There are so many mov­ing parts to an SAP S/4HANA imple­men­ta­tion and a seem­ing­ly end­less num­ber of ways orga­ni­za­tions can roll out these projects. Yet, no mat­ter the size of the orga­ni­za­tion unrolling SAP S/4HANA or how they go about lever­ag­ing the ERP solu­tion, every sin­gle SAP S/4HANA project has the exact same goals: ensur­ing that the solu­tion can be effec­tive­ly lever­aged across the busi­ness to improve busi­ness process­es. That’s why effec­tive change man­age­ment and train­ing strate­gies are such an impor­tant part of every SAP S/4HANA project. If employ­ees can­not make sense of the new tech­nol­o­gy and use it effec­tive­ly, then what was the point of imple­ment­ing it in the first place? 

Week four of the ASUG Best Prac­tices: SAP S/4HANA Vir­tu­al Expe­ri­ence focused adop­tion and change man­age­ment: the last, vital parts of every SAP S/4HANA imple­men­ta­tion. Dur­ing this final week of the con­fer­ence series, atten­dees heard from both SAP experts and cus­tomers, who gave advice for devel­op­ing and main­tain­ing effec­tive SAP S/4HANA change man­age­ment and adop­tion strate­gies. Here are some of the high­lights from the sessions. 

Over­haul Your Culture 

Migrat­ing to SAP S/4HANA from anoth­er ERP sys­tem — even SAP ECC 6.0 — is a sig­nif­i­cant tran­si­tion for any orga­ni­za­tion. Inher­ent­ly, such a large shift also means a change to an organization’s work cul­ture. Kevin Oakes, author and CEO of the Insti­tute for Cor­po­rate Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, host­ed a ses­sion dur­ing the con­fer­ence series about ren­o­vat­ing a work­place cul­ture. Begin­ning his ses­sion, Oakes said that COVID-19 had a sig­nif­i­cant impact on the cul­tures of just about every busi­ness and organization. 

“Your cul­ture has changed dur­ing the pan­dem­ic, like it or not,” he said. More­over, orga­ni­za­tions need to decide whether they want to be proac­tive or pas­sive about these changes and the shap­ing of their cul­ture for the future. 

Based on research the Insti­tute for Cor­po­rate Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty con­duct­ed, Oakes not­ed that ​“next prac­tices” are incred­i­bly impor­tant to any tech­nol­o­gy ini­tia­tive in a com­pa­ny, with the Insti­tute find­ing that there is a strong cor­re­la­tion between these prac­tices and bot­tom-line impact. These traits include adopt­ing net­work struc­tures as opposed to hier­ar­chi­cal ones, defin­ing clear mea­sure­ments ear­ly in a project, as well as iden­ti­fy­ing and engag­ing key influ­ences to ener­gize the com­pa­ny. Oakes indi­cat­ed that suc­cess­ful com­pa­nies imple­ment these practices. 

Cus­tomer Sto­ry: Arc’teryx

On the sec­ond day, atten­dees heard straight from an SAP cus­tomer about how they got ahead of the ball when it comes to adop­tion and change man­age­ment of SAP ERP. Dana Lee, senior man­ag­er of infor­ma­tion sys­tems at Arc’teryx, walked through how her team began tack­ling change man­age­ment. Before the pan­dem­ic, Arc’teryx had to piv­ot — like so many oth­er com­pa­nies last year. COVID-19 hit right as the orga­ni­za­tion was work­ing out when the go-live would happen. 

“We had to accel­er­ate busi­ness pro­grams and ini­tia­tives planned for lat­er,” Lee said. The com­pa­ny had to come up with a new time­line for the go-live because of COVID-19. Cur­rent­ly, Arc’teryx is in the user adop­tion phase of the project, build­ing ini­tial aware­ness among employ­ees, while help­ing them under­stand what the com­ing changes mean. As part of this process, Arc’teryx par­tic­i­pat­ed in the ASUG SAP Busi­ness Process Fun­da­men­tals Work­shop in Octo­ber 2020. 

“We were look­ing for some­thing that would pro­vide a busi­ness intro­duc­tion for SAP S/4HANA,” Lee said. Accord­ing to her, a lot of the oth­er work­shops Arc’teryx looked at focused too much on the tech­ni­cal sys­tems. Lee and her team were look­ing for some­thing that instead focused on busi­ness and end users, help­ing par­tic­i­pants under­stand the impor­tance of busi­ness process­es and ben­e­fits from SAP S/4HANA. About 20 to 24 Arc’teryx employ­ees par­tic­i­pat­ed, and they were able to get a ​“hands-on” per­spec­tive of SAP S/4HANA, allow­ing the employ­ees to see how the solu­tion will be a ben­e­fit to the business. 

