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The FODcast
In the FODcast (The Future of #DigitalCommerce) we explore the real career stories of the people who have made it to the very top of the sector and those who are working at the cutting edge of innovation and change right now. Listeners to the podcast gain insight into the journeys industry leaders have taken to be where they are today, the challenges they are facing now and their aims for the future.
The FODcast
Mastering Digital Transformation: Insights on Change Management with Abbie Ross and Kathryn Roberts
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Ever wondered why so many digital transformations fail even with the latest tech? Tune in to the latest FODcast episode, where Abbie Ross and Kathryn Roberts from Lean Tree reveal the often-overlooked factor in success: the people behind the transformation.
In this insightful chat, Abbie and Kathryn share why aligning project teams and end-users is crucial from day one and how clear, consistent communication can prevent the costly missteps that derail projects.
They discuss practical strategies to help leaders turn digital initiatives into collaborative efforts that empower teams and maximise tech investments. 💡
Ready to lead a transformation that truly works for your people and your business?
Don’t miss their expert tips on bringing in external change management specialists for a smoother, more sustainable transformation journey.
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Business Change in Digital Transformation
Speaker 1Welcome to the latest series of the Fodcast where we bring you the latest insights into the future of digital commerce. In season six, we continue to interview some of the most respected professionals in the industry as we broaden the topics to cover what it takes to build a business within e-commerce, navigating through business change, as well as the future of technology within digital commerce. As we continue our journey to have one of the best podcasts within commerce, we ask you to like and share within your network if you enjoy our content. Welcome back to episode eight of the podcast and our very first episode in this series with two guests. Today I'm joined by Abby Ross and Catherine Roberts, senior and principal consultants for the business transformation consultancy LeanTree. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2Hi, david, thank you.
Speaker 1No worries at all, looking forward to this one. Today's show is focused on business change, another hot topic within digital transformation and, unfortunately, something I hear is far too often overlooked. Ever since Catherine and Abby agreed to join me on the show, I've been excited for this one, so let's jump straight in. So business change why is it important, then?
Speaker 3Well, I think it's vital to the success of a program because often, um, it's not just about the technology delivery that's important.
Speaker 3It's about the fact that people actually have to use the tools at the end of the day, and if they're not actually using what's been delivered or developed, then actually it means that the project will fail ultimately because they won't be able to reach their business benefits. I see a bold claim on your website as well that the majority of digital transformations fail. Yeah, in our experience, I think we've seen a number of digital transformations that fail, not because the technology hasn't been delivered or been, you know, successfully delivered from a technology perspective, but actually the fact that the teams are then not using it or they're not actually immediately able to see the value from using those tools is why it tends to fail, and the business can often choose not to use the new technology. So even if we spent millions on it and then no one actually ends up using it or doesn't end up getting any business value from it, then ultimately the project's not been a success.
Speaker 1Yeah, I mean, unfortunately it's something that I hear far too often, and I mean there's various reasons as to why projects do fail. I look forward to unlocking some of the insights that you share around what you've seen in the market over the last sort of three or four years. So, yeah, I guess let's start at the top then. So, business change how many companies do you believe apportion the right amount of budget to business change?
Speaker 2What do you think, abby? Well, I think we would say and from our experience, especially the transformations that we've been part of here at LeanTree is that often it is underfunded. I think the disconnect that we see is that a lot of business teams that are impacted by changes upcoming whether they're digital transformations or otherwise they're the business teams that and the end users are impacted aren't ready for the change. They don't understand what's coming their way. They don't understand the complexity and we see a disconnect between, I guess, often the program team, especially in digital transformations, that are working hard to get the change in the program over the line, but we often hear that business users are not engaged. There's that disconnect, but also the teams are struggling to understand each other and therefore that causes worry and that's often where we as a team are kind of brought in to work with clients on their transformations and that's often, unfortunately, the kind of lay of the land that we approach and land into.
Speaker 1So I would say definitely it, it's, it's under considered. Okay, and I'd be interested to know, actually, as we're at the start of this conversation, is how often do you do you get drafted into conversations at the start of a transformation program versus a transformation program that is either about to go wrong or has already started going wrong?
