I met Lisa Muller about a year ago when she was part of the OPMS Implementation team for Jan de Nul. It was her first exposure to OPMS, yet after only a couple of initial software familiarisation sessions, she just clicked with the software and quickly became an OPMS Expert.

Today, Lisa is managing her third OPMS implementation, this time at Teekay Shipping. Even though it’s too early in the project to draw any conclusions, I am quietly confident that the project will be a success. If you have the right people using the right products, it always is. I took Lisa for a lunch to touch base on how things are going and asked her a few questions

Tiiu: I was so pleased to hear that Teekay had hired you to manage the OPMS implementation project, congratulations on the job! We have already worked together on Jan de Nul’s and International Maritime Services implementation and now you took on the challenge yet again. Why do you enjoy running OPMS implementation projects?

Lisa: I enjoy implementing OPMS so I can show colleagues what it can do to make their jobs easier.  I am all about working smarter not harder to get the job done efficiently and love that OPMS makes this possible. Also with each implementation I learn more about the capabilities, extra features and improvements which make me love working with OPMS even more.

Tiiu: You are always ahead of the game, when others say, “let’s do it” you say “done”. The license agreement was signed on the 29^th November, by then you had already commenced the data entry in the trial database. We couldn’t import much from legacy systems due to lack of exports available, nevertheless you seem to be making fast progress. How is the implementation project progressing today, three weeks later?

Lisa: We have entered all personnel profiles, positions and rosters. We have also created the training matrix and filled most of the training gaps.  We are now working on setting up reports to be used for the management of the project.  We are also working with our travel provider to work out how best to manage travel from OPMS.

Tiiu: Teekay signed up to use OPMS when we had just launched OPMS Cloud. A decision had to be made between the two options – a self-hosted server or our cloud service. The latter was selected after a successful one-month free trial. You were the main person trialling Teekay’s OPMS cloud environment. Are the users happy with the performance? From your perspective, why was the cloud solution more favourable for Teekay?

Lisa: To date we haven’t had any issues with the performance of the system and are very happy with how it is working. Coming from our IT department and internal restraints, it was more beneficial to use the cloud service option due to the time it would take to set up a self-hosted server. We were all keen to get OPMS up and running as soon as possible and this proved successful.

Tiiu: Our 18 clients use OPMS quite differently, despite the same functionality being available to all. OPMS provides structure, but also offers the flexibility to incorporate existing processes. I’d say incorporating OPMS in daily processes and vice versa is the most crucial aspect of a successful implementation project. How challenging is it to tie OPMS into a company’s daily processes? Can you share any tricks to manage the change in an organization and get all key personnel on board?

Lisa: It is always challenging getting people to change their processes but if OPMS is set up right from the beginning it helps when showing how easy and fast it can be to use for required tasks and to manage information.  I find that getting everyone involved in the set-up process (i.e. feedback, loading data) helps them to get a feel for how OPMS works, what it can be used for and also raises questions on how else OPMS can be utilized to manage the project.

Tiiu: Talking about change management, have you noticed that every time you return to using OPMS, there have been significant changes. How are you as a user feeling about these changes? I’m hoping we are constantly making OPMS easier to use?

Lisa: I am amazed at how OPMS has the foresight to make these changes and how fast it happens. Also love that I never hear ‘our system can’t do that’…it’s always ‘Yes we can’, ‘Here’s an alternative’ or ‘Let us work on it for you’

Tiiu: Good luck with the rest of the project and thank you for your fantastic work. I can’t emphasize enough how valuable your feedback and assistance has been to us.

Lisa: Thank you Tiiu and your team for always supporting me. Also thank you for always listening to my ideas and working with me to implement functions/features to improve how OPMS can work with specific company and project requirements.