Lessons from L3Harris – Why effective Change Management is Critical to Success

Two weeks ago, we held our VT Summit in Arlington, VA. It’s where our customers share how they apply automation and VisibleThread.

Emily Nack and Tom Triebwasser of L3Harris Technologies presented the opening session. They cited efficiency savings of $500k for 40 users in year one. They also saw quality improvement with zero compliance issues across 200 priority pursuits during the year.

These types of results are impressive, but they don’t happen by accident. Just dropping in software and saying to users “have at it” never works. Success requires effective change management. And what Emily and Tom shared numbers-wise is instructive.

So, this week I want to dive a little deeper into the topic. I’ll use some of the L3Harris data to ground the discussion.

Bottom-line: Irrespective of the technology (AI, non-AI or some mix), if enterprises don’t invest time in effective change management, training, and adapting their processes, their Return on Investment (ROI) will be negligible.

By the Numbers

Here’s a slide that Emily and Tom presented:

If we tease through this, some specific items jump out.

1. Frequent & Meaningful Engagement

The data and approach:

• Frequent engagement - 38 distinct training classes during the year. That’s an average of a training session every 6 working days.
• Monthly office hours sessions - focusing on specific questions and hands-on training were key to success.
• Effective training - When you learn how to drive a car, you need to actually sit in the driver’s seat and do it. Similarly, when adopting new software, users can’t be neutral observers during training, they need to actually use the software. Will this be slower? Possibly. Will it push people out of their comfort zone? Most likely. But will people come away knowing how to get full value from the system? Absolutely.
• Teaching techniques to avoid - You’d be amazed at how many vendors have Customer Success teams (supporting roll outs) that are effectively demo givers. They conduct one-way lectures. Users don’t learn, and struggle to complete even basic tasks. These are not the type of vendor partner you need.

Now all the above required a collaborative “partnership” between L3Harris and VisibleThread. But if you want to implement an effective change management program in the enterprise, both you and the vendor need to work closely together.

Related thoughts:

• Vendor Commitment - You must work with a vendor that understands they will need to partner with you. It’s not just during a sales cycle, but more importantly once you cut that PO, that’s when the real work begins.
• Customer Commitment – You will need to commit time to adopting any non-trivial new software. This includes AI, non-AI or a mix. This has not changed in the new world of generative AI (GenAI). The same principle applies. There are no shortcuts.

2. Tracking Metrics & Conducting Surveys

It seems blindingly obvious, but you must gather metrics as you go. Essential not just to justify your original investment, but also to help build the business case for future renewals and potential spread.

Your Chief Financial Officer (CFO) and leadership will demand this.

You need two types of metrics, quantitative and qualitative. Let’s drill into each.

Quantitative Metrics:

For VT Docs, a key metric is the number of files uploaded. From the slide you’ll see it’s 1,570. That’s strong usage, averaging 39 docs per user.?

We also track actions on those docs. Here are the L3Harris numbers.

Shredding (849 actions) and doc revision reports (694 actions) lead the pack.

If you average out the likely time for the manual task vs. the automated one, you get your ROI data.

For example, taking a 150-page doc and shredding it into Excel by hand might take 6 hours vs. 3 minutes with software. You have a time savings of 5.9 hrs, and assuming a fully burdened cost rate of say $120 / hr for your users, your savings are 5.9 x $120 = $708 for a single 150-page shred. Let’s assume our average doc is more like 50-pages, then that’s a $236 savings per doc. And since we completed 839 shreds, this gives us a total savings for shreds of 839 x $236 = $198k.

You can see how the savings accrue.

NOTE: A shred is where you decompose a PDF or Word document, split it into paragraphs or sentences, and create an Excel workbook to track compliance with every requirement.

Qualitative Metrics:

These are not measurable, rather they involve asking people for their perspective.

So, for this you use surveys. You ask a mix of closed and open questions.

Closed questions like “Was the software easy to use?” answer: “Very”, “Somewhat”, “Not at all”. Or “Was the training effective?”, answer: “Yes/No”. Useful to sprinkle in a liberal dose of open questions too. For example, “How did you find using the software?”. Or “Do you think this might help you in your job?”.

Here are actual results that Emily and Tom shared. This question tests how useful each key feature was. It asks the user to rank each product feature one of “Very Useful”, “Somewhat Useful”, “Not Useful”

Takeaways

If you intend to automate some of your processes, you must take change management seriously.

1. Change Management Success Factors:

• Communicate the purpose and intent of the software purchase – what will it mean for the end user.
• Work with the Vendor’s Customer Success Manager (CSM) to train up “Power Users” that will become internal experts on the technology. They will be your ambassadors and will be responsible for supporting training of team members and boosting engagement.
• Invest in Training - Consistent and frequent engagement is key.
• Hands-on Learning - Users need to actively use the software to truly learn.
• Vendor Partnership - A committed vendor is essential for successful implementation. They must have capable staff, not just demo-givers. They must be aligned with your business objectives.

2. Measure What Matters:

• Track Usage Metrics - Monitor file uploads, actions, and time savings.
• Conduct User Surveys - Gather qualitative feedback to understand user experience.
• Calculate ROI - Quantify the financial benefits of automation.

While I know a lot of the above is obvious to many, I’m still seeing organizations not putting in the work. This is especially true for GenAI 1st type product adoption.

While the technology has evolved massively with AI etc., the people and process factors remain as critical as they have always been. That has not changed.

Till next time.

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Best,

Fergal

Founder & CEO of VisibleThread

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