Activating Aprimo Product - Project Approach

Aprimo Services team has well developed methodology and approach when it comes to activating Aprimo products. Our goal with new customers is to get you up and running within Aprimo as soon as possible, so our Activation projects tend to be brief and efficient (sometimes as brief as 6 weeks, but typically about 12 to 14 weeks). This also means that Activation project can be quite time consuming for team participating on customer side, as there are a lot of activities that happen within this relatively short timespan. Another thing to expect if you have opted for a quick activation project is that scope will be limited and we will aim to satisfy only the most important requirements for the beginning as well as establish a solid baseline for your solution to grow. 

We will work with you to fully plan out and define Activation project schedule but overall concept and practice for activation remains the same, with following prominent phases: 

1. Project Planning

During this phase Aprimo Services team Project Manager will work with you (customer Project Manager primarily) on developing project schedule, identifying project specific dependencies , preparing for the project Kick-off meeting, arranging logistics (such as planning meetings).  Aprimo team will deliver surveys that you will need to fill out as preparation for Activation project.

2. Requirements Gathering Workshop (also referred to as Value Realization or Solution Workshop for some projects)

In this phase Aprimo team will lead workshop with the intent to interview stakeholders and gather requirements for the project. We will discuss overall project goals and success objectives, user stories/use cases that we need to enable within Aprimo, and then define in detail how Aprimo would be configured to satisfy those user stories. Aprimo team will prepare for this workshop by reviewing results of survey results (distributed during planning phase), and all requirements and user stories will be documented by Aprimo team in a predefined workbook format.  

3. Solution Activation

This phase of the project is dedicated to configuring required solution and conducting frequent configuration review meetings during which you will be able to see progress in configuration and give Aprimo team feedback.  Our approach to configuration is iterative - we will be configuring portions and aim to show those to you as we progress, so that you can start getting a feel of what your solution will look like and also influence changes early on. Your team will be asked to participate even more by logging into Aprimo Sandbox and checking progress in configuration first hand. This gives you an opportunity to start learning Aprimo features right away and confirm your requirements as soon as they get configured. 
Additionally, since requirements are defined by the time this phase starts, your team can start preparing for UAT. So during this phase of the project it is extremely important start building test plan and test scripts, planning for your team's availability for UAT and even start thinking about activities coming up post go live like end user training. 

4. User Acceptance Testing

Once configuration is finished, an official UAT can be conducted.  UAT typically starts by having Navigation Training session with Aprimo consultants, to educate testers about features and functionality they can expect to see. You as a customer are responsible for preparing, organizing and conducting UAT, while Aprimo team is in support role at this stage of the project (fixing issues that UAT team found). Ultimate goal is to confirm all requirements are met and configuration of the solution satisfy business goals. 

5.  Training Services

After successfully finalizing UAT,  Aprimo team will prepare and conduct additional trainings for your users:

  • Trainers Enablement session intended to better prepare your internal Trainers to conduct end user training (Aprimo team does not typically conduct end user training).  During this session Aprimo consultants will discuss general methodology and best practices for end user training and provide some guidance and examples of end user materials. 
  • Knowledge Transfer for System Administrators - session intended for only a one or two designated future system administrators from your organization who will be charged with maintenance of Aprimo and extension of configuration when needed. To make the most of this session, it is highly recommended for future System Administrators to go through Aprimo Academy certification for system administrators before this session. During this knowledge transfer session, Aprimo consultants will make sure to share details about how your Aprimo solution is configured. 
​6.  Deployment and Support

Throughout initial 5 stages of the Activation project, your Sandbox is the main environment where activity happens (configuration of the solution, training and UAT are all conducted in Sandbox).  At this point in the project, Aprimo team will be moving configuration that is confirmed to your Production environment as preparation for Go Live. You will be asked to run some smoke testing in Production to confirm the deployment was done correctly. Aprimo activation team will stay with you for couple more weeks for support activities after Go Live. 

Here is an example of project schedule that mentions all phases listed above: