Aproove Professional Services
& Post Deployment Customer Care

Would you start constructing a building without any architect plans? Hopefully, the answer is no!

With that in mind, why do so many companies frequently overlook and dismiss the Discovery phase, thinking it adds unnecessary time and cost to a project?. The Discovery phase is your detailed business process improvement project plan, which will save vast amounts of time, money, and risk in the long run. 

The discovery process is the single most crucial step in any process improvement. When carried out correctly, a discovery process will fully grasp the business and user objectives while asking probing questions about every action, stakeholder, and procedure in your workflow. This attention to detail always uncovers unknowns, exceptions, and circumstances not previously considered. Involving all the key stakeholders in this process often leads to less change resistance and unity around the business objectives.

At the end of the discovery process, Aproove delivers a clear statement of work, along with an accurate budget and timeline. The discovery is made as a stand-alone independent professional services engagement before you need to commit to Aproove Work Management Enterprise as your chosen business process management solution.

Your investment in the discovery process gives your organization vital information to understand your current business processes, procedures, and risks across your teams and departments. It has never happened, but if you decide not to commit after the discovery process, the SOW is an invaluable investment in its own right.

Benefits of Discovery;

• Fully understand the business objectives to ensure stakeholders are aligned on the objectives
• External Business Analysts can drive in-depth discussions about your current processes, questioning and identifying further improvements previously not thought about to maximize your investment and provide a much bigger return on investment
• In-depth analysis of your current infrastructure, workflows, and procedures to identify the bottlenecks, risks, and challenges in the current way of working
• A much happier workforce who will feel much more positive about new technology initiatives when they feel senior management have considered them in the discovery process
• A fully documented Statement of work (SOW) gives detailed, invaluable insight into your current workflows, procedures and identifies areas of risk and process improvement; it is also a documented blueprint for a successful deployment giving you timelines, budgets, milestone checkpoints, and clear objectives based on your success criteria
• Discovery costs are quickly recovered and justified in having a clear statement of work and deliverables, which everyone has agreed upon. Discovery saves vast amounts of time and money while reducing risk, and it also provides a clear project start and endpoint with measurable success criteria.

The discovery process gives you detailed architectural plans along with planning permission to start the build!

So what is involved in the Discovery process?

Having completed many successful discoveries, Aproove knows that each discovery is unique. Some discoveries may require all the discovery steps, and others (such as existing customers) may only require a sub-set. 

The Aproove Professional Services team has developed an adaptable discovery template using our vast industry, product, and human behavior knowledge. The template gets adapted per client based on your industry and our pre-sales discussions. It gives us the recipe to leave no stone unturned while we walk through your business process improvement requirements, security needs, infrastructure needs, workflows, procedures, and challenges.

High-level discovery agenda points;

• Project foundations: High-level business goals and objectives
• Identify stakeholders: who are the project sponsors, and users and what roles do they have?
• IT Discussion: infrastructure, security, user permissions, data volumes, legacy data, archive, failover, SSO and 3rd party API Integration requirements, etc.
• How is it done today?: Go through current workflows identifying frustrations, risks, missing functions, and also document anything the users like in the current system
• In-Depth Review: Conduct in-depth analysis and interviews of different stakeholders to understand different perspectives and user expectations
• Mapping: Map processes into Aproove workflows and show some concepts 
• Identify gaps: Document any requirements that could be improved by developing or improving an existing function in Aproove
  

Post Discovery;

After the discovery process, we will present a Statement of Work. This details all of our discussions and findings during the Discovery process. Alongside the report, we will also provide a budget breakdown and timeline. Once sent, we will set up a meeting to go through the Statement of Work and discuss any change requests or additions. 

During this process, you have a few options to consider should you decided to move into the implementation phase.

• Do you want to have administration training and implement the solution yourselves based on our findings?
• Do you want Aproove to implement the business process improvement solution for you and then give you administration training to enable you to maintain and build future workflows?
• Do you want Aproove to manage the entire process and then take ownership of the future administration?

Once the Statement of Work is approved, and if you wish to proceed with your Aproove Work Management Enterprise deployment both parties will sign the SOW to agree on the content and deliverables. Formal quotes will be raised based on the budget breakdown agreed as part of the work statement, and a project manager will get assigned to your deployment.

If you have any further questions on Aproove Work Management's Discovery process, then please see our Frequently Asked Questions on the right-hand side. 

We now move into the Implementation phase. (See next Tab)

We have the recipe. Let's start cooking! 

The implementation phase is where the magic happens! Depending on the discovery output, the implementation phase may consist of all or some of the following hi-level steps;

• System architecture setup and deployment
• User import/setup (Single-Sign-On, SAML2.0, Active Directory, or in-built user management)
• Rights management and configuration 
• Workflow configuration build 
• Test and incorporate any new features developed for the project into the workflows (if required)
• Full smoke test and workflow simulation 
• Check entire design and setup against the agreed statement of work to ensure specification is met

During the Implementation phase, the Aproove Professional Services team will be working on an agreed timeline agreed before the phase begins. The timeline details responsibilities and milestone checkpoints during the implementation process.  All parties must provide the required resources at the agreed time in the implementation phase, or the timeline and budget could slip.

