Name: Beyond Technology: Lessons from Successful ERP Transformations
Uploaded: 2025-04-15T16:30:03.601Z
Duration: 1 h 32 s
Description: Beyond Technology: Lessons from Successful ERP Transformations

Transcript for "Beyond Technology: Lessons from Successful ERP Transformations": Hello, everyone. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening. Thank you for joining us wherever and, whenever you might be in the world today. My name is Diana Veach, and I'll be your webinar producer. And I'm excited to be spending the next hour with you all and two of ProSci's change advisors to talk about a topic that is, I think, top of mind for a lot of organizations today, ERP and large scale digital transformations. So we have a lot of great content packed into the next hour. Before we get started, I wanted to walk you through a couple familiar housekeeping items just to make sure you can have the best webinar experience possible on today on our platform. So to get started, I'll direct your attention to the right hand side of your screen. If you can already see the chat window, it's been going on. People have been sharing where they're calling in from. It's so excellent to see the global spread of change practitioners around the world who are joining us today. So thank you again for taking the time out of your busy schedules to to be with us here for the next hour. In addition to the chat, you're going to see two other options here. We have messages and q and a. So messages as your way to connect with us one on one if you needed if you needed support. That'll just go directly to myself in the backstage and our other our other support person helping us grace you today. So if you needed something, technical support, you can use that function there to, to get our attention. We also have a q and a on today's program. So at the end of the session, we'll probably have about ten minutes left for questions. Throughout the presentation, feel free to click into that q and a window and ask your questions. We'll be able to sift through those and answer some of them as we go on the in the backstage. And then our speakers, Kelly and Amber, will be looking for those great questions to ask at the end of the session. So So if you do have a burning question about ERP or or large scale digital transformation, be sure to chat that in. We won't be able to address hyper specific questions. I know everyone has a unique situation. So we'll be looking at things that are a little more, wide scale that could be, applied to many people on the call today. We are expecting a very large audience. I can already see we have over a thousand people joining us. So, again, thank you so much, for for joining and participating with us today. Now one other thing is gonna pop up here. We will have several polls throughout the broadcast. And when those happen, in that engagement panel on the right hand side of your screen, you'll see the poll there pop up as well. So you'll see a little flash on the screen to go and participate in the polls in that right hand side. So keep that in mind as well. Now finally, we are recording today's session. I know that's always a question that I get from people all over. We are recording today's session. You're going to receive an email, after the broadcast. It's usually a couple hours, however long it takes the platform to kinda process the recording and get into it. So you'll receive that email from Goldcast, so look for that today, later on. And then Prosci will also be sending you an, an email as well later this week with some additional resources. So keep your eyes peeled in your inbox for that. Alrighty. So we are about two minutes in. I think we're getting a lot of good questions. Oh, there is let me quick check through here. We do have closed captions enabled today. So if you look on the bottom of your screen, right now, it's probably that cc next to e n. You can actually enable that. So you can see closed captions in English, and we do have a translation feature enabled as well. So it should auto translate what we're saying into, one of the one of the provided languages there. And then let's see. There's no handouts today. No slides. We're just here talking with our speakers, so you can relax and just fully immerse yourself in the presentation. Alright. So with that, I will start handing it over to our speakers today. We are joined by Amber and Kelly, two of ProSight's change advisors, and they're here to share with us, their lessons learned from successful enterprise resource planning transformations. Alright. Amber and Kelly, I'll hand it off to you. Well, good morning, and thank you everyone. Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us from wherever you are. It's always exciting to see so many from around the world, and we're really happy to have you with us today. We, are excited to spend a little bit of time with you and share our journey, give you some lessons learned from our experience, and go over a little bit about the successful ERPs, and how we can experience and give you some tips of how you can experience. It looks like we might be having some technical difficulty. One of our presenters is unable to hear, so we're gonna need to, take a minute. We've been going through this all morning, and we always have some issues. Amber, can you hear us now? No. Okay. So, There we go. So we will, just kinda keep moving and see how we can correct this behind the scenes. But good morning. I'm Kelly Smith. We've got a lot to cover today. We'll be covering some introductions, looking at the cost of ERP, discussing some of the success success factors that you can expect and what to look for. Spend a little bit of time talking about readiness under pressure and how to activate some of those key roles, especially as you're building your change ecosystem. And then consider in the end how you might be able to, predict and look at some of those early warning systems, as we move into the final close for the day, and then leave time for you to experience and have some q and a and be able to answer your questions. Diane is gonna bring those forward for us. So I hope you'll find this is a productive session for you today. My name is, Kelly Smith. I am a director and engagement leader with Prosci, and I've been here for about three years. Prior to that, I was in the private sector. I've been doing change management for over twenty five years, doing major transformations from digital transformations to mergers and acquisitions, as well as, building change capability. I am have clients all over the world been their advisory side of the business. And, so a lot of what you're gonna hear today is the personal experience that we've had with our own, experience with clients or in our personal and professional life prior to joining Prosci. Annie is our, Amber is our other facilitator for today. She's still working on she said something her audio go out at the last minute, so I'm gonna keep us moving. She's a senior change adviser with Prosci specializing in ERP implementation. She's helped many organizations navigate, the people side of transformation, and she's