Aside from ensuring your IT team is adequately supported, the second thing you can do today is start working on a change management strategy. Obviously, this should start with a look at your internal change management capabilities. Some organizations have well-developed internal OCM experts, some do not. Look into getting some support so that you can start evaluating your organization's change hardiness and potential change resistance points.
Once you have a good idea, you can articulate what that value proposition is in a way that's going to resonate with the end users. You can also start thinking about project branding. What are you calling this? How you are you marketing this internally? What will your communication plan be?
Leigh & I have been doing these projects for a long time now. When we first got started with CloudSuite implementations, we always included change management, but it was regarded as an optional component that was nice to have. Honestly, for projects that came under budget constraints, change management was usually one of the first things to be cut. Looking back on the track record, our experience shows the projects that have incorporated change management throughout the project (instead of tackling it afterwards) have been more successful across the board.
Next week, we will hear more about this from a special guest - Sarah Concannon, one of RPI’s Strategic Services Consultants and a Change Management expert.
