Switching costs when transitioning from one CS software to another

rahul_choudhary

Hello Everyone,

I wanted to initiate a discussion on addressing the switching costs when transitioning from one CS software to another.

How to convince your leadership team that the current CS software is not good enough and it is better to switch to something new? They are worried about the cost associated to switching to new software.

The new Customer Success Software(CSS) team are willing waive off all onboarding fees for us to reduce the switching costs. But this doesn't seem to be enough convince my leadership team. The CSS company asked me what can they do to convince us? But I am also not sure what they can do.

Any advice or suggestions.

Rachel Jennings

You need to build a business case around it. It's a big effort and investment across multiple teams to stand up a new tool.

chrisdishman

Agreed! I have done this, and it is a bit of a lift, but done well, it can be very beneficial long term. As Rachel said, you need to build the business case around the transition. (Why the current platform is not working, what you need to do improve that, and outline the reasons for switching vs potentially evolving the current system.

Being in the space, I have seen many times where CS leaders "adopt" a legacy system, and the setup or configuration of that system dont meet their needs or objectives. Data could be off, etc. So the first step is to understand what is wrong with the current installation, do a gap analysis on why you need to switch, and then build the case for the new tool.

Happy to discuss offline if you would like. Just hit me up in a DM.

Iain Russell

As mentioned above, the business case is all important. Your leadership team are no different to your external customers senior stakeholders - give them a compelling story.

Executive Summary - Key points of potential issues, benefits and ROI

Background - Why do you need it? What's the process to switch over and it's impact on how everyone will work. Rachel has already mentioned changing software is a big investment and rarely trouble-free

Business Opportunity - Why?

Alternatives - What else have you looked at including doing nothing? Why is this a better option?

Costs - Like for our customers, this is a major point. Remember your project triangle; scope, cost & time. As well as onboarding fees from the vendor you have to consider what requirements and dependencies for the switch are needed from you and the rest of the company.

Benefits - All of the benefits. Customer/employee experience, process efficiencies, risk and/or cost reductions, future proofing etc

Financial Analysis - This will be scrutinised hopefully.

Constraints - scheduling, resources, budget, staffing and technical requirements should all be considered like any good project

Research criteria - show your analysis of the proposed software vs the current one; your list of functional and non-functional requirements used to select this

Risk Analysis & How it gets done- What are the risks of the project and of doing nothing and can you provide a phased plan of how it will get done.

It's a long list but in my experience the more thorough you are in these proposals the less likely you'll just get dismissed. Build your story.

rahul_choudhary

@Iain Russell Thanks Man! That's really helpful.

Cheryl Luft

Aside from the financial cost, there is a cost in terms of change management. The business case is very important, but there needs to be a clear plan for enablement and adoption metrics to show the value of the new tool as well. We're actually in the evaluation process of this right now, and a huge factor is ensuring that we have full support for our users if we do wind up transitioning to a new tool.