Innovative Change & Learning Initiative Supports ERP Implementation

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Innovative Change Learning Initiative Supports
ERP Implementation
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Initiative Supports ERP Implementation
Is your focus on the technical side of your
enterprise systems implementation is so much that
youre neglecting to help your enterprise to
adapt to the changes that the system brings into
the way people work? IT sector is undergoing
dynamic and dramatic change today, mostly by the
evolution of cloud-based platforms and SaaS
solution. Despite such ongoing developments,
enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems retain
its relevance of being one of the crucial
enablers of most of the worlds commerce and
public-sector task. The most neglected aspect in
this is dealing with the human and organizational
implications of system and process change. An
ERP adoption almost always entails sweeping
changes to the way work is done across any
organization. It simplifies business processes,
reporting relationships, roles, how customers are
served, how data is stored and used, and much
more. The organization also deploys some number
of resources to train employees as part of the
implementation, but such initiatives are often
insufficient for several reasons. Training needs
evaluation is often superficial. Training may be
provided too late to pace with the workforce
performance and is not reinforced at the right
time. Nonetheless, if deployed and implemented
properly, an enterprise learning and
organizational change program can entail a
crucial impact on the success of the overall ERP
implementation. Here are eight most prominent
insights into how organization can make it work
best by deploying a learning and change
management program.
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1. Deploy a Right Fusion of Skills to the
Training Team
Enterprise learning requires a specialized skill
set not anyone can do it. Just ensure to deploy
experienced learning professionals on board. In
addition, have a combination of business function
abilities and technology. Maintain a right
balance of qualified and knowledgeable colleagues
amongst the design, build, test and training
team. Keep rotating systems and business function
members in and out of the training and rotate
initiative for stretch of time, while retaining a
good team of skilled instructional designers.
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2. Deploy the Training Team Early
Systems training is not a generic, off-the-shelf
program. Each implementation process is unique
given the unique needs of each organization.
Deploy a training team since inception as an
integral part of the development team. Start with
small team whose members can become the experts
for each functional area later on and stay with
the project till the end. You should also have a
mix of roles, like subject matter experts,
testers, system developers to actively
participate.
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3. Initiate Training within a Wider Change
Management Program
Apart from developing specific training program
or web-based learning initiatives, organizations
should think of enabling new behaviors, working
associations and organizational structures. It
should have a threefold initiated - training,
change management and organizational alignment.
This approach will ensure that specific learning
programs are in harmony with the wider
organizational change and that everyone gains
right information and support.
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4. Make an Iterative Approach to Training-needs
Evaluation
Having the training-needs evaluation correct is
necessary to the success of the project. The
focus should be on the end-users performance
needs and not just on the technical details of
the program. It can be created during workshops
with the design-and-build teams their insights
into technical details should be in alignment
with the insights of others who understand the
wider influence on the overall behaviors of
users. Training is about learning the new program
that the system supports. Iterative approach is
required to define training needs rather defining
it all at once. Keep changing the strategy to
refresh the needs analysis with every release
update of the program to keep it aligned with the
system and business functioning.
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5. Entail Innovative and Engaging Learning
Initiative
Engage in more innovative approaches like online
learning, collaboration systems, simulations, and
social media. Dedicated intranet sites can be
developed to publish news and support
literatures, share information and to receive
feedback from users. You can also use social
media platforms to help everyone to contribute
timely information along with user-generated
content in text, audio or video form. You can use
knowledge databases in wiki formats to
standardize ways to accumulate very current
perspectives from across the enterprise.
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6. Assess Progress and Outcomes Rigorously
Do not limit your training evaluation programs to
point-in-time temperature checks and
understanding whether a few employees are
satisfied with a particular program. Evaluate if
the training actually has impacted the business.
Engage in producing a more agile and extensive
training analysis that assesses user analysis of
relevance and impact on individual performance.
It should also be assessed for user adoption,
process performance and the effectiveness of the
change initiative.
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7. Align Cost-saving Practices with Value-adding
Localization
Customized standardized training approach can be
affordable and can enhance the positive impact on
users within particular regional geographies. You
need to maintain the right balance. Start
collecting the crucial part of the training that
can be reused. Once you are done, add the local
specifics needed or business-driven sub
processes. Training in local languages is also
necessary. You may also rely on a trainer that
can speak the local language and can translate
instruction from the master documents, instead of
translating complete project.
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8. Make Sustainable Training Investment
Often the organizational changes and new ways of
working are not sustainable after the initial
training period. Data are not updated,
accountability gets muddled and budgets dry up.
Responsibilities are not well defined for
workforce enablement and support, as time goes
on. It is ideal to deploy an entity having the
incentive and allocated budget to maintain the
training programs and change initiative over time.
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Gaining More from your ERP Program
ERP is a huge investment, with gigantic impacts
on the performance of individuals and the overall
organization. Deploying the right training and
change programs, people can adapt to the new
processes effectively. Organizations can expect
to experience improved productivity on the system
being turned on, and they can be quicker in
exploring and grabbing marketplace opportunities.
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