C06 · PRACTICE GUIDE
Onboarding & Implementation
Prepare the customer, solution and operating teams for the first meaningful use case.
Onboarding creates the conditions for adoption and value. Implementation can be technically complete while the customer's people, processes or data remain unready. Agree what readiness means and separate technical acceptance from the first business benefit.
Put it into practice
Confirm the sales-to-delivery handoff: outcome, scope, promises, sponsor, constraints and responsibilities.
Plan technical, data, process and people readiness together. Sequence work around the first useful customer workflow.
Use explicit acceptance criteria and a transition to ongoing ownership. Schedule the first adoption and value checkpoints before go-live.
What good evidence looks like
A readiness checklist, accepted deliverables, trained workflow owners and an agreed operational handoff.
WATCH FOR
A common failure mode
Declaring customer success at go-live or measuring onboarding solely by elapsed project time.
What to measure
Time to first useful workflow, readiness completion and post-handoff defects.
Practice guidance · Framework v1.0 · Published September 2026. Adapt the method to your business model, customer segment and decision authority.