been involved in several ERP projects over the last few years. Before advising, she worked in manufacturing organization and supported best leadership and frontline users through large ERP transformations. So she's really been, on the inside, and been on both sides because she's seen the good and the bad and the lessons learned, and she's got a lot to bring to the table as well. So she's gonna be sharing some practical tips and real life examples of what successful adoption really looks like and how to help teams actually adopt the systems, not just survive the go live. Right? So while I my Whoop. There we go. Something changed. Yeah. Amber? I can hear you. Yes. Thank you. I had no audio, of course. Wonderful. So let me introduce myself. Yeah. Excellent. Hi, everyone, and welcome. I'm Amber Severson, a senior change adviser with Prosci specializing in ERP implementation. So I've helped many organizations navigate the people side of transformation and been involved in several ERP projects over the last few years. Before advising, I worked for a manufacturing organization where I supported both leadership and the frontline users through a large ERP transition. So I've experienced ERP change from both sides. I've seen the good, the bad, and the lessons that can turn one into a win. Today, Kaylee and I will be sharing some practical tips and real life examples of what successful adoption looks like and how to help teams actually adopt the system, not just survive go live. So before we dive in, we'd love to get a sense of who's in the room today. So we've got a poll in that top right corner. You can see the little red dot for poll. Go ahead and pick which option best fits you. ERP transformations touch so many different roles and bring together a wide range of people. So it looks like yeah. We've got a lot of change managers here. Excellent. Welcome to the leaders and executives on the call. Glad to see you engaging early. We've got a lot of program and project managers. We know you're the glue holding the whole team together. Awesome. Awesome. HR and training folks in the room, you know how much communication and support matters. And for those of you who selected other, we see you. ERP transformations are never just one person's job. So whatever role you're in, your perspective is essential. So it looks like we've got a really well rounded group with us today, exactly what we'd hope to see in a successful ERP initiative. It takes all of these roles working together to make transformation stick. So thank you so much for joining us today. We wanted to take a minute to introduce ourselves and share a little bit about the work we do at Prosci and how research and experience has shaped the lessons we'll be sharing today. So I'm gonna hand it back over to Kelly. Thank you, Amber. So just a little bit about Prosci. Some of you may be very familiar with us. Others of you, it might be something, new. We have we're since our founding in 1994, Prosci has been the leader in change management By combining our deep understanding of people with our proven methodology and rooted in the creation of our ACR model, we have an unprecedented understanding of how to thrive through change. So no one delivers on change that says like Prosci. We do have a global presence. Our programs, our advisory solutions, our body of knowledge are trusted by change experts than Fortune 100 companies and organizations around the globe, and our focus research based insights and innovation ensures that our groups, digital resources, software and advisors are pushing the industry to be more agile, effective, and sustainable. Organizations worldwide partner with us for our research backed enterprise solutions that drives change success from training to advisory services, which is where Amber and I sit in the consulting side, the licensing and e learning, as well as our research. Our combination of offering really does help organizations become stronger through change. Our research is focused on change management. It is the largest body of change management research. And since 1998, we've conducted 12 of these benchmarking studies to uncover best practices in the field of change management. And in the last, last research study was done in 2023. We had 2,668 participants from organizations all over the world contributed to this study. What's also interesting and important to recognize about our research is it is longitudinal, meaning that we examine the same variables such as sponsorship over periods of time to confirm that significance. And, all of this is available in our hub suite from our website. So we encourage you to go out there and look around. Some of the topics that you'll find out there, are greatest contributors to success, all importance role of the sponsor and the manager role, and some of this will actually be highlighting and pulling through our conversation today as we see the importance, especially in the ERP environment. So let's begin by really talking about, the true cost of an ERP. Amber, tell us about that. Thanks, Kelly. So what happens when organizations ignore the people side of change? When we think about ERP implementations, the focus is often on upfront investments, licensing, integrations, and timelines. But those are just visible costs. The true cost of ERP change lies in what happens when people aren't ready or willing to adapt to new ways of working. So prosci research gives us a good idea about the current state of change management and ERP implementations. The research highlights that 55% of ERP projects meet or exceed objectives, and 40% of projects partially meet those objectives. And only 4% of the projects fail to meet the objectives entirely, but there are those financial impacts, unrealized benefits, and wasted resources. And some of those main issues include unrealistic expectations, poor change management, low user adoption, and lack of alignment with business processes. So let's take a moment to address some of the misunderstandings that can derail even the best ERP plans. An ERP transformation is significantly undertake is a significant undertaking for any organization and some misconceptions that you may hear are, it's just a technology project. And this really downplays the importance of the people side. And it suggests that implementation is solely about the software and not about how employees will adapt to and use the new system. Some other things you might hear are, once we go live, everything will be fine, or training will solve all our problems, Change is always met with resistance, or we have to get it done quickly. Pressure to implement quickly can lead to rush decisions and insufficient change management practices. So let's take a different look at where organizations lose value in their implementations. Here's some additional research outside Prosci that supports what we've been discussing. According to Gartner research, over ninety percent of executives who implemented ERP systems acknowledge they didn't do enough to manage organizational change. The implications are clear. Effective change management isn't a nice to have. It's essential