Why you should perform talent gap analysis before building your Microsoft Dynamics team
By Imogen Usherwood- Content Producer at Mortimer Bell International
The decision to implement a new software system into your business is a huge one by any standards, so it is worth going in armed with the right resources, people and information. Of course, a crucial part of this is building a team of individuals to oversee the implementation process, a group of people with relevant skills, experiences and understanding.
This team is broken into two sides: a committee of executives and stakeholders who handle the planning and approve the process, and a core team of consultants, managers and users who carry out the hands-on task of implementing the software. The executive committee is of course already decided upon by its very nature, but the central team who actually get the job done is up to you. Some of the key roles in this team include: an executive figure, whose role is to liaise between the two sides to ensure the committee’s intentions are carried through; a project manager who oversees the process throughout; an analyst (often from the outside your business) who knows the software well and can work out precisely what you need; a consultant who takes the plans laid out by the analyst and puts them into action; a technical consultant to customise the system to fit the specifications of your business; a test lead to devise a plan for testing the new software inside and out; and a user who will be using Dynamics regularly, and is willing to get to know the software and champion it to their colleagues once it comes out.
So, that’s a lot of people, and a lot of very specific roles with certain requirements attached to them. Some of the roles will be successfully filled by existing members of staff, but others will require outsourcing. Depending on the nature of your company, some of these roles may be redundant, or you may need more than one person working on them. This is where a talent gap analysis is useful; by assessing the skills your staff already do and do not have, you can work out where to ‘plug the gaps’ as it were, by bringing in external staff members.
The first step is to make an exhaustive list of the skills required to implement Dynamics in your business, maybe using the above set of roles as a starting point. Then, sort these skills into individual roles, and list the qualities required for each role (communication, leadership, technical knowledge, etc.). Compare these profiles with those of your existing staff members, giving you an idea of which roles can be filled with existing members of staff, and which will require outsourcing.
As with any large undertaking, the key is to break it down into small steps to avoid it becoming overwhelming; taking the time to assess precisely what you need to implement Microsoft Dynamics will save a lot of wasted hours and costs later, by ensuring you are allocating appropriate resources and manpower to the task.