Hidden in Plain Sight – Building a Strong Foundation for ERP success with Integrated OCM

When building a home, the identification of well qualified contractors and structural stability of the foundation and framework are obvious concerns you would have before even thinking about the elevation style or paint colors. The beams will be hidden behind walls, and the foundation is covered with beautiful flooring, but both are at the root of homeowner long term satisfaction.

The same concept should apply to your IT Transformation when it comes to involving organizational change management professionals. All too often, we find that organizations don’t understand the value of OCM early on or they believe services are designed as an urgent repair method when things go wrong.

Imagine preparing to get the keys to your home only to find out that there are delays in the build and re-work needing to be completed due to the contractors not being properly trained or understanding the work they were supposed to complete for your design. This would not only cost you money and time, but you would also lose trust in that builder. Value is created when the work promised is completed not just timely, but professionally in a well communicated and organized way. Change management provides the catalyst for transparency throughout the project and delivering impactful ways to consistently engage your team. These activities build trust with your employees that the ERP transformation will provide impactful benefits. They will motivate and enable users to approach learning with an open mind and better understand how the new system will provide clear, relevant, and lasting results for the business.

No different than starting to build a home without a blueprint, you shouldn’t begin your project without a change management plan. Prosci.com a leading organization in professional change management, recognizes that Change Management and Project Management are “integrated disciplines” that should both be in place for the entire lifecycle of a project. While we are trained in being able to quickly join a project and start ironing out the roadblocks, it is always better to have avoided them in the first place. By bringing on OCM in the start of a project, our team is more able to focus on proactive successful solution adoption when given adequate time to fully exercise our scope of tools. You could make up your design and approach for building on your own, but what happens when the inspector comes and you’ve missed key compliance issues, the foundation wasn’t level, or your contractor wasn’t licensed?  With many steps along the way to building your dream best practice business processes, change management ensures you are prepared to smoothly navigate through each step of the business Transformation. Our expertise is in preparing people and processes, and engaging the right people the first time, to ensure full scope business readiness when you go live with your best practice business process. Be it understanding additional support needed, gathering new user requirements, identifying future state job roles, communication planning, or implementing effective training and knowledge retention it is critical that change management be involved from the very first step.

Organizational change management is the foundation of your ERP transformation, the structure on which the success of your project is built. Hidden behind the technology and the benefits of your new system, OCM is there driving you towards success.