Bring your organisation’s strategy to life…
… and revitalise your talent management strategy
Organisations can dramatically enhance the return on investment from new business systems by investing in user-adoption programmes to embed new business processes into their cultures and workflows, and breathe new life into their talent management strategy. How is this possible?
User-adoption programmes allow for operational outcomes from new systems and processes to be aligned more tightly with the organisation's strategic goals. Such programmes break down organisational silos and ensure that the organisation's functions and departments integrate more closely.
Helping process operators not only understand how the system helps them carry out their own tasks, but also how their work impacts the whole organisation, is key to ensuring the success of a new business solution.
Once users understand their role in the business processes - and the impact they have on the business - they are better able to perform in a way that enhances the performance of the whole organisation. This will make your talent management strategy easier as your users will understand how their work links into the business' strategy as well as how it helps other people do their work.
Why do new systems fail?
The lack of this contextual understanding among users is one of the major reasons for new systems failing to deliver on expectations. It's easy for top management to formulate a vision for a new business system but it's not as easy to translate this into organisational action. The reality is that even departmental heads and middle managers often lack insight into how their departments impact business performance.
Silo-based business metrics need to change as companies put integrated systems in place. Older ways of measuring and rewarding managers based only on their own performance doesn't help to encourage cross-functional collaboration.
Who should lead the business design process?
It's also important that business process champions with a cross-functional view of the organisation are empowered to lead business process design and user adoption strategies. Their job should be to ensure that the process – as it spans multiple departments – delivers the performance that the business is looking for.
These champions should measure and optimise the whole process to ensure that it delivers optimal performance for the organisation and aligns with the organisational strategy. They create, approve and measure the process, and then help to embed it in the organisation through training and change management initiatives.
How does this affect your talent management strategy?
Process owners need to be people with a big-picture view of the organisation, a strong feel for operations, and strategic insight. They need to be good collaborators who are able to translate between strategy and operations.
A step down from that, operational managers need to be incentivised and trained to focus as much on the whole process as they do on their own tasks. Whether they're in procurement, finance, distribution, HR, manufacturing or product marketing, operational managers need to know how their business processes link into the organisation's performance.
