Why success planning isn’t just a nice-to-have - it’s essential to realize value
Businesses don’t just invest in software; they invest in the outcomes they can deliver: Efficiency, automation, and data-driven decision-making. Without a well-structured success plan, even the most feature-rich solutions can struggle to deliver on their full potential.
At Unit4, we firmly believe that success planning is the key to taking control of your destiny.
By having a strategic plan in place, we transform what can be a transactional process into a strategic journey that ensures customers continuously extract value from the system, leading to higher levels of satisfaction and return.
But what does success planning truly involve, and how can it guide your organization? This blog dives into the fundamentals of success planning within the Success4U framework, demonstrating how it works and how to get started.
What is success planning, and why is it a best practice?
Success planning is more than just a framework—it's the foundation for aligning your key business priorities to actionable outcomes.
By working with Unit4’s Customer Success Managers (CSMs), your organization can map your strategic goals to achievable outcomes and identify measurable results to create a structured roadmap for progress.
Success planning in the Success4U context focuses on:
- Strategic alignment—Bringing together your organization’s goals with Unit4 solutions.
- Defined outcomes—Tracking progress and next logical steps with clear, measurable goals.
- Meaningful collaboration—Creating shared responsibility between your team and ours.
- Key business goals and translating them to outcomes
- Milestones to measure our progress together
- Success metrics to quantify impact
- Stakeholder alignment to ensure accountability
- Ongoing engagement to drive adoption
The success plan is your first milestone within our Success4U program. It’s not just about using our product effectively—it’s about unlocking maximum value from your investment.
The role of your Customer Success Manager
Your Customer Success Manager plays a vital role in ensuring your success. Think of them as your trusted partner and advocate within Unit4, an extension of our team dedicated to enabling the delivery of your business outcomes. They’ll:
- Work closely with you to understand your goals and challenges.
- Understand your business and how our solutions fit into your bigger picture
- Identify how to leverage Unit4 solutions and services effectively and challenge your teams toward what’s next.
- Agree on the steps and timeline for achieving milestones.
- Help track the metrics that matter, talk about the wins or course corrections, and ensure you remain on a path to value.
- Document everything in a tailored Success Plan that we can go back to and continue to build upon
Your success plan isn’t just a static document—it’s a living strategy. It gives you a collaborative and transparent way of tracking progress, focusing on priorities, and delivering a return on investment back to your company.
How do we build a success plan?
A success plan requires careful thought, attention, and collaboration. Here’s how we help create one tailored to your needs:
1. Identify business objectives
We start by understanding your business goals, challenges, and desired outcomes. This step sets the foundation for everything that follows.
2. Map objectives to success outcomes
We map your priorities to Unit4’s Success Catalogs, which contains a growing portfolio of predefined success outcomes underpinned by packaged services – defined, proven, and predictable. This ensures alignment with measurable results and agile adaptability to evolving needs.
3. Define metrics (KPIs)
Clear metrics and KPIs help gauge progress and performance. Together, we’ll identify indicators that represent success and define what a meaningful outcome looks like for your organization.
4. Document responsibilities
Collaboration is at the heart of a strong success plan. We’ll outline specific tasks for both your team and ours to ensure full accountability on both sides.
5. Establish a timeline
Timelines are essential to keep momentum and ensure clarity. We’ll create a schedule that outlines when specific milestones should be reached – and celebrate together when achieved.
6. Execute and monitor the plan
The success plan becomes our guiding framework for consistent progress. We’ll revisit the plan during business reviews to ensure alignment and pivot where needed.
By the end of these efforts, you’ll benefit not just from a roadmap but from a fully transparent and actionable plan designed to optimize results.
Base your plan on the right information
At Unit4, we build everything with the customer at the center. To ensure your success plan is impactful, the following key components are included:
- Goals and objectives: Clear priorities aligned with your business needs.
- Timeline: A realistic schedule to track milestone achievements.
- KPIs: Metrics to measure effectiveness and ensure accountability.
- Action items: Specific tasks for both your team and ours.
This highly collaborative process ensures every decision made is rooted in your organization’s unique priorities.
Why success planning matters
Success planning not only helps align our teams with yours but also ensures consistent value generation over time. By basing our collaboration on a shared plan:
- We gain a unified understanding of your challenges and opportunities and alignment with your organization from the start.
- We establish clear metrics to track and evaluate progress.
- We ensure continuous improvement with mechanisms to adapt, add-to or change to support your evolving needs
Your success plan isn’t a one-time exercise; it’s a dynamic partnership evolved through business reviews, updated priorities, and new challenges.
How we use your feedback to drive innovation
Your voice matters. The feedback captured during our success planning process doesn’t just stay within your success plan—it informs our larger mission to deliver innovative services that truly make an impact. For example:
- Enhanced onboarding programs: Designed based on best practices and to reduce time-to-value and get you to maximize your investment quickly
- Integration capabilities: Tailored to enable seamless workflows for easy onboarding of teams and change management across your organization
- Success outcome development: Directly shaped by the needs and challenges identified in our success plan discussions.
Your feedback guides our Service Portfolio Management Team as they develop actionable strategies to align customer needs with product advancements.
Your partner in success
Planning your success enables us to ensure that using Unit4 is game-changing for your business. With your Success Plan in hand, you have a clear roadmap to achieving your business goals—built on measurable results and actionable insights.
If you have questions, encounter roadblocks, or need additional guidance on maximizing the value of Unit4 solutions, remember that your Customer Success Manager is just a call or email away. They’re here to create an ease-of-engagement and use that helps you deliver value.
Take control of your organization’s success. Reach out to your CSM today to get started. Together, we’ll ensure your path forward is clear, prioritized, and fully optimized for success.