The implementation will get overseen by a dedicated project manager on the Aproove team. The project manager gives one central point for all communication and is responsible for ensuring all parties are fully briefed, alerted, and advised of any risks or decision points as the project progresses.

Solid User Acceptance Testing (UAT) results in successful user adoption and change management

User acceptance testing, or UAT for short, is vital in successfully deploying your enterprise solution. Key stakeholders from different teams and departments would have been identified and invited to be part of the initial discovery process. UAT is where you reap the rewards of that early involvement because they are aligned with the company objectives and had input into the solution configuration based on their needs. 

Any company must commit the time and resources to the UAT phase. It is critical to make tweaks, changes, and amendments before go-live. If UAT is not taken seriously, it could affect user adoption and meet change resistance from your end-users. The more effort during UAT, the smoother the go-live roll out. 

The UAT recipe that is adopted by Aproove is outlined below;

• Every team or role in the workflow should have a representative in the UAT stage, and all the UAT users are aware of the Statement of Work and the companies business objectives
• *Aproove Professional Services will walk the different user groups through the workflows and explain their interaction points while also helping them to see the bigger workflow picture
• Aproove will inform users how to report any issues, concerns, or questions into the project Issue Register
• The UAT users will walk through the workflows and test scenarios for a designated amount of time
• Aproove will have a daily open call to walk through anything logged in the Issue Register. This daily touchpoint ensure any issues are explained, escalated, or resolved with workflow tweaks and education.
• At the end of the UAT process, the users should be confident that the system matches specifications and works as expected. The goal of UAT is to verify the system is ready for go-live.
• The customer typically begins end-user training before go-live

Change Management;

Effective Change Management is a crucial part of any successful technology implementation or transformation, helping to ensure a smooth and efficient implementation, identifying key barriers or challenges that may affect adoption, and underpinning key success criteria and agreed KPIs. At Aproove, we have developed a structured approach to change management; however, this must be driven by the project sponsor at the adopting company. You can have the best technology in the world, but if your users resist the change or do not have proper onboarding, that may not be enough!

Aproove provides Change Management as a Professional Service for clients as part of our technology implementation process. We also partner with 3rd party companies specializing in change management, particularly with large Enterprise customers who have hundreds or even thousands of users.

Visit our Partners Page for details on both Team 6ix and TiER1 Performance. decisions were taken after the discovery stage. 

Go-Live;

After UAT we are ready for go-live. Aproove Professional Services can be on standby during the go-live phase (either on-site or remote) to ensure any teething problems are quickly resolved and users are getting to grips with the new system. 

Now the system is live, and the project is closed. Your designated Aproove system users (maximum 5) are shown how to log support issues into our standard customer care support desk, which falls into the agreed service level agreement (SLA) conditions.

Whatever level of training you desire, Aproove Professional Services Train YOU For Success!

Aproove training services are delivered by the Aproove Professional Services team with the following options;

• Administration training
• Power-user training
• UAT workflow training

Administration Training
Administration training is comprehensive and covers every aspect, scenario and feature in the Aproove Work Management Enterprise platform. This class should only be attended by experienced administrators who have the following skills;

• Must have:
  • Knowledge of web applications (front-end, back-end)
  • Great attention to detail
  • Solid grasp of networking concepts
  • Understanding of regular expressions (Regex)
  • Good troubleshooting skills

• Good to have:
  • Knowledge of scripting/programming language, javascript and/or PHP preferred
  • Knowledge of SQL database 
  • Knowledge of workflow concepts
  • A good understanding of the business in which you are deploying Aproove

Administration training typically takes five full days to complete in person. The training can get completed remotely; however, the five days will be split into smaller chunks and spread over a more extended period for remote training. During the administration training, users will have access to a training system where they will be expected to carry out setups explained during the training.

Power-User Training (Train the trainers)
Power-User training is for system users with elevated permissions within the user interface (no access to the administration interface). Power user training gives the attendees critical knowledge about managing projects and proofs. The training also provides a great understanding of key features functions such as forms, reporting, proofs, versioning, notes, comments, tags, workflows, tasks and steps. Below are ideal skills attendees to the power-user training will possess;

• Good to have:
  • Good analytical skills (to help translate user requirements into Aproove functions)
  • Knowledge of web applications (front-end, back-end)
  • Attention to detail

Power-user training typically takes one full day to complete in person. The training can get completed remotely; however, the one day will be split into smaller chunks and spread over a more extended period for remote training. After training, the Power-Users will be in a position to train the rest of the user-base. 

UAT Workflow Training
The UAT workflow training is designed for users who will be part of the acceptance group before go-live. UAT typically involves departmental managers and heads who have a solid understanding of the functional business requirements. After training, they can test the Aproove workflows relevant to them to check they align with the business requirements. After training, these users will have the knowledge and skill to help other team members when the system goes live. 

