Preparing the Organizational Transition

When an IT driven transformation is announced, many users don’t pay specific attention to the project-related communication right away. This is not surprising as the go-live is still far away. Another reason for a limited interest is that messages conveyed at the beginning of an IT project are rather generic and abstract. Concrete, reliable information on what will change for whom is not yet available.

However, after the detailed change impact analysis, implications for the different user groups are identified. At the same time, as the go-live comes closer, the users usually have a growing interest in learning more about the upcoming changes and how the changes will affect them. Thus, the stakeholder-specific communication of change impacts is an important activity to prepare the users well for the go-live. It provides insights about the future way of working, reduces insecurity and rumors, and motivates the users to get actively involved in training and other preparation activities.

In the 4S project, the detailed change impact analysis workshops are about to be completed. Sandra and Paul now want to provide more information about the changes at the workplace for the different affected user groups. Sandra has suggested using a persona approach for the communication activities. A persona is a fictional character, representing a specific target audience. While Paul was on vacation for two weeks, Sandra has already started to develop personas for some of BriscoBikes stakeholder groups.

The persona approach is often used in change communication to address specific target groups. Do you have an idea of how to apply personas for communicating change impacts?

Take 10 minutes to complete exercise 31 in your workbook.

The persona approach supports the development of stakeholder specific communication activities. Watch the conversation between Sandra and Paul on possible use cases for the 4S project.

Preparing the organizational transition to the new SAP cloud solution is an important activity for the entire 4S project team. In this context, one of change management’s tasks is facilitating the mapping new SAP roles and responsibilities to the impacted business users. This mapping guarantees that users are granted access only to the data, transactions, and system functionalities essential for their job roles. It also prevents unauthorized system access and upholds security measures. Overall, role mapping helps to ensure every member of the BriscoBikes organization can use the new SAP solution for their specific tasks.

The BriscoBikes steering committee has asked the 4S project leadership team to provide a proposal for managing the organizational transition to the new cloud solution. This includes the development of the new target operating model and the necessary organizational adaptations, for example, the alignment of organizational policies, procedures, and structures. As Carlos Olmeda is unsure what change management can contribute here, he schedules an alignment call with Sandra.

Sometimes, change managers face unrealistic expectations about their contribution to the organizational transition during an SAP cloud project. Do you know which tasks a change manager usually carries out?

Take five minutes to complete exercise 32 in your workbook.

In the following video, Carlos and Sandra talk about the change management scope during the organizational transition.