Benefits of Organizational Change Management for Day-1 Readiness
In my earlier article, I spoke of setting up an Organizational Change Management (OCM) process as an essential part of application migration and implementation projects. OCM helps bring about smooth transitions and change in the work culture and environment. Its main goal, among others, is to reduce resistance to change and bring everyone involved on board, all while making them comfortable with the change. Negotiations and motivational communication plays a key role in the OCM process.
OCM is focused on identifying leaders responsible for the application-related change, facilitating communication channels between stakeholders (specifically those who are directly affected), and most importantly, sensitizing everyone to the benefits of the change and why it is required.
The OCM process goes a long way in making people Day 1 Ready. Regular and focused communication by OCM experts throughout the project phases ensures that there are no last-minute surprises for the users when the project goes live.
While OCM is not particularly responsible for training the end-users on the application, it closely coordinates the training development and delivery team to ensure that the training objectives map to the identified audience and expectations. OCM also plays a significant role in scheduling and communicating training schedules.
Furthermore, an OCM manager is also a key figure in the process. He or she takes part in identifying preceptors such as the super-users and training the trainers (TTT) who will then be responsible to spearhead the subsequent training processes, addressing issues and clearing up doubts for users as they start using the application.
These are just a few benefits that you stand to gain by including the OCM process as part of the project implementation and the list of such benefits is vast. Therefore, if you’re planning to implement a change, especially an application migration or roll-out, you should judiciously budget and scope for an OCM process as a part of the project.
