Change Management role in enabling successful cloud applications implementation in Mid-Market companies

The need for digital transformation is beyond doubt, however, this doesn’t come without constraints.?Developing effective change management strategy and approach to overcome those constraints is key to ensure the digital transformation success (Panenkov, 2021).

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To understand how individuals are reacting to change, Elisabith Kübler-Ross, in her book “

On grief and grieving: finding the meaning of grief through the five stages of loss” (Kübler-Ross, 2005) suggested five stages that individual passes through when experiencing a change. Company employees experiencing the change of transitioning to the cloud applications can pass throw similar stages of reaction during the transition process.?Those stages are denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and eventually acceptance.?Each of those stages requires different group of actions and communication approach to address the concerns and expedite the transition to the next stage till the acceptance.

?This has influenced John Fisher to come with a similar model to simulate organization reaction to change.?Understanding where the organization stands during cloud implementation project, is critically important to design the right communication strategy to design the right communication approach (Diagram 1 illustrates those phases during the change process) (Fisher, 2005).?

Exposing companies’ employees to SaaS culture, ERP concepts and explain the vision of why moving to the cloud will play a major role into smoothening the transition to the cloud and SaaS model (Carutasu, 2016).

?John Kotter in his book Leading change (Kotter, 2012) suggested 8-steps process to implement a change process in the organization. In Mid-Market companies, moving from legacy applications into cloud applications, is a complex process and requires a very solid change management plan.?Below diagram illustrates the 8-steps change process suggested by Kotter.

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According to John, in step1 organization should establish sense of urgency.?In cloud computing implementation in Mid-Market companies, this sense of urgency can be developed by highlighting the challenges organization faces with the current outdated technology and opportunities that the cloud transition offers to the organization. Cloud applications implementation can be packaged as part of digital transformation mega program that aims at supporting Mid-Market companies business to survive, compete and grow (Khahro, 2021).

?In step 2, John suggested that creating the guiding coalition to help driving the change in the organization?(Kotter, 2012). ?In cloud computing implementation program, formulating the right implementation team representing the different stakeholders and establishing the right balance between IT and business stakeholders are key enablers to drive the change process (Hadjielias, 2021).

?In step 3 of this process John Kotter recommends developing the vision and strategy to drive the change throughout the process (Kotter, 2012).?In a cloud implementation, setting the project objectives and aligning those objectives with the company vision and ambitions are extremely important (González-Varona, 2021).

?Steps 4 in John model, he suggested communicating the vision (Kotter, 2012).?In cloud implementation project, using smart communication messages to highlight why the cloud implementation is happening and what’s in it for the organization, using the right channel at the right time to the right audience, are key enablers to the success of cloud implementation project (Huang, 2021).

?In steps 5 according to John, identifying and removing obstacles are essential to ensure a smooth and speedy progress to the change process.?In a cloud computing project in Mid-Market company, identifying the barriers to adopting the cloud, developing a plan and effective execution to remove those barriers are important to expedite the change adoption (Khan, 2016).

?In step 6, John suggested celebrating short-term wins as an important step in the change process. In cloud implementation project, many opportunities can be identified to celebrate.?This can include the completion of a major project milestone, a specific phase go-live, a major issue resolution and others.?Celebrating those short wins is key to maintain the implementation momentum and boost team morale (Davis, 2022).

?In step number 7, John suggested that change process success shouldn’t be celebrated prematurely. In a cloud project, premature milestone sign-off or premature go-live can be very harmful to the overall success of the project.?Project leaders should go through a very careful assessment to make sure that the milestone completion checklist has been reviewed and fulfilled (Bayer, 2021).

?Finally, John suggested in step number 8 to anchor the change.?In a cloud project, establishing a post applications go-live procedure, continuous employees training programs and continuous reviews to application utilization are only examples to activities that will help in sticking the change influenced by cloud implementation (Huang, 2021)