Speaker 3I. I think in our experience we often come in sort of almost too late in the process. So we would say that we need to be in there at the point at which you're selecting your vendors, or you're selecting your si or you're starting the project. We often get brought in at different points, either because, to Abby's point, there is a problem and they need some help, or at the point at which they are about to start thinking about things like training or trying to understand what the impact on the business users is, and they think, okay, hang on a second, we've got no one in the business who can actually support this, and so we're asked to be brought in.
Speaker 3I think, as I say, we would advocate for going in as early as possible. But to your point at the beginning that this is why it's often, I think, overlooked at the moment. It's not front of center of people's minds when they're starting out on a big transformation program to think, oh, hang on a second, we're going to need someone to help us actually think about the business impact. Here the focus is very much on delivery of technology rather than on the overall success of the whole program.
Speaker 3And often the interesting thing is the business benefits, or the benefits of the technology. Implementation will often be business led, so there'll be things like we need to increase revenue and increase conversion. You know, deliver operational efficiencies. But the element that they often don't consider in all of that people.
Speaker 1So they're very focused on the technology but not necessarily thinking about the people in that program yeah, and so that's what I find crazy is like, as, um, you look at some of the organizations that that you work with, but most in general sort of enterprise, uh, digital transformations they're.
Speaker 1They're led by someone who's done this before generally c-suite, and these companies have a bit of experience. They've probably been for a transformation or two in the past, so they should be going into this with their eyes wide open, knowing, okay, this does require a hell of a lot of change across the business and, as someone that isn't directly involved in it, it amazes me that it's a process that is overlooked, because everything is changing from the technologies that people work with, from the processes that happen, from um the, just the way in which the business works. We're seeing project to product in terms of mindset and cultures in the business. There's so much change. For me, this is like the number one thing as to cool. We're going through this change. Let's make sure we manage the change properly. I just can't get my head around it.
Speaker 3I think, to be honest, some of it's still related to where they see their overall goals. So if they are responsible for delivery, then that's going to be their focus rather than actually the overall success of the project. So if there's an aligned goals across the business, then you will see a bit more buy-in. I think also, sometimes within a business there's an initial ambition that business people who are best placed to get involved in this will be able to help support with this activity and what they find is that, you know, bau activities often end up taking over um and therefore they don't have the time or capacity to give to these activities and therefore that's when they come to us and say we need some help and support great, okay, gotcha.
Speaker 1So, uh, yeah, find out the, the savior, basically we like to think of ourselves like that superheroes.
Speaker 1Hey, so cool, I like. Okay. So we spoke. We just touched upon there sort of why it's important and why they should be investing in business change. What? Uh? We've also touched on some of the consequences of of not investing enough or potentially at the right time. So let's just skip back a notch and say where do you start? So, as a transformation consultant yourself, you've already highlighted the fact that you would like to be drafted right at the start of those conversations. How would you start that process?
Speaker 3So we initially start by understanding the nature of the change and what's involved in it and we do a lot of discovery to make sure we fully understand all the teams impacted. So we do a lot of stakeholder identification and analysis to identify what the impact of this change will be on different stakeholder groups. And we start by also trying to build the relationships of the business so that they trust us to behave and act on their behalf. And we try to embed ourselves actively in the business so that we have the same mindset. We're clear on what their goals are, we're clear on what the goals of the technology program are as well, and that enables us to then sit between the sort of the technology teams and the business and to help facilitate, uh, the program as it goes along, because there are lots of different stages where we'll need to help provide support okay, okay and um, how, I mean, how lengthy is that kind of process, right?
Speaker 1how do you, when you go into the, when you go into an organization, how long does it really take you to to find your feet and and?
Speaker 3it's. Yeah, it really depends on the size of the program, the complexity of it, the number of different teams involved, um. It depends on also what the goals are like. If, for example, if we're going in because there is a problem, quite often we don't have very much time to do that. So we've learned ways in which we can speed up that sort of onboarding process, um, but also the.
Speaker 3I think the other thing to add is that both abby and I, and mostly the um change team at lean tree, have come from working within industry. So we've got a huge amount of experience of sort of change and programs of change that have been done to us effectively where we haven't been actively involved. So we almost have this ability to be able to identify sort of things, to watch out for areas to make sure we're clear on, know where we've potentially seen problems before, know what potential stakeholder groups might be their behaviors. There we see some common patterns across different um groups of people, particularly certain teams where we know that their engagement maybe won't be as involved as we would like and other groups where maybe with engagement is naturally going to be higher because they've got a direct impact. So I think some of that comes from also experience of being sort of on the other side as well as being involved in actually helping to facilitate the change.