for protecting your ERP investment. The top two drivers that you see in the center there of value leakage and failed implementations are low user adoption and misaligned business needs, both of which are driven by ineffective change management. Failure to define and execute on a change management plan at the onset reduces that expected return from the ERP, which in turn drives strained relations internally within the organization and then externally with customers and suppliers. This significantly reduces the return on investment. So what other costs impact ERP success? When the people side of change is overlooked, organizations often face costs that go far beyond the project budget. Some visible and then others in day to day operations. And in those direct costs, even technical tasks like data conversion and legacy system integration become more expensive when the people side are ignored. You may see generic or ineffective training or even last minute training delivery. And then there's also the High turnover of skilled staff. And those long term cap costs are customer impact and employee turnover. Then there are also the costly reads. It's not only the cost of the actual implementation, but also poor change management can lead to several of these costly rewords. Rework when you have to redo tasks or you have to retrain end users. Redesign when there's frequent changes happening, teams scramble to address all of those unforeseen challenges, and reimplementation. The cost of reimplementing can be financially staggering and include the lost productivity, there could be that lack of trust, and also change fatigue. So let's get ready for another poll, everyone. Up on that top right side, that little poll button, go ahead and pick what is the biggest risk of poor ERP change management. Decreased productivity, yep, employees may struggle to adapt, low system adoption, Yeah. That sounds like a critical risk. Increased errors or rework, employee resistance. So, yeah, lack of effective change management leads to higher resistance, project delays, and cost overruns. For example, when I worked for a manufacturing organization, low adoption did occur. End users found workarounds in the system. They started hoarding materials, and in the end, it resulted in shutting down the plant for a full physical inventory count less than a month after go live. That experience is a powerful reminder of how low user adoption can ripple across the organization. At the end of the day, the true cost of ERP implementation isn't just measured in dollars. It's measured in disrupted workflows, disengaged employees, and missed business outcomes. Managing the people side of change isn't optional. It's essential to realizing value. And there will be consequences. Imagine what we have here called the Swiss cheese future state. With those holes representing areas or of weakness or gaps in our change management practices. And some of those consequences are lower ROI, which is not only financial, but also operational and can result in the cost associated with the change outweighing the benefits of the change. The organization creates a history of failed changes. There may be some unachieved improvements, failure to meet objectives, inadequate adoption and utilization, and the long term consequences are there's a reduced trust in leadership and change initiatives. So it's not what we expected or hoped for. When there's when the results don't align with expectation, there's a lack of clarity, insufficient engagement, and then even impact on morale, just to name a few. So the goal is to fill in those gaps with effective change management and to transition with minimal gaps that could hinder a successful transformation. So back to that, let's take another poll here. How does your organization define ERP success? Yeah. Definitely seen some full user adoption and proficiency. This is a game changer. It's the strongest predictor of ERP value realization. Adoption turns your system into a solution. And it looks like we even have a few no formal success definitions. So this is more common than we think. Without alignment on success, the organization risks chasing different goals and missing the mark. So great. Thank you for everyone for participating in these polls. This is such great feedback. Now that we've explored the risks and true cost, let's shift gears and look at what drives success in ERP implementations. Successful change requires both the technical and the people sides. I've heard Tim Creasy, our Chief Innovation Officer say, when I get asked to describe change management on a slide, this is a slide I use. On the technical side, we design, develop, and deliver technical solutions all the time. And this doesn't mean only IT solutions. That technical solution may be new job roles or a new org structure, but we design, develop, and deliver technical solutions to meet today's opportunities or address issues. But we all know from experience and research that we only achieve results, outcomes, and success if the employees impacted by the technical solution are fully engaged, adopt, and use the solution. This is where change management steps in. And at the center, this shows how success is dependent on both the technical and the people side of change. Other key elements beyond technology that predict ERP success can be planning and preparation, ensuring that you have proper resourcing and a project management team, that you have the availability of planning for the knowledge management and knowledge transfer. And so I think of these success factors like a chain. Each link strengthens the others. But if even one link breaks, like a disengaged sponsor or unclear messaging, the entire structure weakens. It's the alignment between them that enables sustainable ERP success. And there are other top contributors to success. Prosci's research consistently shows that top contributors to project success are not technical, they're organizational. Active and visible sponsorship. Being a champion and champion that change as an active invisible sponsor is very important. Sponsor engagement sets the tone for commitment and can significantly influence project outcomes. Cultivate broad engagement, create mechanisms for widespread employee participation and feedback throughout the implementation process. On a recent ERP project as supported, we periodically conducted assessments to gauge the readiness of the organization for the change. And when we looked more closely at business functions, one particular area stood out. The finance group had some of the greatest impact and highest engagement on the project, but their scores for awareness of why the change was happening was extremely low. And we came to find out that the team was being impacted due to how the leader was advocating for the change. And we know the number one contributor to to success is active invisible sponsorship. Of course, knowing what should happen is only part of the picture. Let's look at some real world world blocks. Prosci research shows that 23% of the study respondents considered insufficient stakeholder engagement and management