Introduction
Migrating the operational software for any business can be a challenging time for both management and staff, but with some key processes in place, the process can be managed effectively and the risk of a ineffective migration can be significantly reduced.
In this article, we'll share what we've found to be an extremely effective migration process for companies moving to Drum and how you can implement it yourself.
"That was the smoothest software migration we've ever experienced" is common feedback we receive from our customers!
The key is sticking to a proven game-plan and continual collaboration between your key stakeholders and the Drum team.
The key requirements for an effective Drum implementation involve:
Ensuring at least one internal user becomes your subject-matter expert.
Setting a rollover date that supports your business requirements
Managing the training of each staff member based on their role and potential usage of Drum's features.
Creating good "baseline" data for your Drum account
Testing your data upload prior to the final migration date to ensure key information is present for the final migration.
Final migration using approved data.
Not all Drum customers bring in historical data and this simplifies the process significantly. If historical projects (or active projects) do not need to have an automated import process, steps 5 and 6 above aren't required, but the timeline remains the same otherwise.
Drum Migration Timelines
The time required to migrate to Drum can differ greatly, depending on:
Internal bandwidth to setup and learn a new system
Historic data import requirements
Staff availability for training
The ideal "migration date" for your business
Migration can occur in as little as one week (or less!) given a simple set of requirements and staff availability, but usually the existing workload in the business means that migration must be approached more gradually, with a final migration date a month or more in the future.
When planning the migration process for our customers, we tend to work back from a "final migration date" and manage the requirements in the lead up to that date.
The final migration date is usually chosen based on:
An ability to invoice as much outstanding billable work as possible *just prior* to the migration (to start with a 'clean slate' as much as possible)
Staff availability for training in the lead up to that date
Ensuring enough time is available to test a data import a few weeks prior to the final migration date (if a data import is required)
Based on our experience, the best migration dates are usually the first day of the month, after projects were able to be invoiced for the previous month's work.
An example Drum migration timeline could be like below, assuming a 1 month migration window.
Week 1
Add key data to Drum (see the last section of this article):
Billable rates (across multiple "rate cards" if required)
Project, opportunity and proposal templates all created
Key staff (especially subject-matter expert) build muscle-memory in Drum in the following areas:
Creating projects
Adjusting project structures
Creating invoices
This can be done with test clients or test projects and is helpful to build understanding.
Week 2
Data migration management (if required)
Test data upload is created by the Drum team
Internal review of data, ensuring key requirements are met
Provide feedback to Drum team or approve upload
Ongoing training for SME's, especially around key workflows as mentioned in week 1. Additional features within the sales pipeline can also be introduced.
Week 3
Data migration management (if required)
Second test data upload (if feedback provided in previous test)
Second internal review & feedback provided
Training session one for all staff around their key requirements. As an example:
Managing tasks (managing statuses and due dates)
Adding time to projects, business overheads and leave.
Week 4
Second training session for all staff around their key requirements. Could match last week's session, but have all staff follow along with instructions, e.g.
Change the statuses of your assigned tasks
Use the live timer functionality to track time to a project
Use the timesheet for time-tracking
Understand what's shown on your dashboard
If migrating from an existing system:
Provide the Drum team with a final snapshot of your historical data.
On the final day of the week, the Drum team will upload your final data snapshot to your Drum account for use in the first week of usage.
Week 1 of Drum usage
Check-in with the team to ensure they understand their key workflows and requirements in Drum. This is usually:
Time tracking via the timesheet or live timer.
Managing their assigned tasks
Encourage staff to talk to your internal SME's or the Drum team with any questions they have. The support requirements from the Drum team will naturally be higher for a week or two after initial migration.
After this period, your team will become familiar with Drum and the support requirements will naturally reduce as a result.
Week 2 of Drum and on!
From a risk-management perspective, it's likely that your team's usage of Drum in week 1 was around key requirements (like time-tracking and invoicing). From week two and onwards, it's a good idea to start using Drum's additional features (task management, sales pipeline management, proposals) to get the key benefits of a "single source of truth" system.