Speaker 1Yeah, I actually noticed that. I was having a little browse over LinkedIn earlier on and I saw that almost everybody has got a background in either retail or through a DTC brand. Is that part of the hiring process for lean tree? Is that like a key, a mandatory requirement?
Navigating Change and Communication Challenges
Speaker 3I think it's not necessarily mandatory, because I think people bring lots of different skills, but I think it's something where it actually has helped us build up our strength and helped us be successful. You know, quite quickly, because we've actually got that experience. I mean, my experience of change is that I grew up in a customer service support environment and I was the recipient of lots of different changes, which weren't particularly well managed, that impacted how my team performed, how they dealt with customers, and I think I I sort of felt that actually there wasn't much but a way of doing things based on what I've learned and I think that's sort of at least gone through a similar background, um as well and I think we therefore apply that learning. We've got some understanding of what what the teams are going through and therefore can try and help them and, you know, be empathetic because we've actually been in their position yeah, I would agree.
Speaker 1I think it certainly gives you a, a slight usp. It's not, it's not, uh, it's not a common practice. You generally find a lot of consultancies have people that have a consulting career, um. So seeing it from the other side is definitely very useful and you can almost see those uh, those challenges before they arise, from a different perspective absolutely, and I think that's part of the.
Speaker 3You know, the value that we bring is that we can start to spot where we've seen things happen before, or we know what to look out for. So, um, I say it could be that particular stakeholder groups tend to have the same behaviors across different organizations, so we know to watch for them. Or we know that if someone seems, if someone stops coming to attending meetings, for example, it's the first sign, sign of disengagement, and therefore we know we need to step in to try and make sure that they are engaged. Um, and you know we, we've learned from experience as well.
Speaker 3You know, we've also, at LeanTree, done a number of work, a number of big digital transformations, and I think we've also learned more recently about the better, you know, the best way for us to be able to provide support to the teams to make sure that they, the business teams, are going to be able to maximise the value of what technology is delivering. There's no point in technology teams delivering capability that the business don't use, and that's quite often their way of showing disaster action they just turn around and don't use the tools and then it's a lot of money wasted. So, um, we're trying to make sure that when they do finally start using the tools, they know what they're doing, they know how to use it. We've agreed the processes.
Speaker 1They know who's responsible and who's accountable for these tools you hear that a lot right business versus it and pointing the finger at each other to say it's their fault. No, it's their fault. We wanted this and they wanted that. And I think a lot of it stems down to communication um at all levels, whether it be from the top, whether it be from internal employees or from the third parties, etc agree I think change is obviously dependent on people at the end of the day, and
Speaker 2understanding and making sure that people get what they need. So, from a tech perspective, that priority is going to be delivering on time on budget and scope, whereas for business users it's how am I going to do what I do today like? Am I going to be able to do it as well? How is this going to be impact my team? And, obviously, allowing and equipping at each end user, wherever they are in the business, and to be able to, you know, be confident in the fact that they've got the answers to those questions and they are ready for the change and ready to hit the ground running and embrace it, like Catherine said, and use the new tool, whatever that looks like.
Speaker 1Do you find as though there's one aspect of change that is more common than others when it comes to creating challenges?
Speaker 3I think communication continues to be a constant challenge, because either over communication so people then turn off or under communication, or you think you're communicating in the right way and then someone says I still don't know what's going on. So again, that's something that Abby and I think have become quite adept at, now starting to see signals about. Okay, this group is starting to make this noise which would indicate that the way in which we're communicating to them is not quite right. Or you know it's about, and I think also the. It's interesting because now we've got proliferation of channels, which is great in one respect we can tell people lots of things in lots of different ways but also can be challenging, because you know what might be good for one person might not be good for another person.