as the biggest obstacle. Things like securing stakeholder time, managing expectations, and maintaining consistent involvement throughout the project life cycle. We even had one practitioner note, stakeholder time and new stakeholder onboarding as a huge hurdle. And another pointed out the length of the project and all the leadership changes that took place impacted the staff's trust in delivering on promises in a timely manner. Effective stakeholder engagement is the cornerstone of successful change management in ERP projects. It ensures buy in, facilitates communication, and helps navigate the complex web of organizational interest. Alright. So let's gear up for another poll here. Which factor do you believe contributes the most to ERP success? We've got executive sponsorship, effective training and communication, early engagement and end users, and clear roles and responsibilities. Yeah. Organizations that integrate change management early see significantly higher adoption rates and business benefits. Yeah. And just like we would expect strong executive sponsorship, a. Yep. That is the top contributor to successful change. Projects that have active visible sponsorship are three and a half more times likely to succeed. Excellent. Thank you, everyone. I'm gonna hand it up to Kelly now to discuss our next topic on building readiness. Thank you, Amber. Yes. And oftentimes when we're asked to build readiness and prepare the organization, sometimes that time is limited. So we wanna look at, really, ideally, what's ideal state, but then some techniques that we can use, whether it's we're short on time or we have the right amount of time. Ideally, part of, change is part of the initiation at the beginning of the project effort, and there's alignment with that sponsor, the project team, and the change lead. And as Amber indicated in the slide showing the partnership between the project and change, we work in concert to achieve those common goals. And that's really how we wanna start, but let's face it. That's rarely what happens, right, with change management. We're generally called in late, and we have to pick up and figure out the best way to move forward. In either scenario, a structured approach really does help you prioritize and address where you want to focus. The methodology our methodology is very scalable. And at the center is the individual, the person sitting in that star, and they're the ones that we really wanna focus on. And who has to do their job differently or change their thinking to be successful in order for us to get those results from that ERP? So the ADKAR model is still very relevant and appropriate model to support individuals through the change. As you heard from Amber, the people side of an ERP is often neglected. And so even if you increase your focus just a little bit, you can have somewhat greater outcome. But every ERP implementation is a bit different because each organization that needs to adopt it is starting off in a different current state. Right? So the amount and the degree of change is gonna be very different across the organization and can also vary considerably within the organizations and the departments of that particular organization. So let's look at the amount of change. We'll compare this little exercise, like, in a smartphone. So think about this. If you're going from manual processes and lots of Excel spreadsheets and multiple back end systems, it may be moving, like, from a stone tablet to a smartphone. So in the chat, just let us know. Are you going from a to c, or maybe are you going, from b to c, which we're kinda familiar. We have an ERP, but we're really, consolidating a lot of different ERPs into one system. Maybe that's more of a b to c. And then if I have one and I'm just getting an upgrading or new operating system, it may be c to c. So we'll see a lot of people going a to c, b to c. Yes. I'll caution you. Even if you're going c to c, it may seem like a small change. And what I have found is there have been some significant disruption because some of that new capability, that new functionality can really throw people for a loop. So what I encourage you to do is really look at to what extent is gonna be the disruption. So the scope and the amount of change gives us an indication of how much effort we should put into our change approach to support the organization and its people through the change. And like I said, following a structured methodology really gives you that framework and knowing where to go and where to prioritize. When you consider our three phase methodology, so with phase one, all we're asking is, you know, how big is it? What are we trying to achieve? Who has to do their job differently and how? And what is it gonna take to achieve success? For really considering who has to do their job differently, this lets you know how big a disruption is it going to be for people, especially those going from an a to a c. Right? So understanding this allows you to focus on the area who's gonna experience the greatest disruption and where the most risk is gonna happen if they don't adopt. When determining who has to do their jobs differently, we leverage a tool called the 10 aspects of change. And I tell you, I use this on every project, everything I do because this really lets me know where I need to focus. And the good news is if we leverage this and we break it down by division, in some cases by department, it really allows us to see the variability for the entire population and customize our approach based on our unique needs. So if we just focus, say, on the system, we're only looking at one aspect. There's so much more involved in the change especially with an ERP. You you might have, people have a different reporting structure, new behaviors, new new processes. All of this is involved in an ERP change, so it's important to look at the bigger picture. For all 10 of these aspects, then you consider for those groups to what extent are they gonna be impacted, if it's a high, medium, or low. So for example, I had one client that we were implementing in ERP, and they had some customer facing roles. There was a great benefit that they were gonna have because they were gonna have a dashboarding system that was gonna allow them to see their whole book of business, understand where their clients were, what their clients needed, and they would be able to see, in in a minute's notice and in real time, where before they were having to get a report every week that was their client report. And so we thought, great. This is gonna be wonderful. We taught them how to access the new system. They love the features and the functionality. We went live, and, doggone it, they got mad because they didn't get that client report every week even though they had access to the information. So there was a mindset, attitude, and belief there that really we didn't put enough emphasis on and we didn't rate high enough. So you'll notice the circles on the right hand side. I'm seeing some comments. So the circles on the right hand side really indicate and correlate to the 10 aspects there in the middle. Right? So there's 