By Korinne Condie
Kaseware Deployments
Whenever a client goes “live” with Kaseware, our team works around the clock to make the transition as seamless as possible. Both before and after deployment, we work day and night to make sure our clients have all the training and technical support they need.
Our team has historically been on-site for every deployment. However, since COVID-19 has made it impossible for us to be there in person, our recent deployments have had some unique challenges. And coincidentally, we had one of our biggest deployments to date going live in March. This Fortune 50 client needed training and support for hundreds of its Corporate Security practitioners. These users were spread across twenty separate teams and located all over the United States.
We had been carefully preparing for this launch for the last eight months, which involved:
Developing a customized business processes,
Training each separate group,
Conducting over 50 remote webinar training sessions,
Writing customized user guides and
Developing a detailed go-live plan.
Needless to say, this was not a standard deployment. Even prior to COVID-19, our “go-live” plan was many pages long. The highlights included:
Deploying multiple Kaseware resources across the country, with each support person jumping between cities to work with as many groups as possible.
Utilizing a 24/7 support bridge for those who we couldn’t meet with directly.
Conducting remote dress rehearsals the week before with all product users, which included more than 150 people.
COVID-19 Crisis
We had just completed our plan and started dress rehearsals when the COVID-19 pandemic started. Suddenly, the detailed “go-live” plan with all the campuses we were planning to visit in-person were thrown out the window. We temporarily put the go-live on hold as our client adjusted to the new normal.
With the uncertainty COVID-19 created, we cautiously set a new start date of June 1st. With the three month delay, users started to comment that they needed refresher training for their new case management system. So with only remote support, we quickly re-trained, held dress rehearsals again, and set up the support line.
Unique Challenges
A remote “go-live” presented many new challenges. I couldn’t walk over to a desk to quickly show someone how to open an investigation. There was no central location where users sat together, asking one another “Hey, can you approve that request for me.” I didn’t have Kaseware team members strategically placed around the country, giving additional training sessions and helping new users.
Not to mention that the project already had many unique challenges due to the size of this Fortune 50 company. Challenges such as GDPR compliance, custom cybersecurity integrations and customized complex access control configurations.
And to make matters even more complicated, our client was being directly impacted by our country’s unexpected period of unrest; their Corporate Security team’s workload had been doubled over the past few months. The stakes for this launch could not have been higher.
Go Live Take Two
On June 1st at midnight, the client’s old legacy system was turned off and Kaseware officially went live. By 6:00 AM in Denver, the calls started to come in. People joined the support bridge and emails flooded my inbox throughout the day. Monday was a long day; every five minutes a new question, a new person, and a new “How do I do this?”
My shift was eighteen hours that day and I was answering support calls well past 1:00 AM. But then Tuesday was a little quieter. The questions that came in were more along the lines of “Can you make sure I’m doing this right?” This trend continued to the point that by Thursday, there were only four calls. To this day, the only emails and calls coming in are more like “Can we make it do this? Can we add this?” These kinds of questions are music to my ears. It means the company is successfully using Kaseware and already thinking up new use cases for the system.
Success!
And so another successful deployment is in the books. The work is far from done; the next phase is to continue to support this client’s domestic users while simultaneously onboarding their international team members. But I’m proud to say this first phase is successfully complete and I’m looking forward to phase two!
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Korinne Condie is the Chief Customer Officer at Kaseware. She is a former government contractor with extensive experience in system engineering, operations and customer success within both government and corporate organizations.