Is your team drowning in a backlog of desired enhancements while trying to focus on strategic work? It’s a common problem that can stifle innovation and growth.
In this article, we explore how partnership with a managed services team can help you prioritize and execute on strategic Salesforce or Snowflake projects, while still addressing that ever-growing enhancement backlog. We also look at how a client can work in tandem with a managed services team during a project and continue that partnership for long-term success after the project goes live.
The challenge: growing backlog vs. strategic imperatives
A common challenge companies find themselves facing is a familiar obstacle. As they aim for aggressive growth, their core business systems struggle to keep up. Inefficient workflows, inconsistent data, and a lack of process automation begin to create friction, leading to inaccurate reporting and frustrated teams. Low user adoption of existing tools is often a clear sign of a deeper issue: the technology is no longer supporting the business’s evolving needs.
This creates a difficult choice. Leadership knows a major strategic initiative — like overhauling a critical platform or launching a new system — is necessary to unlock the next level of growth. At the same time, there’s a long and growing backlog of smaller but important enhancements and maintenance tasks needed to keep current operations running smoothly.
This is a classic dilemma: how do you execute on a transformative, forward-looking project without letting the essential needs of the day-to-day business fall by the wayside?
The solution: a tandem approach to project and managed services
The most effective solution is to tackle both fronts simultaneously by engaging a specialized project team for the strategic initiative while leveraging a dedicated team (like Atrium’s Elevate Managed Services team) to handle the existing platform.
This tandem approach allows a company to build a solid foundation for the future while ensuring its current systems remain efficient, effective, and fully supported throughout the transition.
Here’s how Atrium ensures this dual-track approach works in practice:
- The project team drives the strategic initiative: A dedicated consulting team focuses entirely on the future state. They conduct deep discovery, blueprint new and improved workflows, and architect and build the new system. Their goal is to deliver a transformative solution that aligns with the company’s long-term strategic goals.
- The managed services team optimizes the present: Concurrently, the managed services team addresses the backlog of enhancements for the existing systems. They tackle system debt, resolve user-reported issues, and implement iterative improvements. This ensures that while the major project is underway, the day-to-day operational needs of the business are still being met and the core platform is continuously improving.
- A seamless handover for continuous evolution: As the project nears deployment, the project team formally enables the managed services team. This ensures a smooth transition where the Elevate team is ready from day one to handle post-launch support. They can immediately begin tackling both the initial backlog of items that didn’t make it into the first phase and, just as importantly, the new iteration requests that arise once users begin interacting with the new system. This built-in handover guarantees the new platform continues to evolve and improve long after go-live.
The power of a seamless handover and continuous improvement
One of the most common points of failure for any major project is the handover from the implementation team to a long-term support model. A conventional, last-minute handoff often leads to a loss of momentum, delays in addressing issues, and frustration for users during the critical period right after launch.
By engaging our Elevate managed services team throughout the project, however, that knowledge transfer becomes a continuous and organic process. The team isn’t just learning about the new system when the enhancement and support requests are coming in from all angles; they are afforded the time to understand the “why” behind the design decisions. This eliminates the standard ramp-up period, positioning them to provide immediate and effective post-project monitoring, issue resolution, and enhancements once the project team rolls off.
A project go-live should be seen as the beginning of the journey, not the end! The ultimate success of a new system is realized when it adapts to the real-world feedback from the people using it every day. This iterative approach allows a business to continuously refine the platform and the processes it supports, enhancing its functionality and optimizing its performance over time.
Examples of these iterative, post-launch improvements often include:
- Streamlining and automating multi-step approval workflows
- Refining complex business rules and logic based on new use cases
- Improving user-facing documents, dashboards, and reports
- Automating manual tasks and key business calculations
- Enhancing system notifications and alerts to drive user action
- Adding new features and functionality based on user feedback
- Performing ongoing technical health checks and optimizations
The playbook for progress: key takeaways for balancing enhancements and strategic projects
Based on this successful partnership model, here are some key takeaways for any company looking to move beyond their enhancement backlog and accelerate their most important projects:
- Embrace managed services in tandem with projects: Don’t view managed services as just a post-project support function. Engaging a managed services team during a major project provides the expertise needed to maintain and improve your existing systems while the project team stays focused on the new implementation.
- Prioritize collaboration: True success depends on seamless collaboration. A close partnership between the project team, the managed services team, and your internal stakeholders is essential for a smooth execution and strong user adoption.
- Focus on iteration: Recognize that major technology initiatives are not one-and-done projects. The launch is just the beginning. Embrace an iterative approach to continuously improve and optimize your system based on real-world use and feedback.
By taking a strategic, collaborative, and iterative approach, you can transform your backlog from a roadblock into a managed roadmap, empowering your team to focus on the strategic projects that will drive your business forward.
Get the ongoing support you need with Atrium’s managed services
Make efficiency and innovation possible with support from Atrium’s Elevate managed services. Our dedicated Salesforce experts apply industry-specific expertise and a personalized approach to empower your internal team members and help you meet business goals.