10 little aspects. When the aspect is high, when there's a high disruption or a high impact, it's red, a medium is amber, green is low, and if it's grayed out, there's really no impact. So that the circles on the right hand side represent four different groups. So, obviously, two groups on the top have the highest grade the level of disruption, which means if we have to prioritize our efforts and really focus, we really wanna spend our most time with that group making sure that they have what they need to be successful. It's in order to achieve success, at a minimum, you need the groups represented by the top rings to engage, adopt, and use. That's when you begin to consider what do they need to adopt. How do I align my tactics to support their needs? Once you understand how the organization and the people in it will be impacted, then you're able to establish plans to support them. And that's really what we look at in our phase two is deciding what will change leaders do to prepare and equip and support the people, and then how are we doing? How are we managing through the process? What adjustments do we need to make? Again, at the center is the individual, but underneath that is our tried and true methodology, the good old ADKAR that we leverage so much. And, again, use it for everything, even if it's the big change or small change. Ad car is the cornerstone. It's our individual model for change, and it describes the five building blocks of successful change for an individual. It is sequential, not linear. People can go back and forth. In the example I gave you about the customer facing group, they were at Ability at GoLive. They were ready to interact and use this new dashboard that they'd be able to see with their system. But when they didn't get that report, they went back to desire. Their desire was low because they were so used to getting that report. So awareness is not just that we need to change, but aware that we are changing. It's aware of the need to change. The desire I have decided to it is a personal choice. So people may have the ability, but if they haven't decided to make the change, they're not gonna get there. So this is important that we monitor this throughout and understand. Now keep in mind, ability is where we have to be at go live. You have to have the capability to do your job differently once we turn the switch on. And they need to be able to actually demonstrate that new way of working, following the new processes, using new tools. And so we wanna make sure that what we do gets them to that point at go live. And and the other thing I'll say here is often with digital transformations in ERPs, we forget that people really need an opportunity to practice before they become competent, and that may take some time. I saw some of you say the work comes after go live. There is that as well. There's time for them to build up and ramp up and become. I often encourage to have some type of training environment or sandbox so that they can experience the system, do some use cases, do some of their work in a safe environment before we go live, and so we're increasing the likelihood that they'll be successful at go live. Sandboxes are gold. I love them. So, yes, keep that in mind. We do have natural tendencies to go back to our old way of doing things, so then reinforcement becomes very important for sustaining. How do we make sure people stay? I will tell you, every single ERP implementation I've ever done, I still find a group that goes back to, well, let me pull this out of the system and put it in an Excel spreadsheet, do something with it, and that is not what you want. You want people operating in the new ways of working in that new environment. So with ADKAR, if you were short on time or if it's a smaller group, we encourage you could leverage our ADKAR blueprint, which is a simple way to think about here's the group, and I can just figure out what I need to do for awareness, desire, knowledge, ability, and reinforcement for that group. If it becomes much more complex, then this ad card blueprint becomes the foundation for creating these very integrated and detailed change plans. Now I'll tell you, there are consequences for missing an ADKAR element. We often say people will just send out an email and send them to training and you'll be fine. Well, then that gets us back into that rework that you saw earlier from Amber. Employees will be asking the same questions over and over because if they don't have awareness and desire, they're gonna hoard resources. You'll see delays in information. Additionally, without knowledge and ability, obviously, they're not gonna be able to operate in the new ways of working. They're gonna worry, and there's a greater impact on customers and partners. And it can impact the whole value stream if you've got particular areas that are not comfortable and competent. And that can be a major issue. You heard Amber say what happened in that particular environment, and we did have some employee in customer facing impacts with some of the other ones that I talked about that were client facing. So another way to increase the likelihood for success is to really activate these other roles in the organization. Some of you have been through, our three day certification. So you've heard us talk about that change management is a team sport. The practitioner is often depicted as the director of the play or the conductor of an orchestra, but we work with and through others. So let's consider who we might activate to be a part of that team. I always look at this as in two two phases. We have the employee facing roles and the enabling roles. You heard from Amber how critical those sponsors are, but people managers are also important. Our sponsors, these are both employee facing. We need to activate these early. Your sponsors authorize the change. They fulfill their ABCs of actively and visibly sponsoring, building the coalition, and communicating. And employees really want to hear messages from our sponsor about the vision and strategic direction. For people managers, their role is to support their direct reports and their change journey. Look at this. They impact every ad car elements. So I'm seeing somebody say yes. If the managers don't buy don't buy in, employees won't either. And that's absolutely true because they're supposed to be demonstrating their Clark roles. Communicate, liaison, advocate, resistance manager, and coach. We've all seen it. That become become our barrier for reaching employees, so it's important to activate them early. And then our change practitioner and project team, we're partnering together to prepare and equip and support the people and design and deliver the technology, or whatever change it is we're we're listing. Alright. So what do you think? Who has the most influence? We'll do another poll here. Who do you think has the most influence over ERP adoption? Seeing some of them come in. Middle managers, absolutely. They're key. They touch every ADKAR element. Senior leadership. Senior are, sponsors do have they're the greatest contributor to success just because of where they sit