The Accounts Payable Leader’s Guide to Managing Change
As with any major system upgrade or process transformation, effectively managing change is a make-or-break factor in account payable automation success.
New systems and processes have a big impact on accounts payable. The impact can extend further when you consider integration with existing enterprise applications like JD Edwards Financials.
Poor change management can be a disaster:
- Implementation delays
- Weak user adoption
- A spike in errors
- No return on investment
Change management is crucial to accounts payable automation success.
Below are seven proven strategies for managing change to ensure technology success:
- Remember that automation doesn’t happen in a vacuum: Employees can become genuinely anxious about changes to the way they work. Seasoned accounts payable staff may have been using the same legacy systems and processes for years. Takes steps to convince staff that the technology will make things better for them (less drudgery!) and the department. Leverage power users to identify high value features to showcase to users, such as split screens in JD Edwards displaying data and attachments from the AP solution.
- Make sure senior management has your back: Automation projects are more likely to fail without senior leadership’s support. Frontline users are more likely to adopt new technology when they know that a project is owned by the entire organization. Enlist senior management to provide leadership, communicate the benefits of the technology and coach staff. Develop a plan for senior management to communicate with all impacted business unit executives.
- Engage frontline users in planning: Technology projects are more likely to succeed when they are built on a strong understanding of how the organization currently works. Business requirements, workflow rules, audit and reporting needs and vocabulary matter. Process and culture can derail the best-intentioned technology. While some accounts payable leaders worry that involving frontline staff early in an automation project could make them uneasy about the potential ramifications, staff are more likely to accept changes they are invested in.
- Resist the temptation of a Big Bang: It’s tempting to aggressively deploy new technology to try and achieve payback as fast as possible. But this approach is likely to overwhelm users who already are overburdened with manual finance tasks. A phased deployment approach provides more time for training, adjusting business rules, and addressing performance or adoption issues. Be sure to celebrate key milestones and behavior changes along the way.
- Develop a change management plan: There is too much riding on a technology project to leave things to chance. Work with essential stakeholders to create a detailed project timeline that clearly lays out each milestone, including the owner(s), the anticipated duration, the anticipated results, any dependencies, communications, any executive engagement, metrics to measure progress or to determine success, and potential risks and possible courses of action.
- Carefully select trainers: It is critical to select the right people to train, mentor and shadow with frontline users. Seasoned staff may not be the best trainers, natural communicators or the most effective champions. Look for trainers who have the skills to educate, persuade, convince and calm frontline users. Be sure trainers understand that their role is to train users, not to manage them. And find trainers who believe in the benefits of the technology.
- Strive for continuous process improvements: The goal of any technology is to drive better business outcomes. But many finance departments never achieve the full potential of their technology projects because they stop training their users once the technology is deployed. Relentlessly look for opportunities to help users succeed and areas for improvement upstream and downstream. Consider mentoring, post-change support, and publicizing best practices for using the technology. Offer technical guidance to users who may not understand all the technologies or the ramifications for change. Appoint a technology expert who can advise frontline users and partner with essential stakeholders.
While accounts payable leaders may be singularly focused on selecting, cost-justifying and deploying the technology to improve business capabilities or outcomes, getting frontline staff to use it is key.
Following the strategies in this article will help you manage change to ensure a project’s success.
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