Problems With Post-Go-Live Adoption Start When the Implementation is Rushed. And It’s Always Rushed.

Software vendors rightly worry about post-launch adoption.

Because if the client isn’t using every bell and whistle, someone’s going to ask:

Why are we paying for this?

Low adoption is a CX issue. It's a churn risk. It's an upsell blocker.

Let’s put aside the usual suspects: training, enablement, or change management - all of which are too vague to blame - and I'd argue, almost always wrong.

If CMS users aren’t embracing the full feature set three to six months after go-live, the problem’s not behavioural. It’s technical.

Here’s the 2 things I see, time and time again:

1. Full Feature-set Not Fully Implemented at Go-Live.

Most platform builds run out of money, or time. Or both.

It's so predictable it should be in the project plan:

“We will run out of time. We will cut scope.”

The launch goes live. Everyone claps, breathes a sign of relief... But the team knows the job isn’t all done.

At this point, two things usually happen:

1. The client demands the rest of the scope as part of Phase 2. No extra budget and ASAP.

2. The supplier asks for more budget. And is told there isn’t any.

Either way, the supplier is now in a squeeze. And they’ve no choice but to cut every corner, as quickly as possible - because each day is eating into the project profit.

Ironically, it’s the so-called: ‘nice-to-haves’ that got cut to get the big release over the line. Ironic because they were the very features that sold the platform in the first place.

The cool bits, the differentiators are now rushed in. With not enough time, budget, planning or due care. In other words, they're hacked.

To make things worse, the editor experience - the one thing that might help users see value - also gets de-prioritised. Almost always.

So, in summary, the best features limp over the line. The day-to-day UX is compromised. And buyer’s remorse creeps in before the first support ticket is raised.

This is normal. This is happens ALL the time. But senior stakeholders, from all camps are too busy, or too wary to eye-ball it.

2. Technical Debt Starts Immediately.

The moment the ribbon’s cut, the A-team rolls off. They move on to new business, new projects, and greater glory. What’s left behind is a brave but junior support squad - handed a sprawling codebase they didn’t architect, built on custom patterns they’ve never seen before - where the CX and nice to have features received the least due care.

Basically they start on the back foot. They can’t defend the original scope because they weren’t there. They didn’t see the trade-offs, or the rationale for any of the technical decisions made.

They firefight, patch and reverse-engineer.

And they add debt because there's no proper accounting for continuity.

So, inevitably:

1. Promised features stay dormant, or become dormant because they were rushed in.

2. Small fixes take weeks.

3. Change requests get flagged as high risk, because of regression fears - who knows what will happen if we change anything?

4. Marketing teams stop logging tickets.

5. Senior stakeholders start asking: “did we back the wrong horse?”

But we didn’t.

The platform isn’t broken. It’s just aged way faster than expected.

Because the maiden project was pressurised.

And, because the support model doesn't reflect the lived technical reality of the build nor match the complexity of the platform, or the fragility of the handover.

This is what we see, and that's why we insist on investing in support. Support is in many ways the most important part of the implementation.