Change naturally is not very popular amongst stakeholders in organisations. People dread it because change brings something new, different, and uncertain. Change, especially in business, takes us away from our routines, disrupts the normal rhythms of our days, and makes us uncomfortable. But managing change effectively is not difficult and can go a long way towards ensuring that a change-up such as a new system implementation is successful.

The term “change management” essentially refers to shifting a person, a team, or an entire company from an As-Is situation to a future state. A change management strategy is inclusive of the focused training and communication activities necessary to affect change across an organisation. The strategy should be built taking into consideration a company’s culture, values, and political landscapes at a high level as well as individual role and responsibilities and the environments in which they operate at a more micro level.

With system implementations such as SAP Concur Travel & Expense, a change management strategy is key to help employees understand the new requirements towards them. It establishes a roadmap and reassures employees that the organisation is committed to, and, more importantly, prepared for the change. In the wake of SAP Concur Travel & Expense implementations, change starts with understanding the drivers of change in an organisation.

From organisation vision and mission to the daily tactics of job performance, FinTrans Solutions approach change from a variety of perspectives and with an appreciation for the nuances of each organisation while bringing change to our clients in an approachable, structured, and impactful way, considering the following client objectives:

Drive Adoption: Accelerate understanding and adoption of the SAP Concur Implementation, by creating awareness, developing understanding, and promoting buy-in

Build Capability: Ensure the ability of the organisation to continuously improve their systems and processes long-term

Manage Expectations: Communicate what the project will and will not do, as well as anticipated timing, clearly and accurately

Ensure Consistency: Maintain consistency and clarity of key messages by continually aligning project and leadership messages across the organisation

Solicit Feedback & Participation: Solicit feedback in order to measure the effectiveness of the overall project and ensure buy-in.

Illustration: Change Management Approach

There are a lot of factors to consider when planning for change in an organisation. However, the most important step in the process is to develop a change management strategy early and to identify the right level of complexity for each client organisation. FinTrans provide their client organisations with a comprehensive framework, covering the following phases and elements:

Develop Change Management Roadmap, addressing all training & communication-related preparation & planning, content & supporting material related developments and change management execution scheduled right at the time of design finalisation until go-live and hypercare

Develop Change Management Plan, covering all scheduled detailed training activities and communications activities broken down into two main segments: the internal project team (e.g., project sponsors, project managers, local leads, technical leads), and the external organisation (e.g., those impacted by the change)

Conduct Change Impact Analysis in conjunction with a detailed Stakeholder Assessment: This is a key input to any client’s ongoing Change Management strategy – it identifies the ways in which T&E procedures throughout the impacted countries will change as a result of the introduction of SAP Concur. We conduct a series of Change impact validation workshops with business stakeholders in deployment countries in scope. The objective is to validate and better understand the upcoming changes and its impact to stakeholders. Key deliverables typically are: Overview of Results, Change Impact Dashboard, Key Findings by Roles, Proposed Mitigation Action Plan

Ensure Sponsorships from Leaders

Develop communication strategy, delivering the “Right Message to the Right Audience at the Right Time via the Right Channel”. We develop client-specific communication approaches with proper stakeholder and change agent involvement to ensure that stakeholder groups are kept informed / effectively engaged throughout the duration of the project. Change Readiness Measures will inform the change management team on the effectiveness of the communication and ways to maximize user adoption rates.

Develop comprehensive communication plans to be executed during project milestones and key dates to obtain the expected change results. Key messages should also be enforced by leveraging internal client events (e.g. town hall, brown bag sessions, monthly meetings, performance dialogues, intranet updates, and e-signs) for maximum effectiveness. We ensure feedback will be gathered at key milestones of the project to assess the effectiveness of T&E/SAP Concur-related communications.

Develop training strategy, covering SAP Concur Navigation Training, Train-the-Trainer and End User Training which will bridge the gap between SAP Concur-developed and client-developed training content.

Develop a training plan that will enable our clients to equip users (requestors/ travelers, approvers, and processors/back-office staff) with the required knowledge and skills to successfully operate SAP Concur. Training can be delivered across various mediums including web-based and in-person. Audience access, corporate culture, budget, message importance, immediacy, and a potential need for interactive communication (e.g., asking questions) should be considered when selecting channels.

Develop communications such as introduction emails & announcements, SAP Concur training emails, and travel agency briefings

Develop sustainable training content in order to meet the future training needs of new and existing client employees. Methods of training we deem useful depending on the target audience are Instructor-Led training (web-based or classroom), eLearning/virtual training, Self-paced (recorded sessions) as well as role-based user guides, Quick Reference Guides, and FAQs.

Execute training according to the training schedule

Execute communication plan according to the communication schedule

Training Evaluation & Monitoring: As with any initiative, it is important to measure how successful the effort was, to understand the effectiveness of the training execution. And ways to improve, gauge the knowledge acquired by the users to determine their readiness to use the SAP Concur system and gather feedback on any changes/improvements to be made to the training materials/execution

With change management around SAP Concur implementation, some success metrics to consider are (Note: percentages to be determined by individual organisations):

  • Percent of employee adoption
  • Post-launch survey satisfaction at x%
  • x% increase in calls to helpdesk
  • Lead time to complete “Trip-to-Reimbursement Cycle”
  • Lead time to complete back-office audit/processing

Qualitative Insight on the effectiveness of change management can be obtained via:

  • … the audiences’ reaction through:
    • Feedback on the Training
    • Via Online/paper-based survey
  • … monitoring of learning progress:
    • Knowledge acquired by the participant
    • Via verbal / in-presentation quizzes during the training

Here support mechanisms can be put in place to ensure a smooth transition to the new system for the employees.