in the organization, how they authorize, authenticate, and hold accountable others in the organization. So they all play a very important role. End users ultimately do have to make a decision to to adopt the technology, and it's what our IT and project teams create that allows it to be customer centric, user centric, and it's how the change practitioners really enable all of these teams to to work together to create. Ultimately, though, based on our research and the insight on our previous, from our previous slide, is middle managers are really crucial for change success. They influence adoption at the frontline, and shape how employees respond to change. Resistance from middle managers can delay or derail ERP adoption efforts. Our research shows they're the most resistant group, and yet they have more influence over the end users. Frontline teams trust them, and they're the ones they wanna hear about, what's in it for me, and how I'm gonna be impacted. So they play a critical role. Sponsors are the number one contributors to success, but it is important to leverage, those people leaders. So how do these employee facing roles align and work together in form of the ecosystem? So this is really a summary of the roles that we activate in support of a very complex ERP effort. It's in the order in which we activate. We start with that primary sponsor. It's critical to have that alignment with the sponsor and that sponsor's peers, your coalition, because most of your p implementations don't just impact one division. They'll impact the whole organization multiple places of the value stream. So there's generally organizational impact, and having your sponsor reach across divisions to gain buy in and support from his or her peers is really vital to that success. Here, they're helping establish and create the vision, communicating to employees, and really accountable for change success. The primary sponsor is accountable for the overarching success. The sponsor coalition is really accountable for change success with their teams. So we're building a system of accountability. Once we have alignment at the top, then we look at those people managers and those people leaders and support their journey. Remember, they have an ad card journey. If they've never really been successful with change before, we have to help them in their ad card journey as a change leader first and what that means. So we may have to educate them and build their competency around that, and then bring them on board, as well to help them understand about the change itself and become advocates of the actual change and what the implication is gonna be to their organizations. They impact all five elements of ADKAR, and they lead adoption with their teams. Unfortunately, what I see happen over and over again is that employees and people managers get the memo about what's changing and when at the same time. And then the people managers are left to say, well, I don't know. I don't know anything about it. Nobody told me. So here you are. They've not been prepared, and you've created an but we've created an environment that creates that resistance when we know they're already the most resistant. So we specifically focus on them and building their capability. The other thing here is if we can equip them with success and how to be a change leader, it helps them with their BAU projects. It helps them with future projects coming down. So it builds that competency and capability within the organization. Another layer that I rely on very heavily with ERPs, especially because they're so complex, is really that change agent and change champions. They advocate for the change. They motivate, inspire others, and we leverage them to help build and drive adoption with their peers. So let's look at some steps to help you build, this ecosystem and how you might implement this. I would like to say, first of all, it's important to kinda map your organization. You've got your sponsor at the top, and then you know all these different orgs and departments that are gonna be impacted. Those really you need to consider are your coalition members. You also need to think about influential people leaders that might have be able to be advocates as well. And then as you're looking at this, you'll say who might be some agents from this group, and then who do we need to engage early. So once we have this picture, we need to then consider the level of impact for this group, and that's why these 10 aspects then become so important because as we have the picture of our organization, we say they're not all gonna be impacted equally. So remember the circles, and and I so some of you, the one s Jones and m Kowalski are in red, so that means they're high impact. So, a seeing is is kind of more medium impact, AC is is kind of more medium impact, and T Garcia has very minimal impact, if any at all. So knowing this allows us to know where we really need to target, and focus, and prioritize our work. And they become our priority when we build our change role. Helping them understand and prepare them for their role is important. So, establishing clear and accessible communication tools and resources. So we create them. Remember, we're the director, so we're creating things and giving to this group to leverage and use as part of that ecosystem. We need to leverage them to have access to training and to resources. We may have to say, can you provide us with some SMEs? Can you provide us with some training resources? Help communicate the vision and where we're heading, but also the people leaders responsibility is gonna get there with their frontline employees and really let them know how the change is gonna impact them. By creating and leveraging an ecosystem, it provides insights to organizational impacts. We can uncover pockets of resistance, share early successes, translate broader messaging, and they can act as a distribution channel for that consistent messaging. So it's really important to really leverage this group to help be an extension of your change efforts. And there's a significant value in the ecosystem approach as well. So why might we leverage this? It fosters collaboration, reduces resistance. It really creates a network. It really creates this next a network that allows us to identify and address resistance early on, making employees more comfortable and motivated by the change, to embrace the change. It enhances communication because the communication is flowing both ways. We've got this group that's providing us with information and feedback, and we're sharing information with them. So that's where we can track and adjust. Is our how is our ad card, tact how are our ad card tactics working? Are we getting, information back to the right folks so they're getting the message at the right time from the right audience? Yes. A SharePoint site is a great way so you don't blitz people with indigestible communication. I love that idea. So there's lots of tactics that you can use to help, but remember, I, as a frontline employee, wanna hear from my people later. So, it's important to create multiple ways, to provide this information, and