Changing your enterprise technology?

5 lessons from those who succeeded and those who didn’t.

Melinda Starkweather
July 20, 2021

After running hundreds of technology adoptions for more than 15 years, we’ve learned the actions that can make the difference between success and frustration.

1. Understood the time, energy and planning it takes to move enterprise systems. When you change enterprise systems, multiple departments are involved—along with critical assets like content, data, and finances. This can impact everything that you use to generate revenue and maintain your reputation as a quality organization. Your enterprise architecture will also determine some of your strategy because of the inherent limits most systems have. Success begins by taking this transition seriously and giving your organization time to plan, map new workflows and understand your new environment.
   
   
2. Focused on critical revenue-generating processes first. Establishing an inviting hero image might feel like a quick win, but your site is there to do a job first and foremost. Focusing on a design that facilitates your critical transactions may take more work than finding the perfect welcome-image, but it sets the stage for success down the line.
   
   
3. Invested in wide-scale training. “You’ll figure it out,” works almost never. Training and cross-training your team up-front creates success and ROI down the road. Not only will your team make the most of your new system, but if a process-expert leaves, you have back-up and widespread knowledge. Those who continued training post-launch, and established a process documentation cache, got even more value. Key staff leave unexpectedly. Leaders can prepare for that by nurturing office-wide expertise.
   
   
4. Included change readiness to prepare their team. The staff who need to adopt and use the new system also present the greatest risk to its implementation. They have concerns ranging from losing their jobs to ambiguity intolerance to wondering if the new system might just create more problems. Change readiness alerts leaders to opinions that drive behaviors that stall implementations—and provides solutions.
   
   
5. Articulated what success looked like. “Are we there yet?” A subset of people alive today remember car rides that seemed to never end. We saw parents struggling with paper maps, saying, “We’re close. I think.” When leaders create clear, specific markers that identify capabilities and staff behavior, like a modern-day GIS system, your organization knows when it has arrived.

1. Believed the implementation would be easy, so they rushed it. Salespeople often underplay the amount of work an implementation will take, and organizations with less experience may believe them. Some organizations with simple data needs, limited transactions, no need for training or content migration, may succeed with a rushed process. Most organizations need to back up, plan for what is coming and prepare their teams.
   
   
2. Assumed that their team could just transition into and learn a new system on top of their current deliverables. If your staff are busy planning events, publishing journals, responding to member needs, and planning webinars, they don’t have extra time to map out new workflows in the new system. They cross their fingers and hope it will be like their current one. It never is. Organizations that try to ram the old processes into new technology find their return on investment very limited and staff frustrated.
   
   
3. Neglected training. See #3 above. Reverse it.
   
   
4. Didn’t communicate the change with all their stakeholders. When major systems are being replaced, the staff are the first who have to deal with it, but not the last. When other people downstream aren’t included in requirements gathering, customer experience analysis, or other key functions, they get grumpy. Hearing about downstream flaws after launch, and after consultants leave, creates expensive issues.
   
   
5. Didn’t prioritize the implementation. Conflicting priorities slash momentum and rob an implementation of the mindshare it needs to succeed. A crucial task of leadership is to protect the implementation from lesser projects that distract staff. Prioritizing the implementation often means postponing or canceling certain deliverables until milestones are hit and providing time to train.

Success isn’t luck. Following reliable processes isn’t a guarantee, but it reduces known challenges and risks. Transitioning enterprise technology is difficult, but by giving your team time, planning, change readiness and training you will increase your chances of success.

Melinda Starkweather is co-founder of Starkweather Association Services and developed the Cirrus Change Readiness platform. She is a coach and speaker on change management. She loves dogs.