Speaker 3So we have to really, really focus on making sure that the communication is tailored to each team's area, how they communicate. For example, you might be communicating to a team in a warehouse which don't have access to digital tools and therefore you have to think about a different way of communicating. Or people in a store who may be only working on a temporary basis and are constantly changing, so you have to think about how are we going to make sure that these people also know what's going on, so that they know how to use the new system. But they might not, they might only work every Sunday and therefore, how am I going to make sure that we get those you know communication out to them? So we spend a lot of time really focusing on thinking about who the audience is, what the right channel is, when's the right time to communicate, have we got the right messages? Um, and just to say, I think that that is a it is constant challenge to get it right, I think, and that's, um, something which we continue to evolve I guess the hard part there so
Speaker 2I think also, um, sometimes the communication around these changes can be incredibly complex, and so it's navigating that as well, like there could be sensitive environments, like if, for example, the change is due to a merger or an acquisition, and there could be certain kind of regulations or compliance needs around those. But also as well, sometimes change is slightly painful, sometimes it's it's it's short-term pain, but then long-term gain and the future goals, um, and it's trying to navigate those in the right way and obviously we can assist to do that as well. We, you know, we've got experience but also as well, having that focus, um, on your end users and their need and and hopefully, helping to navigate those messages and, like Catherine said, delivering at the right time to the right people yeah, I guess it, like you say, it does get.
Speaker 1It does get complicated when you look at the setup of a business and you've got people in different locations, often different countries. You've got people that work in on shift work and they might not have access to certain tools on certain days and you as a business might be like Joe. Well, I communicated this message really well for the first two weeks, but actually you could have had 20 of your workforce on holidays if it was over the summer, you could have had people on part shifts or whatever. And then if you don't continue that message after that two-week period, then it's just going to get lost in translation and there's going to be a handful of people that maybe don't even get educated at all. So, yeah, I guess the other complex part, from from a lean tree point of view, is every business is different in the way in which they communicate with their employees, so there's not a one-size-fits-all approach.
Speaker 3It's very much going into the organization and understanding everything, as you just mentioned exactly, and I think it's about the tailoring, I think it's also about the engagement. So, you know, it's all very well us communicating with people, but if they are not engaged with that message and we have to think about how do we measure that engagement but if they're not engaged, then doesn't matter how many times you tell them, they'll turn around and say I know nothing, I know, I don't know about that change. That you told me about 50 times last week because I was not engaged, I was on my. You know, this is this is also one of the challenges faced right now is even not just communication, but also training.
Speaker 3You're training people who are also trying to do a day job at the same time, and there might be, you know, messaging on teams or actually doing some very valid work, but the problem is then they're not engaged. And so when it comes down to saying, okay, do you understand that message, that message, have you got it? Have you been trained? Do you know how to use the tools, we have to find different ways of measuring different levels of engagement to make sure that they're fully understood. And that is partly down to us to make sure that we're communicating in the right way, but also making sure that the client understands the fact that we need their teams to be engaged when they're having these sessions or when we're telling them messages.
Speaker 1I was going to ask whose responsibility is this? I guess it's all of yours, right?
Speaker 3It is, it's all of ours. I mean, it's our responsibility to make sure we're providing the communications in a way that suits the specific client. And that's about making sure we spend the time with them to understand to a point, each organization is different, so we need to make sure that we're communicating through the usual channels and best way to communicate with different audiences. But also it's making sure the client understands the commitment that we need, their engagement, so that when we are communicating and if we're not communicating clearly enough that they someone tells us because that's the other thing is. Quite often, you know, you can get into a situation where you think you're being very clear with comms, but if the client says I didn't fully understand that we need people to tell us that to say it still doesn't make any sense to me because, to Abby's point, some of these changes are very complex and we'd rather know now that people don't understand rather than getting towards the end and someone says, oh, still don't understand what this means to me.
Speaker 2I think one of the other things that we um try to do is really integrate with the business.
Speaker 2I think Catherine mentioned it earlier but um working with the business and and identifying kind of change agents within the organization or change champions that we work with in order to carry out some of this work.
Speaker 2So it may not always be that somebody, within a change stream of work, is kind of putting together communications and is is kind of cascading those, but actually working with people within the business line managers or change champions, as I mentioned, to actually deliver that, because often it's much more successful if somebody that is familiar to the end users and the teams that are impacted, if it's somebody like that that's delivering the message to them, as opposed to somebody that they don't recognize or aren't familiar with. And obviously a large part of kind of being on board is is building that trust and and often when you're using somebody that is familiar, then um that often resonates much more clearly than it could do um otherwise if it was somebody unknown. So I think, working and partnering, partnering with the business teams to understand what's best and obviously identifying that the best kind of for all of those elements that katherine mentioned um, so that hopefully we do, we do strike the right note with the right people, and they are ready.
