How to Buy the
Right Software

Chapter 9: Succession Planning

If you have made it this far in the guide, you might wonder what else you need to know. If you’ve successfully selected and implemented a software solution to meet your business needs as well as made a plan for continuous improvement and ongoing success, you and your team have done a lot. There is only one important thing left to do: Plan for the inevitable change in ownership of the business processes and, therefore, supporting software. You and others who have been involved up to this point will not be in these same roles forever. Succession planning is a pay-it-forward move you can do to make the team and company stronger in the future.

The good news is that if you have followed the process outlined in this guide, you’ve documented much of the background information that would be part of a transition package.

Here is an outline of recommended sections:

Project Summary and History

• Business Needs Statement
• Executive Presentation for Decision
• Deployment Plan

Current State

• Current contracts, any vendor commitments, your commitments for any marketing or customer advocacy, and vendor team contact information including roles
• Use cases and SOPs related to the solution
• Team list of business owners, stakeholders, administrators, and user groups (both internal and any external)
• Data flows and integrations in place

Unfinished and Future

• In-progress phases
• Unresolved challenges
• Future expansion promises or plans for the software

With this transition package, you can onboard any new leaders to the project, regardless of timing or role. If you involved others in putting together and maintaining this information, succession planning is easy and lets everyone know that the company is committed to the software critical to your teams doing better work.