Which additional feature to focus on next should be decided based on where your team will get the clearest ROI on usage or where the largest business benefit may be.
As an example, if your sales pipeline tends to be ignored during busy periods of client work, implementing an internal process around capturing, managing and reviewing your sales pipeline would have a clear ROI and prevent feast and famine cash-flow cycles!
The Migration Process Simplified
Fundamentally, the following needs to happen to migrate effectively to Drum:
Key business data is entered into your Drum account.
Your team knows how to use Drum for their roles.
Historic data is imported (if required)
The guidelines we went over above are simply a structured way of achieving these key requirements and generally become more important with larger teams or teams where a more structured change management process is required for any reason.
Your Internal Subject-Matter Expert
The Drum team is always available to support your team both during and after the migration process, but building a strong internal skill-set in the business, especially with one or two subject-matter experts (SME's) is a very effective step to improve your system migration.
An internal SME generally fundamentally understands not only how Drum works, but also how it works within the context of your specific business and internal workflows.
Fundamentally, an internal SME supports the change management process and also help your team members know who they should be asking for help if they don't understand how a business process should be run in Drum.
The SME is often the same person who will be writing internal processes or documentation for your specific use-cases in Drum, which creates a flywheel of knowledge acquisition and sharing within your team.
Choosing an SME in your business is often a balancing act of managing existing workloads and choosing an individual based on their "surface area" of involvement across the business.
"We're already all so busy..."
We get it! Businesses rarely upgrade their business systems when things are quiet, so the additional work of learning Drum needs to be treated as a small investment in order to streamline your business generally.
Drum WILL save your team time and streamline your processes (and it's intuitive to boot), so taking the time to learn it will have a significant return on investment.
Below are some example SME's assignments based on business size:
1-5 Staff
The SME will often be a director or owner, unless an admin team member is already in place.
6-15 Staff
An office manager or administrative team member is often the best choice as SME in this scenario, with a director or owner having a good general understanding of the system.
15+ Staff
An operations manager or office manager is still the best option as an internal SME at this level, but you'll usually have other options as well, depending on the business structure and size.
As an example:
A project manager may deeply understand the PM-based processes in Drum and can assist internally with questions.
A finance manager deeply understands the invoicing and expense claim requirements and is the SME for these processes internally.
How to Build the SME's Skill-Set
The best way to build your SME's skill-set is to involve them early and often in the process, including during the trial period.
By working with the Drum team and referencing our documentation and training, they should ideally have an understanding of how the following should work at a high level within your business's context (remember, you can always reach out to the Drum team for specifics):
Base Drum Data
Managing project roles
Managing templates (projects, opportunities, proposals)
Managing billable rates
Project Management
Creating projects
Updating and managing project attributes
Assigning clients/customers to projects
Assigning "rate cards" to projects
Adding notes, contacts and addresses to projects
Managing project templates
Adjusting individual project structures
Assigning staff to tasks with due dates
Time tracking management
Finance
How to create an invoice for a project
How to allocate your internal costs to an invoice (time and expense)
How to integrate your invoice with your financial integration
Project expense management
Understanding the key financial reports for your business
Sales Pipeline
How to capture opportunities
How to manage opportunities
How to manage proposals (and their associated budgets)
How to convert a proposal to a "won" project
The above list can seem extensive, but within the context of Drum is very intuitive and digestible. A high-level understanding is all that's required, just enough to know what to search for within Drum's documentation or to ask questions to the Drum team when further clarification is required.
Drum can be implemented gradually too, so familiarity can be built on a need-to-know basis, usually starting with project management and finance management in Drum as a baseline requirement.
Staff Training
Although Drum is an intuitive tool, it is quite extensive and does require staff training to achieve the best outcome for the business.
Usually, the SME and at least one of the directors (depending on the size of the business) will be involved during the Drum trial period and will have a good generally understanding of the system already. The below suggestions are based on staff who weren't involved in the trial period, but will be using Drum for their day-to-day roles.
