How to deliver successful change management for an order-to-cash digital transformation project

Delivering effective change management is critical to the success of any transformation project. In this blog I look at the importance of effective communication and how to ensure your business delivers it. The 4D Contact team have extensive experience supporting global businesses on their order-to-cash transformation journey. We provide a flexible outsourced receivables management solution which can help support your in-house team during the transformation period with great success at providing creative solutions to support user adoption when teams have found change difficult.

The success of any business transformation will be reliant on engaging employees across the business to move to new ways of working. It is people that make change happen and how you plan to bring them with you onto the transformation journey will be critical to the project’s success.  This can often prove to be businesses greatest challenge with an article by McKinsey outlining how only “45 percent of respondents at larger firms, compared with 58 percent at smaller firms, say frontline employees are visibly engaged in transformations.”[1] So how do you ensure employee engagement?

The answer is surprisingly simple; effective communication of transformation goals to stakeholders at all levels. A study by McKinsey discovered seven key roles that needed to be fulfilled within an organization to best support transformation. The seven key influencers McKinsey identified were:

1. CEO
   The transformation figurehead, they should set the vision and communicate a compelling story for change throughout the business
   
2. Senior Leaders
   The motivators for change, they must share aligned messages, providing transparent communication across the organisation on the forthcoming changes and the desired outcomes and outline consequence for team members who are not committed to the changes.
   
3. Human-Resources Leaders
   The connectors, they should ensure successful communication of the high-level objectives in relation to employees’ day to day work.
   
4. Transformation Project Management Leaders
   The problem solvers, they must identify barriers to change and address them, they are also critical in sharing transformation related knowledge and best practises across the organisation.
   
5. Initiative Leaders
   The action owners, they must have clear ownership of their initiatives, work well with their peers leading other initiatives.
   
6. Line Managers
   The team motivators, they must make transformation tangible and realistic to the front-line employees to ensure they adopt the changes in hand.
   
7. Change agents
   The transformation role models these employees help facilitate transformation across the business by demonstrating the shifts in mind-sets and behaviours transformation requires.

Companies should also leverage the wealth of new digital initiatives available to help engage employees in transformation: social media, change management apps and live feedback tools can all complement and support traditional communication methods and ensure everyone from the front-line to the CEO feel listened to and supported during the transformation period.

[1] The People Power of Transformations” McKinsey and Company”