Moving Your Support

So, you have worked hard to develop a bespoke software application that perfectly fits your business needs.

Perhaps you are the proud owner of a centralised software system that your business now relies upon to function day to day. Or you may have a mobile app at the core of your customer engagement strategy.

However, you're not sure if you or your software is receiving the greatest level of support. Yet the prospect of changing to a new software support provider feels pretty daunting.

If we had an Xbox for everytime we'd spoken to a business who were worried about the disruption moving away from their current software supplier would cause, we'd probably never leave the house (and have a serious case of RSI!).

At the Clever Software Group, we are experienced in handling smooth and efficient transitions.

Here we let you know about our approach to managing your transition to a new software provider. And how making the move to a new software team could make perfect business sense.

First things first, we embark on a process of discovery.

To get to know your business and your people. This will enable us to effectively understand how your software needs to work for you.

It's important for us to understand what you want your software to achieve in line with your business objectives. So that we can start planning how to bridge the gap.

Software support is about much more than fixing bugs and preserving the system's current state. It should be about evolving your software to do more. Moving with the times; moving with the growth of your business. Adapting to employee and user needs.

This could include training for new users, managed software upgrades or the integration of new business functions.

We take a consultative approach to support. Enhancing the usability of your software to ensure it is the very best it can be. In turn providing greater value for money on your software investment.

Review of Your Current Setup

A comprehensive code analysis will initially take place to help us as the new provider to understand the product, and where we can help to make improvements and recommendations for the software's life cycle.

We want to evaluate the code so that we can see how it is implemented and deployed. This gives us a good understanding as to how well the software was developed and the complexity of any support requirements.

When we review the hosting we look to see if what you have at the moment is fit for purpose, and consider whether we can save you money, increase uptime and reduce risk by using a different hosting provider.

We would present our recommendations for how your software hosting will be set up and implemented ahead of the moving date.

We aim to provide a fresh perspective on your IT strategy, and to get both your team and ours excited about evolving your software.

Tailoring the Right Package

Once we've completed our review and recommendations process, we tailor make a support / hosting agreement for your business.

Some clients will take this time to look at improvements to the system. While others, typically those whose business functions around the software, will need the system to keep on running as normal before any changes are implemented.

We offer a range of fully customisable packages with varying levels of support and maintenance to protect your software and enable it to grow.

Whilst smaller software applications may simply require ongoing training or assistance with system updates, complex large scale enterprise applications with numerous users and huge amounts of data input will require a high degree of user support and technical maintenance.

We can also offer packages specifically tailored to you that may take the form of buying a certain amount of monthly support hours.

Making the Move Happen

Planning is the key here. A seamless transition will need to be carefully managed weeks in advance. With that in mind, it would be advisable to begin your tender process at least a couple of months in advance of your current contract renewal date.

Our team are experienced in managing a happy handover. We can consult with the original software developers on your behalf or if that's not an option, we can work directly with you to take over the code.

From there, we will set an agreed moving date (no big lorries required) and begin to devise a transition project schedule.

You will be assigned a core developer. As a rule of thumb across all of our support packages, we ensure that our clients are given a core support team.

While there will always be a dedicated contact who you regularly speak with, we also value the importance of sharing knowledge within our team. Ensuring that more than one software developer is able to confidently provide you support.

At this stage of the process we will ensure that system traning with our development team takes place. Focusing on building confidence and engaging our team with your business objectives.

Taking Care of Data Management and Hosting

With an agreement in place, and training underway, we can then put together a plan for migration.

This needs to cover everything from minimising downtime for the users to ensuring a robust plan for disaster recovery etc. We would normally look to complete this outside of your core business hours.

One of the key considerations during this process is how best to manage the transfer of your business data to a more secure, accessible platform.

Migration would also include an end to end test before and after so that we can be certain there are no issues introduced as a result of the handover.

A New Start

On the day of the official handover, your dedicated support developer will be in regular contact with progress updates. The team will be on hand to assist with any issues that occur, and to help you communicate the changes internally.

Once we have taken ownership of the system, we will devise a testing plan for the implementation of any updates and enhancements.

We will also set regular review and planning meetings. This will involve ongoing conversations to ensure we are all confident in handling the new system, and can start to build the foundations of a solid software partnership.

We aim to take the hassle out of moving your software support to our development team. Making you talk less about 'taking the plunge', and more about 'the best move we ever made'.