3 Reasons to Bring On A Beaker PM Sooner

– Brian Kundtz is an accomplished Epic Beaker Consultant skilled at managing implementations and upgrades, building and leading top-performing teams, and resolving complex issues.

All too often, an organization brings their Beaker Project Manager onto the project at kickoff, along with the other key resources, only to find out critical steps have been missed in the planning. It’s imperative to engage an experienced Beaker PM to review your implementation plan prior to kickoff. Relying solely on the vendor’s review before starting just isn’t enough. Here's how involving your Beaker PM during the planning stage can prove beneficial:

1. Thorough Project Scoping – A skilled Beaker PM will visit your organization and conduct an in-depth exploration of your labs to get a good understanding of your business workflows, challenges, and project expectations. Utilizing this information, they will deliver a comprehensive evaluation of the project's scope, encompassing all dependencies beyond the Beaker implementation itself.
2. Precise Budget Evaluation – Preventing the discovery of unforeseen expenses mid-implementation is crucial. These expenses encompass third-party licenses, project resources such as the number of consultants required, instrument interfaces, third-party integrations, server sizing considerations, and more.? A highly qualified Beaker PM can ensure essential budget items are not overlooked and will help you assess the true costs.
3. Establishment of a Feasible Timeline – With a precisely defined project scope, accurate project budget, and identification of potential risks, you can develop a realistic project timeline. External dependencies, scheduling conflicts with third parties, resource limitations, or other factors that might influence the timeline can be pinpointed at an early stage.? Failure to do so could prolong the project and have a major impact on the budget.? Only an experienced Beaker PM with multiple implementations under their belt will have the foresight to anticipate the many potential challenges.

It’s typically well worth the expense to bring an experienced resource on for a site visit to tour your facilities, understand your business, hear the current challenges of your operational staff, and address the concerns with a Beaker implementation. You’ll be able to go into the project with a greater level of confidence that the fine details have been considered.? While there will always be surprises, this due diligence will reduce the risk of project delays and contain costs beyond the already planned contingencies.