Habits die hard , the adage not only goes with stubborn or the superstitious . It is equally true for the rational and the reasoned mind also. The example are in galore why every new initiative however scientific or effective it may be first poses the immediate threat to anybody however unreal or imaginative they might be. By instinct we see anything which does not conform to our age old practice although tried and tested (and yes successfully also) with critical and many a times cynical views . And here comes the necessity of narratives , the right narratives with its distinct and defined target groups which may be process owners , users or even the project champions. So while creating narratives the focus areas may be as following :
(1)It must pinpoint the benefits, the advantages in an unequivocal language. There must not be any hushed tone or hidden agenda and whatever is expected or already experimented by so many past implementors must be made loud and clear . If needed their evidence passive or active , immediate or future must be fed in information throughput of the organization to reach different layers and levels.
In the corporate snobbery against the IT to look at it as less strategic and more supportive , it is always the case of everybody to ask for moon from any software or service which must be rightly tackled right at its beginning. While the general perception about IT to be a wonder tool or magic wand , it is very crucial for the ERP project team to tame this unbridled imagination and aptly manage the unrealistic expectation . Otherwise the whole project will backfire or boomerang with deep frustration (mostly not getting inferred and that also immediate result) fast setting in the organizational psyche drawing flaks from the general users with the looming radar of vigilance and surveillance agencies to transform the whole project a very live source of scam. So buy-in at every level with rational expectation from the software suite is very much needed. The best proposition is always to bifurcate between the low hanging fruits ie immediate and visible benefits and some long term or protracted change with a transformative continuum not immediately observed but immensely felt or convincing for every stakeholder in the industry.
(2)After ‘know- why’ permeates across the veins and arteries of the organization the next explanation is about the knowhow , a full scape description of the this integrated solution on how it works articulated in a convincing and crystal clear way with simplest language sans any jargons or business terminology too hard to be understood by the user , module owners , process owners etc. It is all about how the system works , specially process modeling or mapping or its reengineering and its automation with decision making capacity demystified and deciphered in the simplest way. The conflict will be obvious as here the process owners’ possessiveness about their age old tested and tried working style will not easily go way. While they had been used to their practice or the job profile so long , sudden radicalization of it , or impounding knowledge in it from outside however better they may be ,will not settle comfortably with these veteran employees. A strategic fit along with organization fit of the incumbent system and their legacy process or their reengineered version has to be not only created for their conviction but also well choreographed to get them rolled in seamlessly without any major glitches. While for the top management cultivation of effective business proposal for the system implementation is important , for the lower level employees the conforming to ease of using system, its quality, impact on individual and organization and ultimately quality of information is of utmost importance.
(3)The next factor followed after right appraisal of know- why and knowhow is who will be your change agents to orchestrate this transformation. Here need to locate the influential group or the effective power nodes in the organization which not necessarily follow the formal hierarchy. Depending on the defined scope and workflow design or process mapping the whole exercise may be radical with wholesome change in every job or work profile spreading across the full span of enterprise with a big bang approach or it may be incremental , restricted to some pockets or units with phased progress. Normally any organization goes for the middle approach ie hybrid one which means first implementing in some lead units or areas with limited modules and then scale up to the bigger areas and more modules leveraging the experiences it gains specially managing the ensuing conflict the new work environment will inevitably brings with it. The influencer group , opinion makers or the effective power fulcrums(which may not necessarily follow the formal power structure) in the industry come here very handy to push the project forward and smoothen the rough edges of the technology which normally creates those friction points. Normally in any industry this group does not have the colors of post , position , cadre of the employees neither they need to be restricted to the boundary of the organization(in fact opinion leaders may be outside the company also) . They may be any stakeholder who not only supports but also are passionately ready to promote the application packages across the department, desks or divisions. Because of their strong clout inside the industry , they may create a compulsive as well as impulsive urge amongst user levels which can easily negotiate with any upcoming conflict or challenges.
(4) Any organization along with its concerned industry while passing through different phases of its journey or evolution creates lots of histories , collects lots of allegories which must be saved and stashed in its knowledge bank as its learning bites or legacies. These all lessons from the past experimentations whether they triumphed or tanked or simply keep treading for long without any meaningful yield must be treated as treasure trove which can be redeemed in the later years of taking any new initiative in the organization. Leveraging the learning from both past successes or failures are always best knowledge resources for the next big ticket reforms in the company irrespective the domain of experimentation (IT, Operation, Marketing or HR etc ). The scale and scope of implementation is much more important than the specific genre or field of project. Specially in the company like ours with so much diversity and difference in style of functioning spread and scattered across huge geographical as well as demographical dispersion we must not put our experiences to be quarantined inside its parent department rather reuse and retrofit whenever necessary in the other field of application also. Whether it is of PAN organization implementation of personnel management system (like PRIDE)or risk assessment plans in hundreds of units or establishment we are working with (as in SIMTARS), the basic tasks and its associated tenets of tackling the initial resistance or managing the expectation and so the aspiration (or in some cases frustration)are all the same. Documenting the today’s experience to decipher and decode tomorrow’s experimental glitches needs cultural attestation by the top management . It always helps to smoothen the change management process .
(5) The change management is not any informal or casual manifestation of any project. Specially implementing a transformative project like ERP , change management is itself a big project in its own which must be conceived , executed , monitored thus controlled and coordinated in continuous basis. The best integration of the milestones or the deliverable of this project “ change management” with the organization milestones will be only passible if the whole exercise is drilled down to its different doable at different levels and layers in the organization then incorporated in the executive evaluation report of performance score card with the moving targets (as changed with phase of implementation of ERP)assigned to the individuals involved in it.
(6) The last but not least as we must appreciate change management in not any mere managerial job of coordination and much more than that , it must be treated as precursor or precondition of ERP implementation. Once the proper perspective could be established about the implementation then only we must promulgate the technical or managerial roll out of application-packaged-software in that particular process , people or place. Any effort in reverse (ie first roll out and then impose it ) may boomerang and backfire which is not warranted at all. So know-when or timing ie trigger point is very much important and that also in the precision of surgical operation to get one of the most expensive roll out of project like ERP .
On the whole we must treat the change management of any big ticket reform(and so the ERP) with its complete embodiment of another management project a visible , tangible full scale implementation which is not any second fiddle but dwell at the core of ERP roll out. And for this adaptation best knowhow must be preceded by convincing know-why and precise know- when with its detailed and distinct narratives put in with proper context befitting with every stage of implementation..