For more SAP util­i­ties cus­tomer sto­ries, reg­is­ter for the SAP for Util­i­ties, Pre­sent­ed by ASUG, con­fer­ence in San Anto­nio, Oct. 6 – 9.

For an orga­ni­za­tion that has oper­at­ed on SAP ECC for rough­ly 30 years, mov­ing to SAP S/4HANA rep­re­sents much more than a tech­nol­o­gy upgrade. At PG&E, the trans­for­ma­tion is an oppor­tu­ni­ty to rethink process­es, mod­ern­ize oper­a­tions, and change how tens of thou­sands of cowork­ers work across the utility.

The scale is sig­nif­i­cant. PG&E has accu­mu­lat­ed approx­i­mate­ly 82,000 SAP cus­tomiza­tions over three decades with its cur­rent ver­sion of ECC, a lev­el of com­plex­i­ty that has pre­vent­ed the com­pa­ny from upgrad­ing to SAP S/4HANA in the past.

“We appar­ent­ly have one of the great­est num­ber of cus­tomiza­tions,” said Jason Khoury, Direc­tor of Change Strat­e­gy, Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and Engage­ment at PG&E. ​“We’re look­ing at this upgrade as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to mod­ern­ize our over­all busi­ness — not stream­line only our tech­nol­o­gy but the way we work across the entire company.”

PG&E expects the first release of the SAP S/4HANA pro­gram, known inter­nal­ly as Pro­pel, to launch in 2027. But even as teams design and build the new envi­ron­ment, PG&E is putting equal empha­sis on prepar­ing its work­force for what comes next.

That includes approx­i­mate­ly 30,000 cowork­ers plus anoth­er 25,000 con­trac­tors and sup­pli­ers that will need to under­stand new process­es and ways of working.

For Sara Burke, Senior Direc­tor of Orga­ni­za­tion­al Readi­ness at PG&E, suc­cess­ful­ly man­ag­ing change at that scale has already pro­duced sev­er­al impor­tant lessons. ​“When we start­ed this jour­ney three years ago, we had a going-in mind­set on pri­or­i­tiz­ing cowork­er com­mu­ni­ca­tions and their expe­ri­ence. We’re proud of how we’ve main­tained this peo­ple-pri­or­i­ty mind­set, but we have also learned, adapt­ed, and evolved our approach as we move from each phase of this rollout.”

Start by Under­stand­ing the Audience

One of PG&E’s cen­tral approach­es has been stake­hold­er seg­men­ta­tion. Rather than com­mu­ni­cat­ing about Pro­pel as if PG&E were a sin­gle audi­ence, the team divides stake­hold­ers into groups, includ­ing by cowork­er lev­els (lead­er­ship to indi­vid­ual con­trib­u­tors), depart­ments, regions, and oth­er classifications.

Ear­ly efforts con­cen­trat­ed heav­i­ly on lead­er­ship align­ment. As the pro­gram pro­gress­es, engage­ment is mov­ing deep­er into the organization.

“Strong seg­men­ta­tion and tai­lored engage­ments have been crit­i­cal,” Burke said. At the same time, the team has had to man­age a nat­ur­al ten­sion: Cowork­ers often want answers about the future before the pro­gram is ready to pro­vide them.

The goal, she explained, is to reas­sure cowork­ers that ​“they haven’t missed any­thing” while giv­ing them a clear­er under­stand­ing of when more infor­ma­tion will become avail­able. As PG&E gets clos­er to deploy­ment, com­mu­ni­ca­tions move from high-lev­el, direc­tion­al expla­na­tions toward show­ing greater speci­fici­ty of what’s chang­ing for who, lever­ag­ing sys­tem demos as much as possible.

Khoury sum­ma­rized the approach sim­ply: ​“Make it real and make it tan­gi­ble for cowork­ers. Make sure that peo­ple under­stand the change, bring them along, and at the same time lev­el-set expectations.”

