An ERP system is a powerful tool that combines sales, finance, resources, people and processes into one central location. It connects your departments in real-time, allowing you to make more informed business decisions and increases efficiency at all levels.
But to make your digital transformation efforts a success, you also need to adopt the right mindset and culture where your new ERP system will thrive.
How do you do that? In this blog, we look at:
1. Engaging stakeholders
A stakeholder is anyone who’s affected by the project, from your directors down to your employees working at the coalface day-in-day-out. Most people don’t like change as it usually means changing the way they’ve been used to working for a long time. So, you need to explain to your teams what’s in it for them.
The answer to this may vary depending on the employee, so it’s important you have a change management strategy in place. For example, a priority for your staff running the shop floor each day will be how the change makes their daily lives easier. Can the new technology help monitor team performance? Or show them where they’ve performed well/where they can improve?
There’s not only business value in improved employee efficiency but it also makes their job more enjoyable. For example, your teams won’t have to spend lots of time trying to find/interpret data because technology is doing it for them, allowing them to focus on the more fulfilling tasks.
Also, consider how you can add business value back to your suppliers. They will have their own transformation challenges, so spend time understanding each other’s needs. This may result in you creating them some savings that help you gain more efficiencies and will ultimately make you a better company to work with.
2. Aligning people and mindsets
It’s not enough to have a good vision on its own. Your leaders need to show support for your project as they usually set the vision, messaging, goals and path. So, as we mentioned earlier, educate your people so they know what’s in it for them.
It’s easy for the original messaging and passion to get lost as it makes its way down a company. That’s why you need to keep the teams doing the implementation involved from the start. This makes it easier to share the vision across the business and reduces the chances of the news being diluted or misunderstood.
Some other things you should think about include:
- Foster business accountability with your change – have your employees record their wins, losses and lessons learned. By creating accountability, they will be more likely to take ownership of their role while building their confidence along the way
- Build the right team – who will be your leaders to drive the change project?
- Create compelling stories to boost employee engagement – use real-life examples to back up your points. For example, if it’s a process you want to automate, explain how long the process is currently taking and show how much automation will cut performance time by
3. Always looking for new business value
It’s not just about finding business value at the start. You also need to:
- Continually review that value
- Assess whether you’re achieving that value during your journey
- Identify whether there are opportunities for other/new value
Businesses can hunt value by themselves, but chances are they’ll be looking for value they know (or have already done) internally. Bringing in external people can add more value to your business case. They can show you:
- How other companies have hunted value
- What value processes other businesses are currently doing
At Columbus, we have a wide range of expertise within the food sector. And we’ve been helping businesses like yours embrace digitisation for over 30 years. Our framework can help you hunt value that isn’t strictly financial and discover other ways of finding where value might be.
To find out more about what our value process looks like with a customer, watch our ColumbusCast episode below.
To deliver long-lasting business benefits, you must also focus on value
Effective value management contributes to the overall success of your transformational project. This is because it helps your key stakeholders understand the reasons for change and what’s needed for it go ahead.
In our brochure, we outline the five steps of our value first framework to support your value management efforts.
Download it below.