Speaker 1I can see where that would make a big impact. Actually, I was going to ask what level of pushback do you get internally? So when you're coming on as a third party, do you generally get pushback from the users, or are they generally sort of very open to change and what have you? I think, they're often very open to support.
Speaker 3So they often see us as providing additional support and sometimes it can be a bit of a relief for them because it means that they've got someone else who can try and help them fully understand what these changes mean to them. But clearly, you know, sometimes it can be a bit challenging if someone externally is coming in who is sort of trying to understand what you're doing and, you know, getting involved in activities you're doing on a day-to-day basis. That's why, to abby's point, you know we really work very closely on building up the change champions we build on, you know, really trying to embed um and build trust within the organization to make sure that they know that we're there to help them and maximize the value that they can get from these tools. And that's something we spend a lot of. What we do as part of the onboarding is really trying to make sure we understand the business, the people involved and really focus on that trust nice, nice.
Specialists for Successful Change Management
Speaker 1I like it. I think um a lot of what you've just said. Um brings me back to a podcast I did with dom from apply digital. I'm not sure if you know him. I'd imagine you may have crossed paths at some point, um, but he was talking. He gave the analogy sorry of a co-driver for a rally driver saying the rally driver is a guy that kind of spearheads it all, but the co-driver is the person who it basically enables it without. Without the co-driver is the person who basically enables it without. Without the co-driver, the rally driver wouldn't be able to drive successfully. Um, and he, he described it in a far better way than I just have done there, but it really made sense and I really liked it, and often it's these basic analogies when you hear them.
Speaker 3So that makes sense and it's really simple yeah, I mean, as I say often, we are, we're there to support the business. So if they need us to help support in, we get involved in lots of things which we wouldn't have initially intentionally potentially gone in to to sort of help support. But we find we find a way. We are very adaptable and, I think, very flexible and we, you know, identify where we can add value. There's no point in us replicating something that someone else is doing. So if there is someone who is, you know, assigned to supporting the business a particular way, fine, we work alongside them to help them make them successful what they do, um, and that's ultimately where, you know, we can add the value, because we want to make sure that we are adding value, not um sort of hindering or slowing things down.
Speaker 1So, again, that's about us getting in early and understanding where we can, um maximize the opportunity for us yeah, yeah, I guess your success is is pinned down to how, how easily the business adapts to that change. Right, right, I guess they start to get the value from it.
Speaker 3So you know, it's not just about. It's about making sure that, um, the business are getting the value from very early after go live, not, you know, three months in, where they're still trying to get people logged into the system and still trying to get people to actually change the way of working to maximize the value of tooling. What we what we are there to do is to make sure that the business is ready and prepared for go live, but also that they're then maximizing the value of the new tool when they want you.
Speaker 1You're took three months and they've learned how to log into the system right.
Speaker 3I mean, we've all seen it. I've seen before where technology are like brilliant, go live, tick, we've, we've done it, everyone's there, and then we still can't actually get anyone logged in because the permissions haven't been set up correctly or no one knows how they can log a ticket, but they don't actually know how you know it doesn't go anywhere.
Speaker 3It just sits in the queue and no one knows the next step.
Speaker 3So, you know, we've all, um, I think, had experiences of that, and that's the bit that we it's not. You know, none of this stuff is easy. Um, it requires us really to understand the impact of the change, which is where we get involved, you know. Again, that's why we want to be an early, so we can understand, you know exactly what does that change mean, both from a people, process, technology perspective, so that, and set that, setting them up for the you know, the quickest, fastest success, um, and that is asking questions that maybe people haven't thought to ask or, um, helping the business think about different ways of doing things, which, again, can be challenging, but often that's where you're going to see the most value. There's no point in taking a process that you're doing today that's for a I don't know for a manual process that you're then going to try and automate. If you're looking at it exactly in the same way, you need to take a step back and think okay, right, what are we actually trying to achieve here and how do we use these tools?
Speaker 1you know the best of the tool to to deliver that success, so, or to reach that goal yeah, I guess you also have a lot of companies that want to take something with them for the sake of taking it with them, not because they necessarily need it or they use it, but they're used to it and it's like, okay, well, why are you doing that? We don't need that.