the ecosystem really allows you to do that. So what do you think is the biggest gap in your ecosystem? A poll to say where are you experiencing your biggest gap? We know that from our research, change networks, meaning sponsors, champions, and managers, all of them working together, improve adoption by providing consistent, consistent communication and reinforcement and peer influence. We also know that projects with a structured change network see 30 to 50% better results in adoption and sustainability. So if you get one thing from today, I would say encourage you to set yourself up for success with this network, with this ecosystem, so you're not the only one doing the change. So I'll we'll close out today with Amber kinda going through some early warning symptoms. Thanks, Kelly. So, yeah. We're gonna take a look at some of the signs that your ERP project might be at risk or what are those warning signs? What are the types of risks and how do we manage them? Resistance. How will it show up? We might see it in forms like lack of engagement where you don't have engagement from your subject matter experts, or maybe people leaders aren't showing up due to saturation or just in general that lack of understanding the why or that message for them, the what's in it for me. So lack of alignment of organizational goals or people leaders not being prepared for the roles like Kelly mentioned, leadership and success is not effectively shared and understood across the org. That could also be a part of lack of engagement. Also, people may be working in silos or there's a lack of collaboration, so not understanding how all the pieces of the value stream work together and are interdependent. For your training strategy, maybe there aren't enough multiple modalities. You don't have e learning included plus self paced and leader led videos or job aids to support that training strategy. Change management also may not have a clear understanding of impact in the needs of the stakeholder needing the change. There could be cultural misalignment that can remove a sense of control from process owners. Increases in restricting who has access to what, tightening controls on data enforces more rigid processes, and that may cause people to feel disempowered. There could be a lack of adaptability, so going from informal workflows to more formal and standardized processes. Now what are some of the ways that we can uncover this? Using the AGHAR model, conducting surveys to uncover barriers, helping coach and guide individuals or change managers that guide those individuals through their change, and also helping to figure out where this lies across the organization, in individual business functions. Like I said, with the the readiness assessment we took in finance popped up, that AGCAR model helped us identify that barrier and then we were able to focus on that group and help them through that and support them. You can also leverage a change agent work network and your people leaders to help determine areas of resistance. So people leaders play that role of the liaison providing feedback to the project team and going back to the change management team, and that's really helpful. We also have a project health assessment. So the ProSight change triangle is a project health assessment where scores allow the project team to even evaluate the project management, change management, leadership and sponsorship, and the overall success and progress of the ERP project. Or you can leverage what you already have, engagement surveys, NPS scores, or corporate surveys. So when you have created a proper ecosystem that helps us gain feedback earlier and more often to be able to mitigate and address. So we'd love to hear from you in our next poll on which early warning signs concern you the most. Are you concerned about end users resisting the change, no structured change management plans, poor system and data adoption, or even leadership disengagement? Yeah, definitely active sponsorship and structured training reduce the risk of ERP failure by increasing engagement and competency. And, yeah, definitely resistance. It is one of the most common reasons for change failure. Organizations that monitor and address resistance early improve success rates. Awesome. Alright. So as we've seen today, ERP success isn't just about installing technology, it's about preparing people, aligning leadership, and building readiness from the inside out. So So I wanna thank you all for joining us for this conversation, and then we'd also love to hear your thoughts and questions. So let's open it up to q and a. Great. Thank you, Amber. And I think Diana has some questions that she's gonna be sharing with us. And while we're getting her back on stage to offer some of those questions, I'm also gonna put the final poll in there for you. If there's a way that we can help you, please check, how we might be able to support you in accelerating user adoption, building organization wide change capability, or equipping your project. We'd love to hear from you. Alright, Diana. So what do you have for us? Well, wonderful. Thank you again, Kelly and Amber. This has been a fabulous presentation, and thank you for everyone who's been with us here on the call. It's been really fun to watch all of the chats coming through, some great discussion, and really great questions. So we have a ton of questions. Of course, we won't get through all of them, but we'll do our best to also sort through these and and do some follow ups after as well. So to get us started, let me go back here to my questions window. I wanted to kick it off with one on, from Luis on how would you suggest overcoming resistance from an executive sponsor who is too busy and very reactive? Sponsors are my favorite. I usually spend a lot of time with them, and they all are very, very busy. I try to maximize the time that I do have with them so that when they're there, they feel like they're getting valuable information. And what I asked them to do was very quick and simple because I do most of the work for them. I do find too, one thing I have done is show the number of projects maybe that their sponsors for because they're oversaturated, and we can often have a conversation around which of the ones can we either deprioritize, find someone else to be kind of a sponsor or delegate for. We also see how do we leverage a chief of staff. Oftentimes, that works. I've pulled the chief of staff in and used them to really make sure, we're we're getting the right information to the sponsor at the right time, and use that person as a delegate when we can. But usually, it's about making it so simple. They're usually wanting for it to be successful. So I show how everything that we're doing is tying back to the success of the project and what the risk is if we don't have their involvement engagement. Most of the time they want their project to be successful. It's a matter of not understanding what their role is. So if we can help educate them about their role and then make sure that we're making very good use of their time and it's high value work, then we can usually overcome