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Change Management

Change management is usually lower on the totem pole of project priorities and has traditionally been the most overlooked aspect to spend management projects.

Recognizing this issue, Shelby understands that change is the thread critical to tying the project lifecycle together and making a tactical success a business success.  Implementing new or altered business processes has an impact at many levels of an organization.  To facilitate successful change requires knowledge of your audience – be it role-based or technology-oriented.

As part of any project implementation, communicating the vision and value of the impending organizational changes is critical.  The communication of this vision to the user community, and supporting them through the transition, carries with it a high probability that the user community will adopt the new system more quickly and easily than would otherwise be the case.  The focus of our change management methodology at Shelby is focused in the following areas:

• Executive Sponsors must be clearly identified and involved with the system implementation from day one in order to ensure that high-level, strategic decisions can be facilitated in a timely manner and the success of the program is communicated throughout the organization
• Departmental Power Users should be highly visible and actively engaged in support of the system both in the timeframe immediately following the production system rollout and in assisting new users become familiar with the system as it matures
• Training is a project priority and readily available to all end users so that there is a smooth transition to the new system and the risk of lagging user adoption due to system unfamiliarity can be minimized
• There is a clear focus on supporting end-users via training initiatives such as instructor-lead courses, distance-learning solutions, desktop job aids and a dedicated corporate intranet site containing FAQ’s and related process documentation
• A well-defined system support framework that is both user friendly and technically efficient should be put in place so that user-reported issues can be resolved quickly and resolutions can be communicated back to the user community in a timely and concise manner
• Leverage Executive Sponsorship and Power Users to drive user adoption of the system throughout the enterprise – users that feel like they are a part of a program that receives executive attention are more likely to actively participate in the program and access to Power Users will help to ensure that users feel fully supported by knowledgeable peers

Employing this methodology, Shelby has assisted numerous clients in the successful transition to a more efficient procurement environment in which resources are able to do more with less and are free to focus their efforts on managing more spend instead of spending more time managing the procurement process.