Migrate Your Business to Eplan With Minimal Disruption

You may be wondering whether you should migrate your engineering design to Eplan because you’re not sure about the risks that the change could pose to your operations, particularly if your delivery schedules are tight and customer orders are stacking up.


That’s completely understandable; we appreciate that any interruptions to engineering output can quickly put more pressure on already stretched teams and delay project delivery. 

But the good news is that when you migrate to Eplan, there could be a minimal period of downtime or stoppage with the use of our onboarding services (subject to your resources). 

We have created structured migration and training programmes that are designed around you to protect your business and support continuity.  

Depending on your starting point, your migration programme can be phased, partially managed or fully managed. This allows you to transition at a pace that suits your business while maintaining ongoing project work.

It ensures your existing workflows remain active while we introduce your new design and operational capabilities so you can move forward without falling behind.

How do you ensure my operational continuity?

As this implies, we want to ensure that your engineering teams can continue to deliver live projects while the new Eplan system is phased in.  In practice, that means that any ongoing work can be managed within your existing platforms, while new projects are created within Eplan.  

This approach is designed to avoid any slowdown in your planned operational output, and prevent you having to halt any design activity.  

Your migration will be along a stepped programme which is absorbed into your engineering department and business as usual. 

How do you manage the transition with busy workflows? 

We recognise that any organisation attempting to self-manage the onboarding of a new system alongside their full project workloads may find that internal capacity is a limiting factor.

If your teams are busy fulfilling customer orders, then this can extend the time required for a systems integration, or put a halt to it completely. Just as worryingly, it may also create inconsistencies across your teams in terms of how well a system is adopted/used by them going forward.

If a busy schedule means that they feel they have to pick and choose which Eplan attributes/capabilities to start using, then you’re unlikely to enjoy all the benefits afforded by your new system.

By using our supported and managed approach, you will avoid this risk because responsibility for setup, configuration and early-stage optimisation sits with our experienced engineering consultants rather than with your internal teams.

We ensure that your engineering leaders maintain their focus on project delivery, while the set-up of the software and any data migration or creation progresses in the background, reducing the likelihood of any costly missteps.

What if we have limited resources/capacity?

Businesses often struggle most when they are operating at full capacity, leaving little room for additional initiatives.

This is where you’ll find the real value within our structured onboarding model.  

It’s very flexible and can be adapted to suit any limitations in team availability, plus we can supplement the programme with our UK Professional Service Engineers  where required. 

Things like data preparation, template creation, or even redrawing of legacy designs can all be handled by our expert team, if required.  

That means that, by the time your engineers engage with the platform, they will be doing so within a pre-prepared design system, tailored to their needs.  In other words, you won’t need to ask your engineering team to build the system’s capabilities at a time when they are already under pressure, which is often where any disruption originates.

After this stage, we can turn to onboarding your downstream and upstream functions (if this has been agreed as part of your plan).  This scalable service will 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.

 What if some of my staff struggle with the new platform?

We understand that everyone progresses at their own rate, plus there are other factors such as the complexity involved in the software installation, a lack of time and sometimes undefined standards, as well as a need to manage or migrate legacy data.

Our onboarding packages include various levels of training, ranging from self-paced eLearning courses to the Electrical Design Expert course as delivered by the Eplan Training Academy. However, if you do have engineers struggling to pick up the software, then further support is available. We offer 121 workshops with our engineers and/or the eLearning course can be used as a supplementary resource to the course.

Furthermore, all training courses can be purchased separately as an add-on to the onboarding packages. It’s important to note that Eplan recommend the Electrical Design Expert course for all new users to kick start their experience with the software.

So is the adoption fairly rapid?

Eplan adoption is often framed as a technical change with operational consequences, but in reality it is a business decision that can be structured to protect continuity from the outset.  

When approached in this way, business disruption can be designed out through phasing, support and clear ownership of risk, and a rapid assimilation of a system that will transform your productivity and efficiency.

For more information about integrating Eplan into your business please Contact the team or download the free guide below.