Change Management

I would like to share one implementation challenge I faced. I was implementing an ERP in a MNC Finance department. This organisation was politicaly controlled as in all the TOP management were political appointees. The actual challange was, most of the module owners(in charge of departments) were very old people who did not have much of computer knowledge.They were decision makers thus they were the main approvers even in the application I was implementing. The trouble came when the users were not ready to use the system, after the training and the test. I found some work-around, I got some IT people attached to them so that they can help them in data entry. After that, they have left it all to these IT people who actually did not know the business process. They didn't want or were unable to fully play the roles that they were expected to do. It was difficult for me to ask the managemnet to replace them too. What was the best way to overcome this? In such a way that no body suffers?

Then I identified the challenges that we faced with the implementation, focused on energy on srategies to overcome these challenges. Managing people is never easy, getting co-operation from role players with different interest and agendas is part of the challenge of project management. We knew we should find innovative solutions for our challenges. An example is getting people trained. I believe that the main thrust of our focus should be around change management. Thought it might be a good idea to employ someone with specialised change management skills.

I got a suggestion of 'employing' 3rd party Change Management professional by another guy who was here. Isn't this wonderful for the ERP implementer to be master of 'change management' as I have seen in practical life that nobody can claim to be a good implementor if he/she is not good in change management. Or do you think a dedicated change management professional is the answer to all such 'people' issues? Though Project Manager of an ERP Implementation should be competent in Change Management, but given that they have several responsibilities, employing someone specifically to handle change management is as equally valid as employing someone to handle technical issues such as data migration. That is, if there is more work than can be handled by the PM, then get someone in who can take some of the load. Also, in difficult situations, having two voices saying the same thing about Change Management can help quite significantly.

Going through our implementation I can firmly tell you 'CHANGE MANGEMENT' is one area totally ignored in the process of implementation. And lot of failure stories are realted to this ignored topic. Training on an application alone will not guarantee success to the functioning of an application.

Author: Purnima Varadrajan
e-mail : info@ipott.com
Designation : Chief Executive Officer
iPOTT Softech India Private Limited.