One of the biggest challenges for a business when implementing an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution is not realising the need for organisational change management. 

Implementing an ERP solution in your organization entails change, and change is bound to elicit some level of opposition from your employees.

Managers who believe they can provide minimal user training and expect their employees to adopt the new ERP software without resistance are prone to overlooking the importance of change management.

The impact of a new ERP system on business processes and the job duties of end-users who will be using the latest software is sometimes overlooked when implementing new software.

In a world where everything is interconnected, looking at the big picture yields better outcomes than the details. The use of a holistic strategy that connects people, processes, and systems will increase the effectiveness and efficiency of the organisation.

By considering the basic questions, such as:

• Is the company or the employee important?
• What makes the company valuable?
• How do I make the company valuable?

This ensures people understand the business process change and accept and use the new system.

Questions to ask yourself

Here are some questions to ask when implementing change management:

1. What goal do we want to achieve in the market with change management?

2. What would we do if we couldn’t spare one minute of our time fully committed to the goal? 

3. How do we make each team intelligent, effective and efficient?

4. What standards and rules do the team need? 

5. How significant should the change be? 

6. What competencies, knowledge and access to information should be made available?

7. How do we create structures in which teams, departments and areas can support each other modularly?

8. How do we ensure that competence and knowledge are at the forefront of our success instead of work politics?

9. What values and norms are needed for competence-based leadership to work? 

10. How do you create smart, purposeful decisions? 

11. How can trust be created?

12. How are mistakes and learning curves related to trust and respect?

13. Where can we apply our knowledge to achieve our desired goal?

14. How can we identify and anticipate workloads that prevent value creation?

Here are some possible answers to the questions above

It is about solving concrete customer problems. That’s the only thing that interests us! This does not mean that employees should not be in the focus. People-centred leadership is essential, but the customer with his sales is the leading investor in the company.

Our teams are small, free-acting, cross-functional groups of people who like to complement each other, listen to each other and treat each other with respect. They are teams that operate freely, share cross-functional ideas, like to complement each other, listen to each other, and treat each other with respect—another level up in areas that act freely.

Only when two teams succeed can the company function as a network of complexity-smart groups that can handle any degree of complexity and dynamics – and, yes, with perfect stability.

It is about mutual respect and trust and thus the elimination of disrespect – thus, the foundation of trustworthiness and the fullness of faith. If care and confidence is in one’s abilities to guide the decision-making processes, then much is gained!

It all begins by looking at the process you are working on and considering what assumptions and objectives it was put in place – as listed below:

• Who does it benefit? 
• Why does it exist? 
• Who created it? 
• Who has to invest time, money, effort or other resources? 
• What would change if the process did not exist as it does? 
• What might an equally effective (in terms of value creation) alternative look like? 
• Who dares to try the option(s) and report the experience?

It is ‘troublesome’ to perform all these processes, but it is helpful to prioritise the strategies in terms of their frequency and scope. It makes the path a lot easier.

And another answer to a question that was not asked: Setting up in this way helps to better deal with the current and future exponentially growing challenges, such as sustainability. 

This much is certain: this topic flushes a lot of additional complexity into every company that has been stable up to now.

But the effort is worth it.

If you have any questions, feel free to reach out to us.