Speaker 3If you, if you use this tool efficiently and properly, then actually you can remove that from your, your, your setup completely, as you can do with that and that yeah and I've been talking about this just today, about how do you get people to, you know, almost forget how they are doing things and to really come at things from a very, you know, fresh perspective, to think, right, okay, what is it?
Speaker 3And you know how do we focus on where we're trying to get to, not how we're doing it today, but what we ultimately, what the ultimate outcome is, and then use, because all these tools are super powerful these days. You know they've got amazing capabilities and it's about um. We we try to help the businesses try and lose some of that sort of um restraint that they currently got because of doing things and think about it slightly differently. And that can be through, you know, workshops, user groups, um, take going thing, taking things back to the beginning, doing process mapping, looking at the as is thinking about then, how do we, where do we want to get to from a 2B perspective, and helping them think about that journey.
Speaker 2We also see it on the flip side right as well. Catherine, in terms of technology, you'll say we're undergoing this change, the business do X today and they're going to do X tomorrow, but actually the detail that's missing. So, yes, you're going to do x tomorrow, but actually the detail that's missing. So, yes, you're going to be able to do, you do this today and you're going to do this tomorrow, but exactly how many steps does it take for you to get from start to end today and how how many steps is it going to take in the future? And often it's the devil is in that detail that quite often it's not just as simple as saying they do this and they're going to do this going forward. But actually if it takes them 10 times longer, then is that really fit for purpose?
Speaker 2And I think often until we support a lot of business, don't maintain process maps and so aren't kind of fully clear on exactly how they do it today or how many people are involved, etc. But once we start to get into some of that detail and start to map out how it looks going forward, that's when some of these um, uh kind of flags are realized, and then obviously we work to support that. So is it we need to review how it's going to work? Is it that we just need to make sure that people are equipped with training etc. Or is there a resource consideration there that the business needs to think about? So some of those things can kind of come to light through those processes as well.
Speaker 1OK, ok, I know every change process is going to be different and it's going to be reflected of the companies involved in it, whether it be an acquisition, or whether it be a technology change or what have you. But something that I find is or something that I feel, sorry, is really important, um is bringing in specialists to help with that change, whether that be a third party like you guys, whether that be technical specialists on a new piece of software that they're integrating, or whatever it might be. But again, it's something that I hear is overlooked quite regularly as well, usually due to costs. Well, what's?
Specialists and Training in Change Management
Speaker 3your thoughts on hiring technical specialists to help with the change process and the upskilling process. I think that you know there is a place for specialists in particular environments where you know it speed the speed of adoption. If you've got a specialist who knows the tool inside out, they can help with with delivery much more quickly than if you don't have someone. And I think it depends on what the goals of the project are whether or not that is core to requirement. I mean, for example, we feel that what we offer is really important because it helps the business achieve their goals quicker and that's why we would advocate for having sort of our specialist type activities. I'm sure there are other other elements of of deliverables where there are other technical skills which would have the same impact if they were brought in from a I don't know development perspective, someone who's who's had experience of working with the tool before and can speed up the development elements of it.
Speaker 1So yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3There are times and places, I think, for for all types of specialist skills, depending on the scale and the type of the project. If a business doesn't have experience or something, then clearly they could spend the time and getting to upskill and know it, but that then will be time lost in terms of speed of realising the benefits.
Speaker 2I think it also depends on the way you work.
Speaker 2So, definitely, what we strive to do within Mean Tree is really embed within the teams and bring users on the journey, um throughout, so that um any kind of knowledge that we um kind of create over the time that we are engaged on a program, that we are kind of working hand in hand with the end business users.
Speaker 2So it's not a case where we've accumulated all this knowledge and then potentially you're in a situation where you've brought in specialists and they step away with that knowledge. We do a lot to avoid that situation. So, making sure that there's comprehensive handovers, there's knowledge transfers throughout and, like I said, bringing people on on that journey throughout, so that you aren't in that situation, I think that's one of the most important things that needs to be considered. If you do go down the route of bringing external experts, to make sure that you're not in that situation and if it's done well, it can um like it's like, like Catherine said, it boosts the bits that you need it to and supports you in the way that you need it to, without compromising on that kind of situation I just described yeah, well, I think that's I mean, that's super important is to make sure that knowledge stays within the business, and I guess I'm kind of looking at it from like a lean tree.