that. I did have one that was retiring and really didn't care. So I had to work with some of their peers to think about, what might be in it for them as the sponsor to show up and give it their all prior to the retirement, and that was a good exercise as well. And we did find the ability to leave a legacy and things like that that really value to them personally. Couple different ways to address that. What else do you have, Diana? You're on you're on mute. Still happening. Alright. We have one based on budget or about budgeting. So based on based on research or any any best practices that you've encountered, what percentage of the total ERP project budget should be allocated to change management? We get this question all the time, and my favorite word, and that is should. Right? So if you really think about what should be allocated, it's anywhere from, I would say, you know, five to 10% or 13%. It depends on how big it is and the and the actual return on investment. I like to look at what is the overall implications, how much are we investing, do you have some hardcore efficiencies that you're trying to gain, improvements in customer experience? If you have some hardcore data that shows, what that return on investment is going to be, and then you can show what percentage the actual adoption for the people side is gonna contribute to that, then you're in a better position to be able to get that funding. I have yet to see one that has allocated that much. It usually is much lower in two to 3%, and then we continually have to go back and ask, for more and for more resources. So I would just say each project's different and each organization is different, but we do have some research out there that'll show you what others have spent and what they wish they had done alternatively. Fantastic. Now, I'm seeing in the comment or in the Q and A, people are uploading, which is great. That's helping us sort through some of these. And there's a couple different versions of this one, but, can you enlighten us on any specific or any challenges that are more what you see with the ERP implementation versus what you might see on a on a smaller scale change? What what what do you commonly You wanna take that one? Yeah. I mean, what I think when we when we're looking at complex changes, what's important to focus on is that we want detailed plans. We want to ensure that we're adequately defining the success and the impacts and going through the whole process. But what's great about Prosci's methodology is that it's adaptable and can be structured. And so when we have a smaller project, at times, we can apply a little bit of change management. And so we might not make a huge communications plan or a highly detailed sponsored plan, but that sponsor, we're still gonna continue to be engaged with them. We're going to provide them updates and, adequate information to be sharing to their teams. And the communications plan might just be within a small group and not broadly across the organization. So those are some of the ways that we can alter, the differences between small projects and large projects with our approach. And I will say for ERP issues, what I find is the most significant and also the one that people don't realize is the impact it has on the processes. When you bring in a new ERP system, you are completely changing the internal processes of the organization, especially if you've never really had an ERP system before. And even if you're going from c to c, there is going to be some significant process change. And when we don't take that into consideration and a lot of organizations say, well, I don't wanna spend the time mapping current state. Well, okay. But you it's very hard to help people move from their current state to future state if you don't at least understand at a higher level how they're doing their jobs today, and what the impact is gonna be to those processes. But that's generally the biggest one. It is not always understood. It is hard for people to grasp. Often I see people when they're brought in to design sessions, they wanna try to make the new system work the same way the old system did, and that's not there. It's not there for that. You're bringing in this new system to to really streamline, to give you these efficiencies. And so people really have to have that mindset shift coming into that to understand. They have to think differently about how they're gonna do their job. They have to leverage what this technology is gonna bring to them. Imagine it's the same as going from, basic functions to leveraging AI. I mean, it is that drastic. And when we don't take that into consideration at the ERP, you do run into specific concerns. The other thing I'll say is they often want to just do the technology training. And when you bring people in, they need to know their it's a job training. It's their process. It's the technology. It's all of that together within the training because it is a totally new way of working in many, many cases. So I would say focus on the process piece. We have to spend a lot more time on that on ERPs than we do other other transformations. Yeah. And then you also what had increased engagement? Yeah. So increase engagement when parts of the solution are still being developed and tested and hence information of the actual new ways of working are still missing. I think that's a great opportunity to build trust and transparency to say, hey, we're all in this together. You're you're learning as we're learning. Be open and honest about it. If we try to go out there that we have all the information and we've got all the answers, it's they're gonna feel it and it will not lend to trust, environment. We always are clear about, hey, and there's probably gonna be issues when we go live, but this is what we're gonna do to help you. What if you would you find an issue, here here's what you need to do and how you need to leverage your resources. Anything to add, Amber? No. Thank you. Sorry. Looks like we're up on time. We have forty seconds left. Forty seconds left. Well, thank you again, Amber and Kelly. I'll quick, say thank you everyone, for joining us today. If you would like to connect with us, if if this sparked a lot of ideas or you need to, want to connect with someone within ProSci, again, reach out to us. You could use any of the, means of contact up here on the screen today. If you respond to any of the polls, we'll be reaching out with you again, with some of the information there that we had up at the end. But, otherwise, thank you again so much for joining us for the last hour. This was a very, insightful conversation, lots of good information and good questions. So keep an eye open. We will be sending out the recording here, in a few hours, and you'll get one later later this week. And if you have any questions, again, feel free to reach out to us at solutions@proside.com, or you can follow us on LinkedIn and get in touch with us that way. Kelly and Amber, any last words? Thank you very much. It's been great seeing you all. Have a great rest of your week. Thank you. Have a wonderful day. Fantastic. Thank you all. Thanks.