address any issues discovered (some time should be allocated to address them).
The main benefit of a having pilot program in the implementation is to provide time for issues to surface that may not have been considered during the initial implementation without risking a customer’s production work from continuing.
Many companies tend to de-prioritize the pilot. Training and Piloting is absolutely critical to project success. Many issues relating to training or workflows as well as bugs can be found during the pilot phase. Identifying and addressing these in the pilot can avoid a backfire when rolling out to production. While working with customers and conducting a larger scale implementation, it is important to insist on a pilot from day one. Pilot length is a function of number of users, volume of data, what departments are involved, how many user scenarios are managed in the Platform, etc. Pilot can take anywhere between a few hours to a few weeks.
📅 Phases
Phased implementations should be considered in situations where higher levels of governance are required. The more functionality that is implemented directly relates to the benefits that are realized, but, the adoption curve can be steep so it is recommended whenever possible to start simple and add new features as the customer becomes more comfortable with the 3DEXPERIENCE Platform (i.e. crawl > walk > run) This is much easier to achieve, because unlike other enterprise software, any changes from an admin standpoint can be modified and deployed almost instantaneously.
🤝 Ongoing Engagement
SaaS models require a different approach to engagement. The level of engagement is determined by the perceived value of the customer as well as the customers willingness to meet. Listed below are recommended activities that relate to engagement levels. Starting with Low Touch, each higher level engagement should benefit from the lower level activities.
This is by no means an exhaustive list and should be used as a starting point to be evolved to fit your business and customer base. More information regarding Ongoing Engagement can be found in 4. Ongoing Engagement
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