What does a migration to Eplan involve?

Migrating your electrical engineering team across to new design software may sound to you like a fairly disruptive, technical project, and one that could distract their attention away from existing projects. Eplan’s team will work closely with you to ensure a smooth transition, minimising any disruption, and helping you quickly realise long-term efficiencies and benefits that far outweigh the initial investment of time and effort.

Our onboarding programmes are structured and phased in such a way that your teams’ capabilities can build steadily while day-to-day operations continue.

Whether you are replacing a legacy ECAD system, or moving from paper-based design, we’re here to help your team become fully productive fast, without compromising delivery quality.

Is it a phased migration programme or hard changeover?

We will always recommend a phased approach to migrating to Eplan.

As part of the basic, extended and enterprise onboarding programmes, you will have clearly defined stages, each designed to reduce pressure on internal teams while maintaining your momentum.

The process commonly begins with assessment and planning, where current workflows, data requirements and business priorities are reviewed.

The installation and setup phases place the software within your existing IT environment, and this is followed by a configuration phase to reflect your standards, templates and reporting needs.

From there, our training and support can equip your engineers with the practical knowledge required to start using the platform confidently.

Once all this foundation is in place, you can move into your first live projects before you enter a longer optimisation phase where your standards become refined and platform usage expands.

This sequence gives you and your leadership team control over the pace and your workflow priorities, rather than forcing the business into a single deadline.

Different organisations need different levels of support, which is why our onboarding packages can be matched to reflect the complexity of your business, as well as your current levels of team resource availability and capacity.

Find out more about Eplan’s migration and training programmes.

How can we keep current projects moving forward?

We understand that many companies may be concerned about whether the migration will mean shutting down their current engineering design activity while the new Eplan system is installed.

There is no need to be concerned, because your existing systems can continue running alongside Eplan during the transition.

Your live projects can be completed using these systems, while your new work will begin in Eplan. This allows the changes to happen progressively rather than with an abrupt transition.

At no point will all your design work have to stop simply to enable the migration!

Which parts of my business will you migrate across?

Typically, your electrical engineering team will take the lead in the early stages.

After this is completed, we can turn to onboarding your downstream and upstream functions, if this has been agreed as part of your plan. This is designed to give you greater data consistency across all your operational processes, from procurement to production, which is where much of your longer-term value will be realised.

For example, your procurement team may help define bill of materials outputs, while your production teams may have an input into reports such as the terminal diagrams, or connection lists.

As the migration progresses, you’ll find that this programme becomes less about software and much more about improving the information flow across your business.

What if you come across problems during the migration?

Every business is different, and challenges can vary, but our team is very experienced at navigating the process for companies of all sizes. We’re well equipped to identify and manage any issues – often pre-empting them before they arise.

Typical challenges include limited internal time, inconsistent standards, legacy data quality as well as uncertainty around ownership, all of which can impact on the speed of adoption.

That’s why our well-planned onboarding programmes are designed to deliver full adoption of the Eplan system quicker than you may expect.

For more information about integrating Eplan into your business of to find out about Eplan's onboarding programmes please Contact the team or download the free guide below.

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