By: Maneesh Sharma, Partner, Technology Advisory Leader, Grant Thornton Bharat
Though change management has always been critical to ensuring the success of ERP implementation programmes, with the advent of cloud-based ERPs—Software as a Service subscription (SaaS model)—the lack of effective change management becomes a deal breaker! With public cloud SaaS ERPs, due to their architecture and customisation constraints, organisations do not have the luxury to change ERP functionality to suit their needs, but rather have to adopt the ERP’s out-of-the-box functionalities. Failure to effectively manage this change often results in delayed implementations, even shelved implementations or lack of system adoption. Here are some global and India-specific best practices, which can help organisations tackle change management with ease.
ERP implementation business case phase: Change management needs to focus right from the ERP replacement business case phase. This is a common concept amongst ERP implementation programmes in developed countries, but often not followed in India. In this, change management aspects are factored into the business case itself. Though there are many considerations here to weigh on, key aspects to include and facilitate effective change are to ask the following key questions whilst evaluating a business case:
- Are internal change management team members, who will drive and support the change, identified?
- Can their required bandwidth be freed up from their BAU work to drive the change?
- Is the ‘degree of change required’ a factor in evaluating the proposed duration of implementation?
- While opting for a big bang implementation approach, what is the action plan to address the fact that various in-scope entities and geographies will change at different rates?
India needs to adopt some of these best practices globally now, as with SaaS, organisations implementing it will have to change, and not the ERP. Upfront focus on change management during the business case phase itself will set the stage nicely for execution later on.
During ERP implementation: India needs more frequent and informal means of communication on how ERP will change ways of working in an organisation and how they will get trained effectively. In this regard, the global practice of having formal training workshop sessions (TTT—Train the Trainers) has often been found lacking effectiveness in our part of the world. Each organisation works in its own best ways to learn.
- In this part of the world, it is not just what, but who is communicating the message of change, which creates a big impact. Identify role models in the firm, and have them relay messages of change—What, How, and Why.
- Though What and How are important, equal emphasis on Why should be given—Why it’s important, and what value it provides. Process changes are very important as they provide the maximum value to organisations. Organisational transformation will happen only if everyone aligns to new benchmarked processes and ways of working. The element of process changes should be endorsed, communicated, and driven by business process leaders. Often a top-down approach is most effective in these cases.
- In terms of How (one will operate on the new system), focus on personalising the user training, keeping in mind your user community preferences. Remember this is not very different from targeted ads one gets on social media! As an organisation, you want people to get trained and thus you need to market the use of training content and make it enticing and easy for your users. An important aspect to note is that different generations of your users will be attracted to different training modes—Gen X, Millennials, Gen Z, will all consume content differently; some may prefer formal workshops, some documented manuals, some bite-sized videos, etc. Identify your audience and plan a training strategy suiting their affinity for training content consumption. Investing in creating these different training contents will go a long way in increasing user adoption and training your staff.
Post-implementation and the Business-as-Usual (BAU): This is the most important and longest phase of the programme. To begin with, organisations should measure system adoption rates, application support incidents, and other process compliance KPIs to track if the system is used in the manner it should be, and if new processes are followed as intended. Post the implementation, change champions should periodically spend time evaluating these KPIs and work towards improving them in a targeted manner where they are found wanting—such as in a particular region, with a section of users, or issues with a particular process area, etc.
ERP change management is a journey; you should plan the itinerary and follow the same to have a joyful ride!
