Why Change Management Matters

3/1/2011 at 12:05 pm by The Sage ERP Team

When people get jazzed up about the idea of an ERP implementation, they tend to stay focused on the benefits. And it makes sense. ERP can provide companies with a new and improved process that leads to happier employees, bigger profits, massive ROI and a better corporate culture.

Still, there are some pitfalls that managers must be careful to avoid when leading up ERP implementation projects – for example, employee resistance and the temptation to cut corners.

Of course, it’s human nature to be excited about the great things that might lie in your future. The trick is to acknowledge that you must prepare for and avoid the negative aspects of any process in order to reap the benefits.

If you’re pumped about buying a new car, you’re going to busy thinking about how fast you’ll be able to go, the road trips you can take with your friends, the new independence you’ll find in your vehicle – you won’t be focusing on the idea that the car could crash into a pole and get totaled. Of course, we still purchase insurance and drive safely to make sure that the unlikely pole-crash scenario remains unlikely. ERP implementation is the same way: We must prepared for the bad, even as we embrace and eagerly anticipate the good.

One important way of minimizing negative reactions to ERP that could potentially derail a project is with employee change management. Change management isn’t always the easiest thing to tackle, but investing time and money into making sure employees are comfortable with the new system is a worthwhile undertaking for any business. After all, ERP is not artificial intelligence – it cannot function without the cooperation, support and dedication of your employees. The more easily employees can make knowledgeable contributions to the system, the more likely the system will be to succeed. In order to facilitate this process, you’ll need to educate your workers and ensure that they have a place to go with questions and concerns.

“Properly managed, we can see how people feel about the changes over a period of time, and how they shift in their expectations,” explains Neville Turbit for Project Perfect. “The results of money spent on change management can be seen. Not putting in the effort before implementation will cost an organization after implementation.”

It is important to forge personal relationships with employees so that they can feel they can come to you with their concerns. If you are too busy to handle employee concerns yourself, you can delegate the responsibility to another individual, set up a team to handle questions and feedback, or create a system that will allow employees to anonymously contribute their opinions – kind of like a suggestion box.

What is important is that employees have some way of airing their concerns, and that those concerns are addressed in one way or another. After all, your employees will be the main end-users of the system. It can only be as good as they are.

“What is the cost to an organization of a system that is forced upon people, and with which they feel little ownership? They will either sink it, or ensure it never reaches its potential. Either way, the organization will never get the return on investment it imagined,” Turbit warns.