Keep the Mes­sage Sim­ple and Cul­tur­al­ly Relevant

The sheer scale of the trans­for­ma­tion cre­ates anoth­er com­mu­ni­ca­tions chal­lenge in that there is an enor­mous amount of infor­ma­tion to share. The team ini­tial­ly approached some com­mu­ni­ca­tions with the ambi­tion of shar­ing as much infor­ma­tion as pos­si­ble, only to real­ize that audi­ences could eas­i­ly become overwhelmed.

Burke said trans­for­ma­tion teams can also become accus­tomed to their own ter­mi­nol­o­gy. Acronyms, tech­ni­cal lan­guage, and new vocab­u­lary may make per­fect sense inside a pro­gram while sound­ing like a for­eign lan­guage to those in the com­pa­ny out­side of the program.

The solu­tion, as Khoury indi­cat­ed, is fol­low­ing the ​“four C’s”: clear, con­cise, con­sis­tent, and culture.

“If you’re speak­ing ​‘inside-base­ball’ lan­guage, it’s not going to con­nect. Throw­ing around ter­mi­nol­o­gy and acronyms that doesn’t mean any­thing to the end user sim­ply won’t work,” Khoury said. ​“It’s not going to res­onate, and ulti­mate­ly, then you have a risk for failure.”

Cul­ture is par­tic­u­lar­ly impor­tant at PG&E. Burke described a util­i­ty envi­ron­ment influ­enced by risk aver­sion, com­pli­ance, and a strong engi­neer­ing cul­ture. Cowork­ers want details and want to under­stand the rea­son­ing behind decisions.

“They real­ly want the meat on the bones — the details behind the key points — so they can under­stand that this has been well thought through,” Burke said.

Lead­ers Need to Be Par­tic­i­pants, Not Just Recipients

PG&E also learned that exec­u­tive engage­ment can­not wait until every ques­tion has an answer. Because design work was still at a high lev­el, the team hes­i­tat­ed to engage lead­ers know­ing they would have ques­tions the pro­gram could not yet answer. Burke said the trans­for­ma­tion team ini­tial­ly found itself in some­thing of an infor­ma­tion vac­u­um with executives.

To address this, Burke and Khoury cre­at­ed an exec­u­tive-lev­el cur­ricu­lum pro­gram (Pro­pel 101 – 105). The team then cus­tomized the mate­r­i­al for dif­fer­ent func­tions so lead­ers can bet­ter under­stand the changes rel­e­vant to their organizations.

“It was a cur­ricu­lum for exec­u­tives to go through each step and hear more details per­ti­nent to them, from under­stand­ing the change impacts with­in their own depart­ments, the end-to-end process­es, the per­sonas involved, and the val­ue that will be derived from the pro­gram- kind of the nuts and bolts,” Burke said.

That work estab­lished a base­line of under­stand­ing while build­ing rela­tion­ships the trans­for­ma­tion team could return to as addi­tion­al details became available.

The strat­e­gy has since evolved from lead­er­ship edu­ca­tion toward lead­er­ship acti­va­tion. Instead of exec­u­tives sim­ply receiv­ing infor­ma­tion, PG&E wants them to active­ly spon­sor the changes with­in their respec­tive organizations.

Take the Trans­for­ma­tion to Coworkers

PG&E is also using mul­ti­ple chan­nels to rein­force its mes­sages, includ­ing open hous­es, all-hands meet­ings, event booths, videos, intranet con­tent, and planned roadshows.

For field cowork­ers in par­tic­u­lar, Burke said phys­i­cal­ly bring­ing the pro­gram to where peo­ple work can make a difference.

“It’s dif­fer­ent when you meet them on their turf,” she said. ​“Bring­ing a mes­sage to them where they nat­u­ral­ly gath­er, and in a less for­mal environment.”

Khoury said the key is to cre­ate mul­ti­ple oppor­tu­ni­ties for cowork­ers to encounter and under­stand the trans­for­ma­tion rather than rely­ing on a sin­gle com­mu­ni­ca­tions vehicle.

“You need to start with ​‘what does it mean for you’, oth­er­wise it’s going to miss the mark,” he said.

