Are you all set? Maybe, but read this first.

Moving business management processes onto a digital platform is a good idea if you get the processes and platform right. Sometimes, all you need is an onboarding call with the vendor and you will be able to get going. However, suppose your organisation has ten people or more or is growing quickly. In that case, you might consider paying more attention to the project.

Business Process Management is a specialist area of management consulting focusing on improving how an organisation operates and delivers work. If you are starting a new project, you can think of 4 phases:

1. Assess Current Processes: Examine existing workflows, systems, and practices to identify inefficiencies and opportunities for improvement.
2. Design Improved Processes: Develop optimised processes that align with business needs and priorities.
3. Implement Changes: Guide the organisation through the transition to new processes, ensuring smooth adoption and minimal disruption.
4. Continuously Improve: Establish metrics and mechanisms for ongoing evaluation and refinement of processes to pursue excellence. This commitment to continuous improvement can motivate your team and lead to a culture of excellence.

Can we do a Business Process project ourselves?

The test is not do you understand what needs to be done, ask yourself whether you have the experience and can give the project time and attention in needs to be successful. Here are some general points to consider:

1. Experience, Expertise, Specialist Knowledge and Capacity: External support brings a wealth of experience and skills that may not be readily available in-house. Even if there is competence in-house, it might be distracted by the day job and not have the capacity. If you are going it alone, be realistic about how much time it is going to take.
2. Objective Perspective: An external consultant can provide unbiased insights and identify issues internal teams might overlook due to familiarity or organisational politics.
3. Change Management: Successfully implementing new processes or technologies requires managing significant change. How will you make sure adoption runs smoothly? It is an area where projects that are managed in-house flounder most frequently because they get caught up in the organisation’s internal dynamics, which a consultant has some distance from.

Engaging Consultants for Change Management in CRM or ERP Migrations

We specialise in serving small and medium-sized businesses, so it is probably not a surprise to hear that helping clients migrate or consolidate business processes onto a digital platform is a project brief that often comes up in one form or another. Here is a breakdown of some specific considerations and why they are essential:

1. Integration Challenges: CRM and ERP systems often need to integrate with existing software and processes, requiring careful planning and execution. As far as possible, remain neutral on a specific vendor’s suitability for your business until the integrations needed have been identified and evaluated.
2. Customisation: Tailoring CRM/ERP systems to fit specific business requirements will need technical expertise that needs to be under the change manager’s control. The change manager, a key figure in the project, is responsible for overseeing and controlling the technical aspects of the project, ensuring that the CRM/ERP systems are customised to fit the specific business requirements.
3. Data Migration: Transferring data accurately and securely from legacy systems to new platforms is a complex task that needs to be within the scope of the change manager so it can be controlled appropriately.

Of course, only massive projects that go drastically wrong become case studies in business schools. Still, any analysis usually reveals failures in one of these three areas. All those projects in smaller businesses and organisations that end up costing more or achieving less than expected typically have problems with poor definitions of requirements and business needs in these areas. These items are top 3 on purpose here.

Managing Organisational Change:

1. Employee Resistance: The project’s most complicated and least predictable element is people. Your change management strategy should be coherent with your communications plans.
2. Training and Development: Effective training is essential to ensure employees can use the new CRM/ERP systems proficiently.
3. Communication Plans: Clear and consistent communication is vital during transitions to move people from resisting to supporting change. Talk details when appropriate.
4. User Engagement: Consultants facilitate user involvement throughout migration, fostering ownership and commitment to the new systems.
5. Process Alignment: A new CRM/ERP system must align with existing and planned business processes to achieve desired outcomes and operational efficiencies.
6. Continuous Support: Post-implementation support provided by consultants helps address any issues promptly and ensures sustained success.

If done right, organisational change and user adoption will transform your organisation. Done wrong, well, everybody’s seen it done wrong. You end up with an expensive system nobody uses, and the person who championed it gets fired. Fortunately, the most frequent problem we see is not that it has been poorly done, just that it has not been done at all or no effort has been put into it. That can be fixed without anyone getting fired.

Risk Management

Identifying potential risks and developing contingency plans. Anticipate and identify risks associated with CRM/ERP migrations, such as data loss, downtime, or poorly understood costs. Complete a risk and uncertainty reduction exercise around the top 3 risk areas: Integration, Data, and Customisation needs, and bring some formality to this if appropriate.

Requirements

Author:

Michael Sivewright

Digital Transformation | Workforce Solutions | Operations Consulting | Managing Director at Valenta

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