Organizational Change Management Makes ERP Smooth and Simple

7/28/2010 at 2:10 pm by The Sage ERP Team

Ostensibly, ERP is software. But in practice, ERP systems are more about people and processes than they are about IT – which is why it’s so important that a company practice organizational change management.

Change is difficult, and change within a company is no exception. Many employees have likely been working for you for years, even decades, and may initially be confused by – or even resistant to – something new. Whether you’re implementing an ERP system for the first time or just considering upgrading a current system, you’ll want to be aware of how you can make the transition easier for your employees and keep your business running smoothy. Here are some tips we found on the Panaroma Consulting Blog.

â€¢ Standardize your business processes. Many major companies for whom ERP systems are the most beneficial operate out of a handful of offices located throughout the US and the world. Global enterprises often suffer from standardization issues – everything from Celsius versus Fahrenheit and kilometers versus miles to more complex operations that are performed differently on different sides of the Atlantic. ERP provides an excellent way to standardize these processes, but organizational change management will be crucial in helping successfully complete the enormous undertaking of standardization.

Even while you work to streamline your company’s operations by standardizing processes across your global offices, you must be careful not to overlook location considerations. Geneva is a different place than Toronto, Toronto is a different places than Buenos Aires. These different areas do have some specific considerations. You can except to tailor a perfect one-size-fits-all solution that you can then blanket over all your offices, no matter how ill-fitting it is. Listening to local needs goes a long way when it comes to helping employees and communities transition to something new.
Cater to your employees’ needs to the best of your ability. For example, you can’t expect to train all your employees in English. They may not all speak English – and even if they do, they may be much more comfortable being instructed in their native language when it comes to something as complex as ERP. Taking the time and effort to train your employees in their native languages will help both you and your workers. They’ll understand the concepts better when explained in a language they understand, which means they’ll be able to adapt more quickly to the system.
Don’t be afraid to employ help. Change agents can help make the transition easier for everyone in your company. Electing a local representative to act as a change agent for the project is key to employee representation within the system, because the change agent can speak for the local interests of the employees while relaying important information to the upper management.
Use performance measurements. These measures, figures, statistics and other ways of representing data transcend language barriers, and they serve to quantify the results you expect from your ERP system implementation, as well as to clarify each office’s role in the general ERP implementation process. They also help to measure progress once the ERP system has gone live.

If you follow these simple steps, you’ll start seeing returns on your ERP investment almost immediately, from all corners of your operation.