PG&E sup­ple­ments those efforts with local com­mu­ni­ca­tions plans tai­lored to busi­ness units such as elec­tric, gas, finance, human resources, and sup­ply chain. That allows the team to nav­i­gate a work­force oper­at­ing across in-per­son, remote, and hybrid envi­ron­ments while deliv­er­ing mes­sages through forums cowork­ers already use.

Lis­ten­ing Becomes Part of the Change Strategy

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion at PG&E is not intend­ed to flow in only one direction.

The com­pa­ny is col­lect­ing feed­back through focus groups, intranet ana­lyt­ics, lead­er­ship inter­ac­tions, sur­veys, and a change agent net­work of approx­i­mate­ly 120 cowork­ers (in the first release phase) who remain in their reg­u­lar roles while serv­ing as for­mal liaisons between the pro­gram and the organization.

PG&E is also using the Prosci ADKAR method­ol­o­gy to mea­sure aware­ness and desire, with lat­er stages address­ing knowl­edge, abil­i­ty, and reinforcement.

An ADKAR assess­ment gen­er­at­ed rough­ly 1,500 open-end­ed com­ments, giv­ing the team anoth­er source of insight into what is res­onat­ing and where ques­tions remain. Focus groups with super­vi­sors and man­agers have sim­i­lar­ly helped PG&E under­stand how cowork­ers pre­fer to receive infor­ma­tion and what train­ing approach­es have — or have not — worked in the past.

“We pull all this feed­back infor­ma­tion and activ­i­ties to date into a change jour­ney dash­board that gives the team insights into where it may need to adjust its strate­gies and plans,” Burke said.

Bring­ing AI Into Change Management

PG&E is also exper­i­ment­ing with arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence (AI) as anoth­er way to make trans­for­ma­tion infor­ma­tion accessible.

The com­pa­ny has cre­at­ed an AI agent (named Pey­ton) and is in the ini­tial phas­es of rolling this out to cowork­ers, who can use the tool to ask ques­tions about the pro­gram. Pey­ton draws on curat­ed infor­ma­tion to pro­vide answers direct­ly to cowork­ers. PG&E has even cre­at­ed a holo­gram rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the agent.

For a trans­for­ma­tion affect­ing tens of thou­sands of peo­ple, that abil­i­ty to scale access to infor­ma­tion could become increas­ing­ly impor­tant as deploy­ment approaches.

Anoth­er impor­tant les­son PG&E has learned is that trans­for­ma­tion teams can­not go qui­et while wait­ing for per­fect infor­ma­tion. Burke said orga­ni­za­tions need a steady ​“drip feed” of com­mu­ni­ca­tion telling cowork­ers what is known, what is still being deter­mined, and when they can expect to hear more.

“You can’t stay silent, even if you don’t know all the details. Bite-size pieces of infor­ma­tion can go a long way in eas­ing anx­i­ety and also make it quick and easy to digest,” she said.

Ulti­mate­ly, that reflects PG&E’s broad­er phi­los­o­phy toward change man­age­ment. Build­ing the right sys­tem and process­es mat­ters, but the expect­ed busi­ness val­ue only mate­ri­al­izes if peo­ple actu­al­ly use them.

“You only get the val­ue if peo­ple adopt the pro­gram capa­bil­i­ties in the end,” Burke said. ​“Just build­ing them alone gets you noth­ing but a very expen­sive prod­uct that’s sit­ting on the shelf.”

For PG&E, that makes orga­ni­za­tion­al readi­ness and com­mu­ni­ca­tions insep­a­ra­ble from the SAP S/4HANA imple­men­ta­tion itself.

“It’s not the thing that we’re build­ing,” Burke said. ​“It’s you. It’s you using the sys­tems and process­es we are build­ing that will achieve the val­ue we are count­ing on to ulti­mate­ly ben­e­fit our mil­lions of customers.”

Reg­is­ter for SAP for Util­i­ties, Pre­sent­ed by ASUG, Oct. 6 – 9 in San Anto­nio to hear more cus­tomer sto­ries like PG&E’s.