The complex decision-making required to select the right lease accounting software cannot be made in isolation – to avoid major headaches, it’s important consider the implementation plan when reviewing lease accounting software vendors.

When making a plan, private companies have the advantage of gaining insight from the lease accounting lessons learned from public company implementations.

Many organizations do not have the luxury of temporarily reassigning an employee as a full-time project manager to coordinate the resources necessary for successful software implementation. Other challenges faced by organizations adopting new technology are lack of resources, missed deadlines and tight budgets. The right lease accounting software choice goes beyond software features and functionality and provides the resources necessary to overcome these challenges. The lease accounting software provider needs to be a long-term partner in your organization’s success, from implementation to ongoing operations. Here is a checklist of qualities to look for in a lease accounting software provider well-equipped with a successful implementation plan:

• A solid track-record of providing on-time and on-budget completion of software implementations with proven methodology
• A collaborative project management approach
• A fast return on investment
• Expertise on the lease lifecycle
• Integration of industry best practices
• High level of client acceptance
• Transparent and measurable results

Once it’s been determined a software provider has the expertise needed to guide your organization through implementation, it’s time to evaluate their plan. Specifically, the proposed steps for successful implementation based on experience and best practices, which should include a pre-implementation planning session, an initial review of current business practices and the estimated time and resources required to implement the software solution based on your organizations specific status and needs including:

• An on-site project kickoff meeting
• Determination of the specific configurations your organization needs to meet your goals
• Development of design details
• Sign-off of design wireframes with screen mock-ups
• A development phase ensuring all requirements are identified and configured
• Data migration, including development of integrations with other systems, development of custom reporting needs
• Hi res document imaging
• User Acceptance Testing (UAT) to ensure all the features and functions have been delivered to exact specifications
• Creation of lease abstracting samples

While meeting the Go Live deadline within budget is a milestone to celebrate, the software partner selected also need to demo up-front capabilities to provide ongoing support, including management and execution of all change requests and continual maintenance.  Learn more about CoStar lease accounting software and the implementation services available to ensure all milestones are met, from planning through implementation and ongoing services.