Aproove Development

The Aproove Work Management Enterprise product is a very comprehensive and highly configurable platform. The majority of our clients have all the features, functions, and granular controls required to deploy a solution that meets your exact business process and workflow requirements.

Aproove continually updates the product, but we do it in a way that is not intrusive to existing customers. We always apply the following principles to any future development;

• Any development MUST be part of the core product available to all customers
• Where possible, any new features should only ever be available to users if the administrator chooses to enable the feature from the administration interface

Product Roadmap

Aproove has a clear and concise product roadmap, which drives our core development. The roadmap is centered around balancing many requirements including, new features, product improvements, and maintaining and introducing new core back-end technologies. The roadmap is always based on strategic product direction, driven by business requirements and customer feedback.

Aproove always shares our roadmap and vision with our customers, whose input we greatly value. Our development team works in four-week "Sprint" cycles, and at the end of each four-week cycle, the new features and improvements go through rigorous internal quality assurance before release. Typically updates are available every 6-8 weeks. 

Project Specific Development and Customer Feature Requests

During the discovery process, or via our existing customers, we do receive Feature Requests. In these circumstances, Aproove will always follow the same workflow;

• Feature Under Review: This is the status we use for any feature requests. Once a week our, Product Director, Development Director, and Account Director will review any new feature requests. Once reviewed, the features will be categorized and given one of the following statuses. 
  
  
• Feature Accepted: If a feature is accepted, it means that after evaluation, the function is deemed relevant for the product and other customers. The feature may be done differently to your expectations after considering many different evaluation factors and doing an impact and usability assessment. Once the feature is accepted, it will get placed into the feature backlog. During sprint planning, it may be added to one of our Development Sprints at our discretion. When features get implemented primarily depends on our existing roadmap, development availability, urgency, and importance for a high percentage of our user base.
  
  
• Feature Rejected: After evaluation, a feature request could be rejected. Typically the reason for rejection is because the FR is not part of our core philosophy or product direction or offers little or no value to other customers. In these circumstances, we inevitably have a way to achieve what you need without developing a new feature. We will take the time to explain our decision and offer any alternative ideas we may have via the feature request ticket.

Accelerating an accepted feature request

If a customer wants to accelerate a feature development (after a feature has been accepted), we are willing to discuss this requirement on a case-by-case basis. Most new feature request acceleration requests come from the discovery process. A customer wants to fulfill a specific need that may not be covered in the standard software or requires an extension to a current feature set.

In this circumstance, your Account Manager will advise you of any potential costs to incorporate your requested features and functions quicker. Charging for an accelerated feature is based on Aproove incurring additional costs to accommodate your requirement without significantly changing our planned roadmap deployment, which could affect other customers.

API Access

Aproove has comprehensive API and documentation in both REST and RPC formats. Our modern and complete API offers callback and webhook capabilities and is fully supported. Aproove is also willing to add and extend the API should a customer have a specific requirement not already covered by the API.

The API is based on an annual subscription fee, which covers API support. Aproove also offers the option to purchase yearly subscriptions for stand-alone developer licenses.

Aproove has many customers interacting with Aproove via our API. This ability allows enterprise customers to integrate business-critical technologies seamlessly. Aproove is always open for discussion on integrations and partnerships. We can also offer API training and professional services to support your requirements if you do not have the skills in-house. 

Aproove Customer Care takes care of you post deployment

Once you are fully operational with Aproove, our Professional Service team will transition you over to our Customer Success Team. The Customer Success team is a department in itself. However, it acts as a central cog to pull in the different Aproove resources as necessary while still taking ownership of your success.

Aproove Customer Success always tries to be proactive instead of reactive (like a traditional support help desk). We implement the following with all our Enterprise customers;

Monthly account review call: The CST team will set up a monthly reoccurring call. The attendees from Aproove will be your dedicated Account Manager, Customer Success representative, and at least one C-level executive.
The purpose of this call is to have a regular open dialogue with Aproove. The loose agenda will be to cover your feedback, ideas, and any concerns. From Aproove, you should expect a "show and tell" of any upcoming versions, dialogue about our roadmap, and updates on any open support issues.

*Customer Care Ticketing System: If you ever encounter an issue with your Aproove implementation, you can email support@aproove.com. Based on your Maintenance and Technical Support Services Agreement, we will respond promptly and categorize your ticket. It is then the Customer Success Team's responsibility to see your request through to a conclusion, drawing in any necessary resources from the other Aproove teams such as our engineers, developers, and account management. 
*Please note: Customer Care Ticketing System is only available to a maximum of 5 users per company who have been trained as System Administrators or Power-users.

Product update information: Our Customer Success Team work closely with our Marketing Team to ensure you are updated via email notifications, webinars, and "how-to" videos as and when we make any product enhancements or improvements. 

Product upgrades: Our Classic customers are automatically updated as new releases become available. Our Customer Success Team will pro-actively contact our Enterprise customers to discuss upgrading your environment at a convenient time. Once an upgrade is agreed upon, our team will take care of the rest and inform you when it is complete. With our monthly account review calls and product update information, you will be well placed to determine what new features and functions you want to incorporate into your workflows.