Dealership software implementation planning

What to check before you decide

Map the dependencies. What must be ready before each step: the DMS connection approved, data supplied, accounts created, hardware installed, staff trained?

Dealer-side tasks are often the cause of delay. List them and give each an owner.

For a DMS cloud implementation, vendors describe roughly 120 days from kickoff to go-live, with testing and data conversion in the middle.

Configure workflows with the people who do the work. Walk through real scenarios in the test environment. Reconcile data: compare counts and sample records against the source, and sign off in writing.

Write acceptance tests. Define what must work, with your data, before go-live, and who confirms it. Include the connections, the reports, the permissions and the failure cases.

Train by role, close to go-live, on the tasks each person performs. Record short videos for new hires.

Plan go-live and stabilization. Pick a quiet date, keep the old system available, and set a period after launch with daily check-ins and a short list of open issues.

Close the project with a review: what went well, what slipped, and what to change. Keep the plan, the test results and the sign-offs.

Hold a short weekly meeting during the project, with the same people each time and a written list of open items, owners and dates, because most implementation delays come from small dealer-side tasks that nobody owned, such as supplying a file or approving an access request, and a visible list makes those tasks hard to forget.

Keep one document that holds the plan, owners, dates, test results and sign-offs. When a problem appears after go-live, that file answers who agreed to what and shows what was tested before the switch.

Record each decision made during setup, with the date and the person who made it, so that later questions about why something was configured a certain way have an answer.