New Customer Implementation for Cross-Wind

I am sitting in the Newark airport after leaving a new customer implementation that I have been on all week. It is Raining and flights are delayed so I thought this the perfect time to update the blog.
I have spent Monday through today in the customers office setting up print product templates to meet the customers specific needs and to add their supplier base and the buyers into Cross-Wind I will try to give you a breakdown of my week and the customers response to all of this.
Day 1
was spent understanding the customers current purchasing processes and mapping out Cross-Wind to fit that process. In addition, I reviewed a demonstration site with the customer to show them how their process would look once their application was set-up. I also added all of the customers suppliers information into the system. One of the great things about Cross-Wind, is the ability for the customer to put their specific vendors in the system.
Day 2
Set-up of modules to fit the customers need, I added the customers buying team and assigned access permissions, from there we reviewed product templates and inserted attributes for the customers templates, we applied pricing structures for their templates and we built the templates to be used.
Day 3
We reviewed the templates and pricing applied to each and then created the product-to-supplier associations. When this was completed we did a final over view of the administration tools and then began a complete walk through with the customer of their application and made minor site adjustments on the fly.
Day 4 TRAINING DAY
8:00 AM we set-up for Buyer training which was split into two sessions to allow for supplier training in between. We trained the buyers in the process of creating a project, specifying the product, selection of suppliers, and submission of the RFQ. At this point the suppliers were receiving quotes within the system and allowing them to begin review so we immediately went into supplier training. The suppliers called in to a conference bridge and a LiveMeeting demo of how to respond to quotes. The supplier training session was completed in one hour and all suppliers were able to login and begin sending responses to our training quotes. After lunch the buyers were trained to review the quotes and how to submit proposals to their customers and how to submit purchase orders back to the suppliers. The buyer and customer training was complete by 3:00 PM and the buyers spent the rest of the day practicing.
Day 5 System Live Day
When the buyers reported to work this morning they began entering live quotes within the system and began receiving quote responses from their supplier base. I answered follow-up questions and helped the buyers with any problems they were having in navigating the system. I thanked everyone for their time and the opportunity to learn another customers processes.
Overall, What a great week! The customer is extremely pleased with how Cross-Wind works and how flexible it is for them. I will follow-up with them most of next week to ensure that it is functioning in the manner they expected and I will return to their location in about 6 weeks to do a follow-up and to show them how to use the custom and scheduled report features. In addition we have tentatively scheduled a 3-day session to implement another of their buying facilities into Cross-Wind in the next 6 weeks. I can't wait to reveal the customers name, but until approvals and finalized contracts are complete I cannot. But it will show how flexible and wide ranging our customer base is.
Well I hope all have a great weekend and It looks like my flight will only be 2 and a half hours delayed!!
John

Busy, Busy, Busy, Are you busy too?

Good Morning!
Or is it afternoon I am not sure! It has been a very busy start to 2008 for me. I hope your 2008 is starting out with a bang as well. I was at the Corporate Express National Sales Meeting last week. What a great show! The Keynote speaker was Astronaut Jim Lovell who talked about his experiences on Apollo 13. A very inspiring talk. I got the opportunity to visit with almost all of the Strategic Suppliers for Corporate Express and talk with them about their experiences with Cross-Wind and how it is working for them. Almost all of them were very pleased with how it works and expressed that it helps improve their processes when quoting to their customer. In addition, the Strategic Sourcing supplier manager did a supplier survey in early December asking for the suppliers input and the preliminary analysis is showing that an overwhelming majority of Suppliers are please with the tools. I hope to have the raw data soon and to share that analysis here as well. While the weather wasn't the greatest (Cloudy and rainy Wednesday through Saturday) it sure beat the Minnesota weather I came home too (-10 degrees) on Saturday.
Next week I am off to New Jersey for another customer implementation of Cross-Wind and hopefully I will be able to announce very soon the customers name. I am out of the office all next week but will have some time to start keeping up on this blog! As always if you have questions please feel free to send me a note.
John

New Customer Implementation

I am doing a new customer implementation in December so I thought I would touch on some of the things that are involved with implementation of Cross-Wind. One of the very first questions I get asked is;
"How long is this going to take?" knowing that everyone's time is extremely valuable a standard implementation of Cross-Wind takes only 5 days (Technically 4 and a half but who's counting?)
"Is there work I need to do before the implementation?" Yes, typically we send a spreadsheet prior to implementation asking for user information to upload to the customers site prior to implementation. This information is typically Buyers, Suppliers, and Customers that will be accessing the system. If the customer already has this information contained in a database or spreadsheet we will clean the information for them and help to fill-in the blanks. One of the other things we ask customers to consider is what products do they associate to which suppliers. This helps us in the building of there custom product templates to know which templates are associated to which suppliers. We also ask our customers to supply us with copies of any forms that they are currently using to spec print so we can develop the product templates to meet their current processes.
"What is the agenda for implementation week?" I won't get into specific detail here but typical implementation consists of understanding the customers current buying process. If the customer has there process clearly defined then this goes very fast. I have spent time in advance of an implementation sitting with the customers buyers to watch how they quote print and to produce a map of the process. This helps in understanding which pieces of Cross-Wind will be needed in the development of the customers application. During implementation week we cover the basic set-up of the site and administration, how to add modules, users, templates, modify existing templates, supplier associations, buyer training, and supplier training.
"How long will it take to do the training?" Buyer training will usually take 4 to 8 hours depending on how quickly and how knowledgeable the buyers are of their processes. Supplier training typically lasts 45 minutes to an hour and a half. Supplier access to the system is very straightforward and easy to use so the suppliers can usually start processing quotes with only an hour of training. The buyer side of the system is more complex because of all of the capabilities the buyer has to specify and request print.
I typically try to schedule implementation to start on Monday morning and will try to get out of the customers office by Friday noon. The customer then has access to myself and our client services staff at no additional charge to ask any questions or walk through any issues they may have. The Call period usually only lasts about two weeks after implementation and the customer is usually very comfortable with using Cross-Wind after that. We also provide user guides and online help to our customers and their suppliers.
Thanks for taking the time to read this and if you have questions please contact me.

Cross-Wind® Supplier Training Session - November

The Monthly supplier training session is upon us. If you are a supplier to a Cross-Wind customer. you should have received your monthly notification of training this morning. The session lasts 1 hour and is a Live Meeting session combined with a conference call for the audio portion of the meeting. If you have difficulty getting into the meeting please contact me. We offer Free supplier training sessions to Cross-Wind users on a monthly basis. No cost to the suppliers or to our customers. This is part of our services and we have been doing these sessions for the last two years. If you have questions you can always contact myself or client services at James Tower and we would be happy to answer them. The session information is below along with upcoming training sessions. Have a Great Day!
John

December Training - Dec. 13, 2007 2:30 PM CST
January Training - Jan. 10, 2008 2:30 PM CST