“Suc­cess comes in the form of peo­ple being able to use your sys­tem,” Lee said. ​“Hit­ting a go-live date is one thing, but hav­ing a suc­cess­ful adop­tion is anoth­er matter.” 

Imple­ment­ing Suc­cess­ful Change Management

The event also fea­tured SAP experts dis­cussing the ins and outs of suc­cess­ful change man­age­ment pro­grams. On day one, Brett Addis, glob­al head of cus­tomer trans­for­ma­tion for SAP Suc­cess­Fac­tors, dis­cussed how busi­ness­es can rethink their change man­age­ment processes. 

“Change man­age­ment is not only a foun­da­tion­al pil­lar — it’s a required pil­lar,” he said. ​“But change man­age­ment is one of those areas that is, frankly, under­es­ti­mat­ed. Peo­ple assume that when new things come to a com­pa­ny, employ­ees will just con­sume and adopt.” 

Accord­ing to Addis, suc­cess­ful change man­age­ment is all about ​“chang­ing an over­all mind­set,” and yet most orga­ni­za­tions don’t invest in this cru­cial pil­lar ade­quate­ly while focus­ing on using tech­nol­o­gy and fol­low­ing processes. 

“We have to think much broad­er,” he said. 

Addis encour­aged orga­ni­za­tions devel­op­ing a change man­age­ment strat­e­gy to focus on three things: mind­set, expec­ta­tions, and behav­ior, which he described as ​“crit­i­cal parts of change management.” 

In a lat­er ses­sion, Lori Edwards, busi­ness trans­for­ma­tion archi­tect prin­ci­pal con­sul­tant for SAP Amer­i­c­as, also dis­cussed the impor­tance of man­ag­ing change in organizations. 

“Resis­tance to change is inevitable,” she said. ​“If peo­ple don’t accept and adopt best prac­tices, then you’ve failed.” 

She encour­aged atten­dees to look for ways to reduce resis­tance, decrease shock caused by change, and increase aware­ness. While most employ­ees will ini­tial­ly be shocked by a large-scale change — like imple­ment­ing SAP S/4HANA — orga­ni­za­tions can take steps to mit­i­gate that response. She encour­aged orga­ni­za­tions to look at a few aspects of their strat­e­gy, includ­ing how lead­er­ship can help with change man­age­ment and how to prop­er­ly com­mu­ni­cate upcom­ing changes. 

Tools to Improve Your Change Management 

The final week of the con­fer­ence gave atten­dees access to tools to help accel­er­ate user adop­tion and facil­i­tate change man­age­ment. Ste­fan Haenisch, SVP of knowl­edge trans­fer and edu­ca­tion of SAP Learn­ing at SAP SE, walked atten­dees through some of the pro­grams avail­able to help SAP cus­tomers dur­ing this process. He encour­aged atten­dees to have devel­oped and thor­ough train­ing pro­grams because these can max­i­mize (and mul­ti­ply) the invest­ment made in a dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion project. 

“Pro­duc­tive and sat­is­fied users lead to a bet­ter phase of the SAP S/4HANA jour­ney,” he said. 

Haenisch encour­aged atten­dees to take advan­tage of SAP pro­grams, includ­ing open­SAP, SAP Learn­ing Hub, and class­room-style train­ing ses­sions through SAP or orga­ni­za­tions such as ASUG. He also point­ed atten­dees in the direc­tion of SAP Enable Now, web assis­tant train­ing that can be embed­ded right into SAP Fiori appli­ca­tions. This will help users under­stand how to effec­tive­ly use these appli­ca­tions cor­rect­ly and address issues they might have. 

“If you want to be suc­cess­ful and get the right val­ue for your project, don’t for­get about the peo­ple,” Haenisch said.

Con­tin­ue learn­ing how to guide your orga­ni­za­tion through a seam­less SAP S/4HANA adop­tion jour­ney by view­ing the ASUG Best Prac­tices: SAP S/4HANA Vir­tu­al Expe­ri­ence on demand. Sign up today to access. Please note, on demand con­tent will be exclu­sive to ASUG mem­bers after Thurs­day, April 24.