Speaker 1As an example, another business change consultancy were coming and they would oversee it, ensure it's smooth and make sure the handover is done correctly, et cetera, et cetera. But those specialists were coming underneath just to help with upskilling in certain areas. Often you find that companies go from technology that's maybe 20, 30 years old to something that's all shiny and modern and it's very different. Um, so just putting the team from there to there will take a long time to upskill. So bringing in certain people to help with that would would be. In my opinion, it's very I can't talk.
Speaker 1In my opinion, it's very beneficial yeah we got there in the end, um, okay, so. So what? What other activities do you get involved in?
Speaker 2I think one of the biggest ones that definitely has been kind of front and centre from some of the recent engagements that we had is training. What we find most often is that it misses the end user's needs. So often it's not considered from the view of the end business user, business user um. Quite often when you're implementing change, especially with digital transformation, you might have like a new tooling provider that says, yeah, we offer training, that's, that's all good, um. But the questions that quite often you need to consider are what type of training? What does that look like? Is it personalized um? Is it going to build in and integrate like the organization's ways of working and processes? And ultimately, is it going to build in and integrate like the organization's ways of working and processes and ultimately, is it going to enable business users to hit the ground on day one and be ready and know what they need to do and run with it and do what they do today.
Speaker 2Quite often if organizations go down the road of using like third party training, you'll have business users that attend and ask kind of organization specific questions around the tooling and often related to process, and often the third parties aren't equipped and don't know how to answer those questions. They can answer about the tooling capabilities, but they perhaps aren't enriched with that knowledge from an organization perspective and in that situation you're essentially then having your business users come away lacking confidence in the new tool because they haven't had their concerns kind of answered or they're not familiar or haven't been reassured on exactly how that's going to work for them in future. So that's something that definitely needs to be considered and it's something that we've supported with more recently um, more comprehensive kind of training approach for end business users to make sure that really, like I said, they're ready to hit the ground on that on that first day.
Speaker 1They know exactly how they're going to work um and obviously they're able to more quickly realize that success with a new tool I guess that's something as well that you would have to consider the different channels in which you deliver that training through, whether it be in person, whether it be on slack or teams or whatever, maybe even on an internal intranet with a document that they can all access. Yeah, we're doing.
Speaker 3Yeah, we think about things like quick reference, guides, videos.
Speaker 3Now we've done some, actually some podcasts where we've talked about um, like specific elements of training where we think they need to know.
Speaker 3We've had to break it down into bite-sized chunks, because some people might only have a minute or two or they just want to know why about one very specific part of a process that we need to make sure that everyone knows about.
Speaker 3So we have to be very you know, think about the audience, the channels and what they need to know, and also what they need to know from a, like an onboarding perspective. So going, you know, going forward, if new people join the team, what do they need to know versus what they're going to need to know to do the job day to day? Versus, um you know, future, when we're not there to support making sure they've got all those materials in a centralized place which is then easy to use, and sometimes that means integrating with the you know, the organization's learning tools. It could be sitting it on some sort of portal, internet or um, and again, that comes to the point about making sure that we're leaving the business with everything that they need to be successful going forward once we've left which is the definition of a success, successful business, change, transformation, I guess right exactly.
Speaker 3I think that's part of part of it, yeah, and I think you know, after you know other activities, after training, we then will help support uat. So we'll make sure that the right people are involved in the uat activity. They know what they need to do, make sure they're trained in order to be able to be able to use the tools to do the uat. Um, and then we also get involved in the UAT activity. They know what they need to do, make sure they're trained in order to be able to be able to use the tools to do the UAT. And then we also get involved in, you know, hypercare, so helping to manage feedback during the hypercare period. So once we are, once we do go live, making sure that the feedback is getting from the business, the relevant teams and the teams, the tech teams are getting the feedback back to the business and helping to prioritize, focus on particular issues and just helping the general communication around that as well, which is really important yeah, okay, do you find as though um, or do you do?
Speaker 1you see many instances where you've um, you've, you've been involved in this transformation program, you've visited the training and you're in the process of kind of off-boarding and then suddenly you have to get called back in and you've got it's like a, almost like a p1, because for whatever reason it's not going to plan and you're having to go through a lot of what you've done again there's elements of that yeah, sorry no I was gonna say.