Training for staff is often most effective when structured in at least two stages:
General Drum overview
Role-specific training
Depending on the size and complexity of the business, each of these two stages could be a single training session each or could require multiple sessions per role for larger businesses where staff have more specialised responsibilities.
We'll dive deeper into each of these stages now.
General Drum Overview
The goal of this session or stage is to help all staff understand the purpose of Drum in the business and how it helps achieve the business goals generally.
This session can broadly cover Drum's functionality "from enquiry to invoice" and helps staff understand the whole-of-business use-case for Drum and where their unique workflows might exist within that greater context.
This is a good session to explain and explore how you'll be using Drum for your unique workflows and do explain to staff how this may differ from your previous systems generally.
If you'd like the Drum team to be involved in this session, please just reach out and let us know!
Role-Specific Training
Depending on the size and complexity of your business, this may be a single session with all staff, or it may be multiple sessions based on role.
For smaller teams with fewer support roles, the minimum requirement for this training is usually ensuring that:
Staff know how to track time to projects or other concepts in Drum
Staff can see their task assignment and know how to manage those tasks
This ensures that billable time is being captured and work is progressing effectively. For these smaller teams, the SME and director(s) are usually managing the requirements outside of time-tracking and task management.
For larger teams with more support roles, it makes sense to has role-focused support sessions that explain their key workflows. Here are some examples based on roles:
Project Manager
Understand how to structure projects and assign budgets
Understand how to raise and approve variations
Understand the progress claim (optional) and invoicing systems
Understand how to review the budget usage of projects via times and expenses
Finance Manager
Understand the key financial reports
Understand invoices, purchase orders and supplier bills
Understand how Drum and the finance integration interact
The Drum team is here to help for understanding what an effective training system might look like for your team, so please reach out to ask!
Fundamental Drum Data Requirements
A "minimum-viable implementation" of Drum usually means that:
Projects and their associated budgets can be managed
Billable rates are correct
Project structures are correct
To achieve this first goal, the following data is required in your Drum account:
Staff roles (aligned by billable rates/roles) have been created.
Your billable rates) are set in your business rate cards. With one rate card set as your businesses "default". You may need to create a new billable rate if you've recently updated your staff roles.
Your business overheads are set for staff non-billable time allocation.
Although projects can be customised on a case-by-case basis, it's also a good value lever to have a handful of project templates to use as well. To do this, you should:
Create some deliverable templates. Deliverables are the building blocks of your project templates and you can assign different combinations of these deliverable templates to your different project templates.
Create at least one project template and opportunity template using your deliverables. Ensure that you change the status of these to "Active" and click "Save" to see these as valid templates when creating new opportunities or projects!
At this point, you're 80% of the way to streamlining your internal processes with templates. Our final recommendation is to create at least one proposal template that matches your most common proposal structure (most Drum accounts have more than one, but starting with one is a great start).
Either create a new proposal template here or adjust the default "Example Proposal Template" to suit your requirements.
On that proposal template, you should do two key things:
View the "Project Budget" for the proposal and change the structure to match your new project template that you created above. A great starting point is to click the "Change Structure" link and then select your template (you can add some basic pricing at this point)
Add line items to the proposal structure itself that match what you want your clients to see. This can be fundamentally different from your internal structure and will ideal have a "baseline price" to reference in the future.
The proposal document can also be adjusted at this point using merge fields.
Send an example proposal document to the Drum team and we'll be happy to add the dynamic merge fields to it for you as a starting point.
Making Migration Easier
Following the recommendations in this document will make migrating your internal operations to Drum much simpler than starting with no system at all and can be a helpful starting point for thinking through your migration process.
If you ever have any questions at all or want any guidance about your specific use-case, be sure to ask the Drum team. We are more than happy to help you and your team and want your first impressions of the system to be as positive as possible.
If your team needs additional support during training or migration, having your team interact with the Drum team can be a great way of building rapport and supporting the migration process as a whole.