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It's human nature to resist change. We all do it regardless of the situation, work or personal. Change is a hard thing for people to deal with and manage. I try to keep that in mind all the time with all my interactions.

When it comes to companies purchasing new software, one thing that many tend to forget is that there are often many effects and changes that occur as a result of the new software. In order to overcome peoples adversion to change, we recommend to our clients to involve their employees into the process of gathering requirements. By allowing them to be involved in the process, invokes a feeling of ownership and that their concerns are being heard.

Thanks,
Laurence
www.discretemanufacturingerp.com
www.tlcgroupinc.com

Jarrett OBrien Replied on Feb. 15, 2012

That's a great point Laurence. It's amazing how a little involvement and upfront communication can change people's perspectives. Even with the same outcome, people who feel that they were part of the decision have ownership and therefore support and adopt the final solution.

Andrew Baker

Director, Service Operations, SWN Communications Inc.

Posted on Feb. 10, 2012

First things first: Business software is so much work because business is so much work.

Flying a plane is harder than driving a car, because there's a whole lot more to pay attention to, and the penalty for doing things wrong is much greater.

Having said that, I find that all too often, the adoption rate of any solution is tied to the problem that is being solved. When problems are surfaced by people who are closest to the issue, and the solutions are collaborated with them, then the solutions are more readily accepted by them. Conversely, when the problems are "identified" and articulated from much further away, the proposed solutions may be less accepted either due to their perceived complexity, their lack of closeness to the situation, or because they don't represent the true burden of the people facing day to day issues.

Some portion of this is "buy-in", but a larger portion is actually suitability to the situation at hand.

The involvement of those directly affected by both the problem and the solution (which may or may not be the same groups) will likely lead to a more suitable resolution that is cost-effective, delivered in a more timely fashion, and more widely adopted than a solution that is orchestrated from afar for reasons that appear political or otherwise unrelated to those in the trenches.

-ASB: http://XeeMe.com/AndrewBaker

Jarrett OBrien Replied on Feb. 15, 2012

Also great points Andre / Wayne. To your point of "proximity to the problem" one of the biggest selection failures I witnessed was at a billion dollar organization where IT drew up all the requirements, and then a room of managers and executives decided on the software platform in a final meeting. The final solution had great reporting capabilities and integrations, but failed to automate end user business problems. The end result was poor adoption, data quality, and a complete redeploy.

Wayne Spivak

President, SBA * Consulting LTD

Posted on Feb. 10, 2012

The answer is in part of what Andrew expounded. Finding and implementing a new process (software, technological or not) requires buy-in from those who are affected.

To make that new item "ours" instead of theirs (and 'theirs' breeds resistance where 'ours' is ours, and we'll go that extra mile) is to have representative members of the end-users most affected by the new item be part of the team, from start to finish.

This is a way to diffuse the "our" vs "their" controversy and minimize the resistance.

Resistance is futile - the Borg

Jim Barnet

Posted on Feb. 15, 2012

Hi Jarrett:

Our CEO just did a blog on this very topic. http://www.promys.com/why-purchase-new-business-automation-software-not-using...

Basically it comes down to three things:

1) Were you able to configure your software to automate your business processes or did you just automate a series of disconnected tasks
2) Were the business processes you automated good "best practice" business processes, or did automation just allow you to frustrate your users faster
3) People like automation, if they're not using your automation tools, it's probably because they're hard to use. Count the number of times in a business process users have to re-enter or update the same data, if it's more than three, see point #1.

Driving adoption is easy, if what you're asking users to adopt makes their lives easier instead of harder. If you are forcing people to do things that are hard, unnecessarily repetitive or difficult to remember in a busy environment, then things are going to get missed. And then, it is just a matter of time before users start looking for "faster, easier" ways to get the job done that don't involve your automation tools.

Regards, Jim Barnet