Companies implementing major enterprise resource planning and other company-wide IT solutions need a systems integrator to complete the work involved, which can amount to thousands of hours of professional expertise.
For decades, ERP implementation meant the systems integrator would meet with a team from the customer organization for months to design and develop custom enhancements tailored to support the client’s business — a process that often resulted in solutions almost identical to those they were replacing or that were run by other companies their employees have worked at. The “new” business processes were really the old business processes in disguise. But modern cloud ERP software is designed to be implemented “out of the box” using standard functionality, and businesses adopt the processes built into the software as best practices. There is flexibility to configure an application to deliver truly unique requirements, but fewer technical consulting hours are required.
In the terms of Wardley Mapping, the software has evolved from a “Genesis” stage, characterized by high risk and novelty, to one characterized by rapid increases in fitness for purpose.
While less effort is needed to transform the software to fit the customer, more effort is required to help customers with the business optimization and adoption of the new ways of working with the software. In our engagements globally, we consistently see three things systems integrators should master to help customers achieve this business transformation.
1. Strategy
Systems integrators should help a customer determine where they are heading on their journey and give the C-suite and senior managers the analytics and insight to navigate toward their destination.
To support these decisions, we need to look forward with predictive analytics rather than backward at historical data. One customer recently described the role of strategy in their implementation as requiring a set of choices that must determine how they are going to operate in order to reach a destination. And these decisions are made in a series of steps collaboratively by sales and marketing, finance and operations — all in an effort to create higher service or product quality for the customer.
2. Team Dynamics
While the hard skills are required to keep a project on track, the industry has at long last acknowledged that soft, human-facing skills are important. For both technical project completion and to secure buy-in among a user base, systems integrators should, in the words of Dr. Steve Andriole, deal with the elephant in the room.
“The simplest explanations for why so many enterprise technology projects fail — in addition to all of the conventional explanations — are traceable to people,” Andriole writes in Forbes. “Before you rip out and replace all of your methods, tools, techniques, frameworks, data, platforms and technologies, look closely at the people in the room.”
This reality has moved us to develop a psychographic assessment tool for project teams to make sure the right personalities are in the right roles. Over and above the hard skill sets a project demands, systems integrators should account for how each individual’s brain works.
Someone with a bold, open game-changer personality may do well making big changes that require creativity. But for a project like lift and shift of applications to the cloud, that game-changer might be a poor fit.
3. Behavioral Economics
In an ERP implementation process, the wise and prudent thing for each employee of a company to do is commit to and embrace the new system, learn how it works and become a power user to help the company — or just advance their own career.
Yet often, that is not what happens. Academics have theories on why people do or do not engage with a new ERP system, including the technology acceptance model. We base our own work for customers on behavioral economics, the study of why people behave the way they do. Neoclassical economics assumes people make decisions based on rational preferences, but behavioral economics holds that people often lack the required information and skills to make optimal or rational decisions.
But people are creatures with moods and biology that cause them to make decisions based on how they feel. We cannot move people to act through logic; in this case, other tactics, including nudge theory, become important.
This means a systems integrator should be adept at creating the equivalent of a marketing or public relations campaign. Some people approach change management more like advertising from the early 20th century — focused on product features. It is more effective, though, to focus on understanding what people want and helping them see how adopting and using their new software helps them get those things. This is new territory for most systems integrators.
In marketing and in behavioral economics, storytelling is a core skill set. This is because, as revealed by researchers at the University of Cambridge, a story activates mirror neurons in our frontal cortex, and mirrors the emotions of the people in the story. So telling a story about how a stitch in time saves nine, for instance, will likely be more effective in motivating people to adopt a new preventive maintenance system than simply relaying facts. Writes Doug Stevens for the Project Management Institute; “If you need to influence without authority, tell a story. If you need to communicate to a diverse workforce, tell a story. If you need to influence people to change their minds or behavior, tell a story.”
Cloud ERP still enables us to configure the software, but we may see a decline of the systems integrator and the rise of the “people integrator.” And that can only transpire when we understand and respect people’s inner workings, just as we have come to understand digital technologies.
