Tough week but we are live

Phew...it's weekend again and we survived last week. Two more beer traders are live and switched to their new software System21 aurora last weekend.

After weeks of preperation, looooong days and not enough sleep, extreme stress because we get on finding mistakes in the data files and we hardly had enough time to test the data touroughly, we made our deadlines last weekend. The cut-over stock was counted last Friday without too much problems, but it was 00h20 after all before we had loaded it all into the new system. It was fairly disappointing that the platformmanagement had all left us in the early afternoon without even checking how things were going. What a display of interest , support and involvement on such an important day. I can't understand that: when other people are helping you to make an inventory and counting stock, when you know they've been working in your platform every day from 8-9u up to 8u-9u, and you are reaching cut-over day, when you know loading the stock is critical to go life.... would you then just go home early?
I suppose I'll give them the benefit of the doubt that they did not realise how important that step is.

On Saturday they exceptionally had to come back to work and prepare the first trucks with the new goods. I am always helping telesales the most since I don't have operational sales responsibles in my team. Despite my fears and lectures about them still being too slow and not practising enough, it went fairly well. But they were not so stressed as there were no phones ringing and they did not have to key in the orders while they had the customer on the phone (the day before they wrote down the orders on paper). We got delayed because some articles were not created yet and when they were partially created, they were already put on orders, but beside that we had no real problems. By 21u30 the first trucks were picked, loaded and the first despatch notes and load sheets had come out of the system. Yeaah, so far so good. But usually it's not that weekend that that's hard, it's when the customers starts phoning, when there is stress of deadlines, when there are coming back complaints about wrong invoices, etc...

Thank goodness we had still 2 days weekend left to recover from our lack of sleep. I must admit that I've been quite dizzy and weak twice in the previous week. Scary.

Last week was hectic and stressfull and yet not too bad. As in the previous go live in March, we did not suffer tru technical problems. But as was too be expected the first days we got a lot of delays. Mind you, this was a 4 days week, so much busier than usual, there is the big festival going on in Mons which causes this to be the busiest week of the year anyway and then all the new systems and processes are completely new for everybody.
So the poor pickers have worked until 1h30 twice , the first time leaving 5 unfinished trucks. But I am sure things will slowly get better. Everybody seems to know how to use the system though, only the processes in specific cases aren't always clear yet.
A lot of prices are still wrong, but that's because they gave us the wrong data to load and fortunately they realise that.

For the first time we have a go-live with a platformmanager with a positive attitude. Despite my disappointment about their absence during stock count, he's been quite supportive afterwards, putting the problems we encounter in the right perspective and encouring the people to continue to have a positive attitude. But of course you can't have it all: the logistic manager who always used to be supportive and active has surprisingly switched completely. All of a sudden, the new system is shit to him and he's not willing to collaborate much further. Great...just what we needed.

Oh well, another week next week. It can only get better, when it all becomes more routine.

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