Change Management Framework

A change can either bring an exciting opportunity or a loss or difficult situation, especially in the business world, it’s an important characteristic for an organization to remain relevant. “Change management is the process, tools and techniques to manage the people-side of change to achieve the required business outcome” (Creasey, n.d.).

Let’s take an ERP project, MADAR that was implemented at King Saud University (KSU), Saudi Arabia, and analyze the challenges they had faced during the implementation phase.

KSU’s ERP project, MADAR was aimed to integrate their finance, HR/Payroll, administrative communication, inventory, warehouse and employee services. The main objective was to integrate the process with different departments, improve the information availability, and provide an effective decision support system.

KSU soon realized that the implementation involves high risk other than the project cost and its technical difficulties, which were mainly due to the major changes happening in the existing business process and organizational structuring as part of the new ERP implementation. A change management team was formed as an implementation strategy to tackle the employees and overcome their resistance. This team had employees from IT, middle & top management, project members and consultants.

The responsibilities of this team were as follows;

• Implementation of the change strategy.

• Ensure the effective communication within the implementation team.

• Deliver effective change programs and outcomes.

• Ensure the smooth transition from the old system to MADAR.

• Ensure all employees are well informed, trained, involved and have a positive attitude on MADAR.

However, like any new ERP implementation project in an organization, KSU also have had to face greater employee-resistance during its implementation phases.

Here are the identified reasons for employee resistance;

• Lack of skills to understand and effectively use MADAR.

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