5
An enterprise resource planning (ERP) platform enables organizations to consolidate several core business processes, such as finance, HR, and supply chain, in one place—and even automate redundant tasks, thereby boosting efficiency and reducing errors.
But those benefits are the best-case outcomes of a successful ERP adoption. Oftentimes, teams without an accompanying, people-first change management strategy never reap the positive outcomes of this powerful tool.
Here, explore the ERP change management process and how your implementation team can ensure success—from configuration to adoption and beyond.
What is ERP change management?
ERP change management is a structured approach to guiding the adoption of an enterprise resource planning platform. This term refers to the “people” aspects of planning, configuration, rollout, testing, training, and adoption, with a special focus on getting end-users to adapt to the change.
Successful ERP change management strategies involve the participation of stakeholders across the organization—from leaders to everyday users—who help create and test functional workflows and work together to minimize disruptions.
Common ERP adoption challenges
ERP implementations can be especially disruptive. More than a straightforward tech installation, an ERP initiative is a total business transformation. When ERP adoptions fail, it’s often due to a lack of communication, planning, monitoring, and end-user input.
Implementation leaders should prepare to tackle the following common challenges:
- Broad impact across roles, teams, and processes: ERP implementations touch many business areas, causing disruptions to daily work across the organization and affecting the way end users perform tasks.
- Changes to daily workflows and responsibilities: As a result of the ERP implementation, end users' workflows move to a new platform, and steps may change. This can cause confusion and a learning curve. Team members may even have to take on new responsibilities and learn fresh reporting structures for workflows.
- Risk of low adoption, workarounds, and productivity loss: Not everyone will be eager to adopt new practices, and this resistance to change among members of the workforce can lead to an all-out rejection of the ERP tool. People create workarounds so as not to interact with the platform or revert to obsolete processes, which reduces productivity and can lead to disorganization and errors with data storage and processing.
- Strong correlation between poor change management and ERP failure: When implementation leaders don't spend enough time planning, training users, and encouraging buy-in, ERPs fail altogether. Research shows that successful enterprise resource planning implementations focus on end-user adoption and making changes based on team members' recommendations.
6 key steps for a successful ERP change management plan
Use the following six steps to guide your ERP implementation with a heavy focus on user adoption.
- Generate user-forward ERP implementation goals: While business leaders may be able to map the use of the ERP tool to overarching organizational goals, it's also important to strategize ways to leverage this system to improve team members' workplace experience (i.e., by minimizing redundant, low-value tasks).
- Map current workflows: Map how people perform work currently, and look for ways to improve upon these processes in the ERP system, saving end users time and diminishing their risk for error. Scribe enables teams to easily document workflows, analyzes how work is performed, and makes suggestions for efficiency improvements.
- Configure the ERP with optimized workflows: After you've pinpointed areas of improvement in current ways of working, you can configure optimized processes in the ERP system. Be sure to gather end-user input at this stage, as team members can help you design more practically useful configurations.
- Test workflows with end users: After configuring the ERP system, test it with end users, and ask them to share their honest insights on ease of use and the efficiency of new workflows. Take their feedback seriously at this critical moment. If team members don't think the tool will streamline work, they may be unlikely to adopt it.
- Train users by role: Role-based training enables users to see how the ERP system will integrate into the daily tasks they are already accustomed to performing, highlighting the value of the tool. Scribe Capture enables teams to seamlessly create and update role-based documentation that demonstrates how to use the tool to perform role-specific tasks.
- Launch, monitor usage, and reinforce adoption: Adoption can drop off after the initial launch of the ERP tool, so monitor usage after you introduce the system company-wide. If you spot a decline, actively listen to end users' reasons for avoiding the tool. You can then intervene with improvements that make the system genuinely helpful for your teams.
Best practices for managing change during an ERP implementation
ERP change management processes run more smoothly when implementation leaders use the following best practices during the project lifecycle.
- Focus on change management from the start: Instead of trying to achieve buy-in after the ERP has been rolled out, encourage user adoption from the start with a day-one change management strategy. Ask team members who will interact with the platform to provide their insights early on, and take these suggestions into account when configuring and designing workflows in the new system. Doing so will help you install a practical tool that optimizes work—not one that employees avoid using.
- Align on goals: Begin by gathering key stakeholders and drafting a compelling "case for change," which describes how the ERP system will transform the business from its current state to an improved future one. Also, determine clear, measurable goals for desired outcomes. For example, your organization may want to cut down on time spent on human processes or improve data visibility, and stating these objectives early on encourages the creation of workflows in the ERP tool that support these initiatives. You can also more easily monitor for success when you know what positive shifts you’re aiming for.
- Involve users: While it may be intuitive to involve end users during testing and training, this participation isn't enough. Invite team members to provide insights from the beginning, and design a more functional implementation. You'll also drive adoption because users will genuinely see the value in the system in the end, as it will make the improvements to daily workflows that they hoped it would.
- Communicate the change: Establish value early in the process by communicating to team members why the company is making this shift and how the ERP system will make work more efficient. Have team leaders break down this information by role for their direct reports, providing unique examples of how each person will benefit.
- Train with real-life scenarios: Teach users to run real-life work through the ERP system during training so that they can see firsthand how the tool optimizes workflows. Plus, training sessions are more useful when they deal with real-life scenarios that people can replicate instead of fabricated ones that don't as clearly correlate to actual work.
- Provide support after rollout: Establish known feedback channels for employee suggestions and concerns—insights that can ultimately perfect workflows, better adapting them to real-life work. It's also smart to have dedicated IT personnel on stand-by to quickly address glitches. These support strategies are often called "stabilization" or "hypercare.”
- Monitor for adoption drop-offs: Track usage of the ERP system, and promptly address drop-offs. End users may be creating workarounds because the tool isn't acting as efficiently as possible, or because they don't have sufficient training to correctly integrate the system into daily work. Leaders can jump in to answer questions, optimize ERP system configurations, or provide additional tutorials.
- Remember that change management is ongoing: Change management processes are continuous and iterative, constantly adapting to changing business and end-user needs. Even after the initial post-rollout period, invite feedback on the efficiency of the tool and monitor usage, always looking for potential areas of improvement.
How Scribe supports ERP change management
ERP implementations mean new workflows. And getting people to adopt these new processes depends on giving them proper training and easy-to-follow guides. Scribe is an ideal enablement partner during your ERP change management process, driving adoption and workflow consistency.
Scribe Capture transforms ERP workflows into visually-driven, step-by-step guides, complete with screenshots, text, and annotations that support training. This tool:
- Creates role-specific training materials tied to real tasks
- Reduces reliance on live training sessions and the input of subject-matter experts
- Houses guides where teams already know to look for them, such as in wikis and knowledge bases
- Automatically updates process documentation as workflows evolve during and after rollout
FAQs
What’s the difference between ERP change management and project management?
ERP change management refers to the people side of an ERP implementation, while project management covers the timeline, roles, and responsibilities that support the technical adoption of the tool.
How can I know if ERP change management is working?
Track key performance indicators (KPIs), like adoption rates, productivity metrics, and error rates. Jumps in adoption and productivity are positive signs, as are error reductions.
What happens if you skip change management during an ERP implementation?
Not focusing on change management during an ERP implementation can lead to resistance to change, low user adoption, and, ultimately, the failure of the tool. Team members need to understand the value of the ERP system in the context of their daily work to use it.
