How you can bridge the Gap Between Technology and People

People are becoming increasingly crucial for the success of technology-driven transformations. With the right approach and tools, even large-scale change projects involving 10,000 employees can achieve big success. This article reveals how to effectively navigate the bridge from the current state to the new state, showcasing strategies for triumph in transformative endeavors.

If you think of your IT enabled business transformation program as the bridge from the current to future state; How stable, steady, and sustainable is your path forward?  People can naturally be resistant to change if they don’t have a few key areas considered: Clear communication, understanding of purpose and benefits, and involvement in the change process. While there are ways to reach your technological future state without putting a focus on the people side of the transformation, we have seen in past transformations that you run the risk of your employees being more resistant (or flat out refusing) to cross the bridge with you if these key areas are not addressed. The goal of Organizational Change Management (OCM) is to assist in bridging the gaps between technical changes and the people who are impacted by them.

 

People are becoming increasingly important for successful transformations in the LS Industry.

A growing trend within the Life Sciences industry, is that the voice of the patient has a strong correlation to the organizational decisions for ongoing operational improvements. With the rise of social media, and other technological advances allowing people more public venues to express their feedback, there is a renewed focus on the people centric approaches, meaning putting people at the heart of their organizational vision, mission, and decisions. Even with the best technology as basis for the transformation, research has shown that successful organizational change only comes through individual change (PROSCI, 2023). In fact, statistically based on failed organizational transformations, employee resistance accounted for 72% of the barriers to success (McKinsey.com, 2023). What this means, is that the people responsible for executing the new processes must adopt the changes for the entire transformation to be successful. The human return on investment for technology improvements include both day one proficiency with the new processes, and long-term stability with usability of the new operating model and ways of working versus reverting to old routines. A strong change management approach makes projects 6x more likely to meet objectives. With our Tenthpin OCM methodology and toolkit, which we have further developed in the course of many IT transformations, we align the necessary phases of your employees change journeys to an implementation’s technical timeline. The ambition is that your impacted teams across all levels of the organization have the awareness, understanding, training, and ability to adopt and support the changes as they apply to their specific roles.

 

How a technology heavy change with over 10,000 employees became a success

The OCM at Tenthpin team recently partnered with a global Life Science company during their ERP implementation to ensure that their employees were able to navigate a technology heavy change more efficiently and maintain system proficiency long term. The goal was transitioning to SAP S/4HANA system for all functional areas, across multiple countries, with over 10,000 employees impacted by the change, all within the course of three years. Due to previous interruptions to planned implementations, large amounts of master data, and incomplete legacy data, they had challenges with their employee’s desire to engage in the change activities.  

By implementing the change impact assessment, we were able to identify the groups who were most impacted by the upcoming changes giving us the opportunity to focus our change effort and maximizing results.  The finance team was highly impacted transitioning from manual onsite procedures, and third-party assistance, to a fully in-house managed and primarily automated system. Change sessions were held for each employee role type allowing them to more specifically understand how the new system would provide them solutions to current pain points. One example was ending duplication of efforts by creating shared data. To ensure that all learning styles were covered, custom training videos were developed to supplement detailed users guides and step by step process instructions. Sharing key benefits by each user group, layering targeted communications to additional employees, and providing robust details around the reason for the changes, we saw an increased participation rate in project activities as well as more honest feedback on future needs for ongoing support. Users were excited by the specific benefits to their roles, engaged with their individual learning journeys, and ultimately were able to self-manage processes at go-live with minimal support in hyper care leading to significant improvement from previous iterations on ticket creation and faster return to normal business.  

Change getting easier with tried and tested tools

We are experienced in supporting a wide range of different clients and different IT enabled change programs. In all of them, people are impacted in different ways by the proposed changes, so we have developed a variety of customizable OCM solutions to fit the organizational needs of each of the transformation programs. Starting from the beginning of a program, our OCM tools and activities are designed to enhance the work of the process and system related efforts by focusing on engaging impacted employee groups towards embracing the future state. On one side, the technical developers are focusing on process requirements, functional outputs, system specifications, and validation tests. Complementary to that, our OCM team focuses on the change efforts required for operating new processes, role assignment for access and training needs, and creation and application of materials for sustainment of knowledge.

To give you a better idea of how you can support people through change, here are a few core activities recommended for implementations of all sizes:

• Leveraging our change strategy workshops can assist with resolution for many transformation needs. Design thinking workshops can identify otherwise unseen challenges with a future program. Employee experience design strategy can address specific issues such as retention or onboarding and craft precision solutions for positive future outcomes. Staying on the journey with you during the program, we will facilitate the employee experience throughout the transformation, and monitor progress to help address any unexpected challenges.
• Utilizing our change impact analysis tools and guiding you through implementing corresponding change actions, we identify employee groups and how the transition to future state will affect their roles. Further, we evaluate potential pain points for the upcoming changes and develop strategies to ensure smoother adoption of new processes.
• Our communication planning and delivery approach includes internal, external, and intercompany stakeholders, covering your entire organization’s awareness for upcoming changes.
• Implementing our approach to run an effective training program, we develop a training plan, supervise material creation, perform training progress tracking, and conduct knowledge checks. We foster not only thorough knowledge required for user readiness at go-live, but also reinforcement of new processes and systems for long-term usability.
• Applying our extensive Business readiness assessments, we assure business teams are able to identify areas of opportunity to improve adoption. Their active involvement and ongoing awareness of project status solidifies their commitment to a successful transformation.

Core Elements of our Change Approach

Managing individual change, starting in the earliest phase, as a necessary and fully integrated complement to the technical teams, will lead your project to a more desired result.