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7 Strategies for successful software deployment (and 1 mistake to avoid)

Alison Trapp
April 4, 2025
0 min read
two men and woman around a desk

Strategies for your next technology implementation  

Implementing new software can turn into a frustrating, expensive experience without proper planning.

Key topics covered in this post: 

Avoiding frustrating software implementation

Banks and credit unions are ramping up their technology spending, but as many financial institution executives know, spending more doesn’t guarantee business outcomes.

As much as it seems like successful software deployment should be a gimme, implementing new technology can turn into a frustrating, expensive experience without proper planning.

Abrigo knows something about helping financial institutions successfully implement technology. Some 2,500 financial institutions have deployed the company’s risk management, financial crime prevention, and lending software. The collective assets of those customers make up a third of all U.S. financial institution assets.

Expedite ROI and technology adoption via "the people side of change."

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Lenhart

To help shed light on how financial institution clients can succeed in deploying new software, I recently sat down with my colleagues Rick Rectenwald, Vice President of Client Success; Aaron Lenhart, Vice President of Implementation; and Jennifer Jernigan, Director of Client Education.

Jernigan

Using our combined 30+ years of experience helping Abrigo clients implement, learn how to use, and make the most of software, we discussed what successful deployments have had in common.

Here are our key takeaways.

Pick the right partner.

About the time we had our conversation, Abrigo was getting ready to deploy a new learning management system (LMS), which is the back-end software to Abrigo University. Since its inception in 2017, Abrigo University has provided tens of thousands of users with on-demand training options to help them make the most of their software. We were making this change because the new LMS vendor more closely matched our culture of support and the needs of our client base. While many features may have been similar from vendor to vendor, the difference for us was that the new vendor was more intentionally built to support a customer who was using the LMS with their own clients rather than internally with employees.

The experience illustrates what we agree is the first integral step to success with software implementation: ensure you have the right partner to start with.

Communicate the “why” from decision makers to individuals.

One of the most meaningful messages that can be sent to a broader team once a decision has been made to partner with a specific vendor is “why.” The message should cover “Why this change at this time?” and “Why this vendor?” Explaining the goals of change and how the vendor and its solutions will be able to help you meet the financial institution’s goals gets everyone on the same page about what’s ahead and what success looks like.

It’s also particularly important to ensure that the people who will be working in the software on a day-to-day basis know that their experience has been considered in the decisions, especially because they will likely have to change something about how they do that day-to-day work. These users need to be bought into the implementation process. That requires leaders making the software decision to communicate the advantage they expect to gain from it and to acknowledge the change involved.

Users need to feel like their views are considered and that their roles are understood, Jernigan said. Not communicating with users can impact morale during the implementation and the success of the implementation itself. “People in that role get frustrated and feel underappreciated,” she said. “They think that nobody really cares about them.”

Set expectations on what users will (and won’t) get from using software.

Expectation setting was a theme that came up a few times in our discussion, and it’s a topic that comes up often with customers in the evaluation process. Software can create process consistency and efficiencies. It may even help as financial institutions bring on board less experienced professionals by helping them know what to do next. It won’t fix all of an institution’s troubles, however. Issues like a misaligned culture between lenders and credit are never going to be resolved by even the best software. The key to success is ensuring realistic expectations for what you will accomplish. Obviously, your vendor can help you with this step.

Be willing to change how you do certain things to get the bigger advantage.

To build on the point above, a key consideration for financial institutions rolling out new technology is whether to select software that can meet most needs through configuration of out-of-the-box options or to insist on customization of the software. Clients who are willing to adjust some of the details related to how their teams perform their day-to-day work can take advantage of configuration.

Configuration allows users to see the benefits of the software more quickly and potentially with less “lift” by their teams than if they required customization. Customized software can take longer to implement, require more company IT resources, and open the door to issues when future software updates are rolled out.

Selecting configuration should begin with the decision makers sharing their expectations with those who will be assigned to work on the implementation project.
“The executives making the buying decisions need to be communicating with their team to say, ‘We're buying off-the-shelf software, and it’s not going to be custom tailored to you and that's OK. This is why we are making that choice,’” Lenhart highlighted.

Tailor rollout to specific roles & focus on what people need to do to accomplish their jobs.

Not everyone in the organization needs to know everything about your software to be successful. It’s more important that each person understands how their job is done using the new technology and how it touches adjacent roles. Trying to do more than that can be overwhelming and counterproductive.

Jernigan explains, “Clients ask for more training before we have executed on our standard plan. Then they get to the end of the [training] we’ve planned, and they realize that it’s not feasible to do more all at once because it’s more than they can digest.”

Own your rollout and training plan.

When you feel like you have a stake in the game, you are more likely to drive to success. One way to create that stake is to ensure someone at the institution takes ownership of your software roll out, training, and adoption plan. Success requires an ongoing commitment to maintaining software configurations for changing needs, understanding enhancements and how they can improve your experience, and bringing new users into the software in an efficient way.

“Institutions need to have that expertise, and they need to have somebody who is a go-to resource to make associated decisions,” Jernigan contends. “And it’s related to ongoing learner opportunities as well.”

Institutionalize adoption to avoid dependency on one person.

The best adoption, and therefore success of an implementation, comes from those institutions that deeply tie together their processes and the software. In those cases, it doesn’t matter if a single person leaves the organization because software adoption has become part of the day-to-day experience. Rectenwald observed that it’s like watching a switch flip when people move from “’Why are we doing this?’ to ‘I can’t do my job without this.’”

One mistake to avoid

And the mistake to avoid? Ignoring the people side of implementation. As noted in several strategies above, software implementation isn’t only about the technology. You can configure your software perfectly and tell everyone exactly how to use it, but if people resist making that change, you’ll have no return on your investment.

For implementation success, look to address both the questions “Can we?” and “Will we?”

Abrigo offers change management services to help with the people side of change, as people are crucial to successfully implementing software. All projects receive some assistance related to change management, and more extensive help is also available.

Getting new technology is exciting. But to manage the risks of a less-than-successful implementation, financial institutions and their leaders will pick partners carefully and provide leadership with communication, adoption, and training.

Lead technology change. Learn about additional change management strategies for software adoption

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About the Author

Alison Trapp

Senior Vice President, Professional Services
Abrigo
Alison Trapp, Senior Vice President of Professional Services, leads Abrigo’s Implementation and Advisory teams. After spending nearly 20 years in financial services, primarily on the commercial credit risk team of GE Capital, she joined Sageworks in 2017. Prior to the acquisition that formed Abrigo, she used her expertise in process

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About Abrigo

Abrigo enables U.S. financial institutions to support their communities through technology that fights financial crime, grows loans and deposits, and optimizes risk. Abrigo's platform centralizes the institution's data, creates a digital user experience, ensures compliance, and delivers efficiency for scale and profitable growth.

Make Big Things Happen.