Speaker 2I think often we're asking those questions before we come to that point. So, as part of training, you know everybody's received the training, you know we've had the feedback, we know it's embedded. And then often, when the program is gearing up to roll out, then often because we've built the relationships around the business, we know the business teams that are going to be impacted, we would at that point be are going to be impacted. We would at that point be asking questions to make sure that it has been considered. So thankfully touch wood it's never been a situation where we're rolled off and then actually something goes wrong and it hasn't been considered. I think at that point, if it hasn't, then asking those questions can mean that either we end up supporting or the the business will make sure that there are kind of provisions put in place so that it has been considered, so that you're not in that situation where it or it ultimately falls over. I mean it's it's. It can be like really fundamental things, like quite often you'll.
Speaker 2You know these transformations have complex cutover plans for the day of go live and then actually you look at the, the business activity that's around that, and there's often not a lot of consideration and you can see why. Obviously there's lots of time pressures, that these complex, these changes, technical changes are really complex. So, um, making sure that you've got that focus around, okay, what else needs to be done around the go live to make sure it's successful? Is everybody logged in to Catherine's point earlier? Can everybody access the tool? Has, uh like, the resource, the effect to accommodate the go live? Like, if there's going to be an influx of orders if you're changing your order management system, have you got people that can deal with that? Um, if your end customer is going to be impacted, have you thought about any communications or terms and conditions that needed to be updated with that? So I think asking those questions early and making sure there's a plan in place, whether we're supporting it or not, can help avoid that situation yeah, I mean it's it's clear that you have these conversations regularly.
Speaker 1Um, yeah, all of that stuff, I guess you, I would just assume that people would take into consideration.
Speaker 3But uh, yeah, you know, they say about assuming things and it's clear that they probably don't I think we also do things like we do readiness surveys throughout the program to understand where people's level of readiness are, and that can also be quite telling. So if you think you've got someone who think you should, they should be ready, and yet they answer the readiness service saying I'm not ready for this, then you know immediately. Maybe there is something that we need to do to try and make sure we get them in a position where they're ready to support as well, and that can also help reduce the number of issues that you get post go live for people saying it's a bug. And it's not a bug, it's just a change in the way of working, changing something.
Speaker 2So I think also to your point, james, like, uh, quite often you know that assumption is common and and you mentioned at the top that, um, you're hearing a lot of the frustration or things that commonly can go wrong when you're rolling out digital transformations.
Speaker 2And I think quite often tech are so focused on the technical delivery that often they would assume that perhaps the end business users know, as part of the rollout, that resource needs to be considered or that they need to make sure everybody's logged in. And it's definitely not that that awareness isn't there, but I think that there's an assumption between teams perhaps that that is taken care of and actually that's often where it can, can, it can fall over or, um, perhaps is forgotten about, um, because, uh, there's so much focus going on from tech, from the program side and making sure that's getting over the line. Business obviously also have a day job to do so you know that is often their focus. So it's about making sure that that communication between the program and the end business users is is fluid and it's smooth and and that there's no miscommunication, um, so that you know those situations are avoided again.
Speaker 1I guess that stems back down to communication right, just as one of the possibly the number one uh thing to to work on across the business to ensure a successful transformation, to make sure everyone's aligned, everyone's talking, everyone knows what everyone's doing, everyone's on the same page. Easier said than done, though, clearly clearly brilliant, all right. Well, um, I think, uh, I think that probably brings a brings an end to the conversation, so thank you very much for joining me.
Speaker 2Thank you for having us.
Speaker 1No worries at all. As I said at the start, for me business change is a hot topic. Unfortunately, I hear about this a lot and more often than not it's with a negative impact. So if you're listening to this right now, hopefully you've taken some insights as to just why business change is so important and where you should be investing your time and your money and your resources. But, most importantly, that this, this draft, is guiding at the start of the conversations, because it's clear there's a lot more value that can be had when, when you're thinking about business change at the start, that midway or towards the end of the project, when you've already gone through the majority of it and there's a limited impact that they can have. But look, I hope you've enjoyed the conversation. I know I have thanks again and I look forward to seeing you all again soon.
