I was working with a large global organisation which was implementing a Business Intelligence solution. My role was Deployment Lead which was basically a change management role for the programme impacting just over 100 global offices.

I was supporting 3 Product Owners developing Business Intelligence tools for Finance, Account Management and Location Management.

There were offices all over the world which operated fairly independently. There were also around 8 different ERP systems that that would be linked to the new data lake and updating the reporting tools.

The first thing we did was group offices into “regions” based on their current systems, proximity and markets – we ended up with 12 regions. Then we met with staff from each region to outline the project and nominate a network of change representatives and subject matter experts who would represent the region to the project and the project to the region.

Based on typical change management perspectives we were very successful. Stakeholders were very well informed, attendance for workshops and training were very good, feedback was mostly positive and the reports were among the top 5 most viewed reports in the business.

The key to our overall success however was the framework and our status reporting. We manage 3 pillars throughout the project: Engagement, Solution and Transition. As a project team we would rate each pillar either red, amber or green for each region and then each region would do the same. This is where we picked up some major issues when some regions were reporting as amber for transition and red for the solution. Despite the fact that people liked the reports, we learned that were not actually adding much value and the regions were not willing to switch off their old reports. It turned out that regions were not aligned on various aspects of the data and as a result did not understand or agree with the data.

All was not lost. Now that we knew that there were issues we could delve into the specifics and address them. Unfortunately some were not easy or quick to address and this meant that transition steps were delayed for some regions, but by addressing them we made amazing strides for the organisation. Teams were collaborating more than ever and this in turn led to new opportunities beyond the project itself.

This project is a very good example of the value of great collaboration between project teams and the business. Even though this was a project with a very broad scope and impact, the same principles apply to every change. You need good engagement, a solution that is developed and supported by the organisation and throughout the project there are transition activities that not only help the business prepare for new ways of working but demonstrate their commitment, buy in and readiness for the change too.

• Business Change Frameworks
• Business Change Management & Communication

• BI & Analytics
• Digital Enablement