Migrating from a legacy UKG product to the UKG Dimensions® solution may seem a bit overwhelming, but it doesn’t need to be once you’ve determined your goals, carefully assessed your workforce management (WFM) needs, and thoroughly planned for the change. To help guide you during your migration journey, the UKG Services team offers these tips and best practices for retail and hospitality customers.
Check your readiness level
You’re ready to take the next step in your WFM technology and investment — great! First, determine your organization’s readiness level and the preparation your team needs for migration. A deep understanding of your legacy UKG solution and your business processes is also vital for a smooth migration. By assessing your organization, you’ll have a detailed review of your current workforce management processes to provide a complete picture of your WFM lifecycle by day and by week. Identifying ways to improve these processes helps ensure that only effective WFM practices are carried over to the UKG Dimensions solution.
Identify potential risks, challenges, and opportunities
As you go through the assessment process, discuss with your peers and stakeholders any pain points and determine if any migration roadblocks exist. By having these conversations early, you can proactively create strategic solutions to these issues. Also consider potential risks and uncover opportunities for process improvements based on solution functionality and industry best practices. New UKG Dimensions functionality may eliminate the need for some legacy solution processes, streamlining processes and saving everyone time.
Develop a WFM strategic vision
What is your vision for your UKG Dimensions solution? What are your strategic goals for your business? Discussing these questions and more helps create your strategic vision and framework for your organization’s workforce management solution. Determine the major goals of the project and clearly define priorities, success criteria, and metrics. Identifying these elements helps ensure that your Dimensions solution aligns with your evolving business goals, not just for tomorrow, but for your organization’s future.
Create achievable migration goals
Whenever an organization invests in technology, it’s tempting to strive for lofty goals; however, we caution that these goals aren’t always feasible due to the customizable nature and myriad new features within the UKG Dimensions solution. Instead, we recommend a strategy session to align the desired features and functionality with a “Day 1 / Day 2 / Day 3” type of approach for alignment of priorities and project team bandwidth.
Determine your resource bandwidth
Unfortunately, taking time to consider how many resources and how much bandwidth are needed to review current business practices, pay practices, and integration with other applications is often overlooked. This frequently results in delays in overall project execution such as design, testing, and go-live dates due to the project team’s daily responsibilities getting in the way. But fear not! Carefully assess the needs of each member of your migration team before beginning the process, and you’ll avoid common setbacks, as described above.
Activate change management plans early
Accepting change is the most uncomfortable and challenging aspect of any migration from the familiar to the unfamiliar. We’re all human, after all. Get ahead of these anxieties by providing resources for all involved in the migration process. This includes creating training materials, incorporating employee feedback as part of the application design, and mitigating roadblocks to learning and accepting the new platform. We recommend leveraging resources internally or externally as part of the project kickoff, so efforts are in sync with all other project activities, and the materials provided can help put people at ease during the transition process.
Use a roadmap for your migration journey
Since your migration to the UKG Dimensions solution is a journey to a new destination, you’ll need a map. You’ve determined your organization’s WFM goals plus how they align with your business goals, and completed a detailed assessment of your migration readiness. Great! You also have a list of initiatives to prepare for the migration and have identified the change management resources needed to support your migration to the UKG Dimensions solution. Fantastic! Now you can create a roadmap tailored to your organization to keep everyone on track and your destination within sight.
Test, test, 1 2 3!
What’s the most underemphasized phase during implementation? Testing. And, it’s critical that organizations make testing a priority to ensure a successful UKG Dimensions implementation. This includes creating a detailed testing plan, selecting testing technology for overall execution and defect resolution, and identifying everyone’s ownership of testing activity. With testing, you’ll gain the knowledge of what needs to be addressed before going live. And, as the saying goes, “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”
Rely on an experienced partner
We understand that a UKG Dimensions migrations is like preparing for a marathon. It takes planning, preparation, and dedication to reach the finish line. At UKG, we have a dedicated team of Services professionals experienced in the migration process ― from conducting a readiness assessment and creating a migration roadmap to guiding you through the implementation process and beyond. We’ve helped thousands of organizations migrate to new platforms with success. If you’re interested in learning more about migrating to the UKG Dimensions solution and how the Advisory Services team can support you, contact your UKG representative.