The case was analyzed through a change management framework; Kotter's 8 strategic eight-step model for transforming organizations. Not only the management of changes in the organization, but also the specific factors that we need to carefully consider. In this case, change management is very important to ensure communication and motivation as a key success factor in project implementation.
When planning change management, there are several factors that the regional project team should consider, e.g. To understand the importance of change management, strategy, process and implementation of IT system implementation. The case is analyzed through the change management framework; Kotter's eight-step strategic model for transforming organizations.
LITERATURE REVIEW
George Spafford (2013) of research firm Gartner identified five main reasons why change management processes fail. Gartner analyzed data from hundreds of inquiries and interactions with organizations of all types and sizes trying to implement change management over the past three years. One reason is that IT people tend to ignore change management and fail to manage the cultural changes associated with the process because they don't want to slow down IT implementation.
There have been various researches from reliable institutions studied about the importance and values of Change Management in project implementation. From Change Management That Pays, studied by McKinsey Quarterly (2002), The McKinsey study examined many project variables and in particular the effect of an Organizational Change Management (OCM) program on a project's ROI. Best practices in change management.”, a recognized leader in change management research, again pointed to the ability of the organization to manage the changes for project implementation efficiently and effectively.
Managing Change through Management Development: An Industry Case Study (Chris Shanley, 2006) also supports the importance of change management; implementing appropriate change management activities by developing a management development strategy could contribute to changing the company's work culture more effectively. Shanley believes that implementing the change management activity to help the middle management level understand their role in managing change on a day-to-day basis can better support the change transition at the operational level in the organization. Based on the literature reviewed by Kotters (1995) strategic eight-step model for transforming organizations, Lewins (1947) proposed a three-phase theory of change acceleration process model, theories that can be applied as a framework for change management.
His model is aimed at the strategic level of the change management process and also as a 'vision' for the change implementation. This can be attributed to behavioral changes and shows the success of implementing change management with Kotter's change model in the global context.
CONTEXTUAL BACKGROUND
To increase the demands of the operating company in the region to share data and ideas between working groups and teams in the region and Holcim. To bring together expertise and improve collaboration within the Group in order to promote knowledge sharing, innovation and work efficiency;. The "Together, Faster" initiative to roll out the full set of Google Apps to each Group region has already started, with Holcim in the UK, US and Canada, Switzerland, Europe and India.
By 2015, "Together Faster" gave all of the more than 40,000 employees who currently have a Holcim or affiliate email address access to Google Apps, unifying all existing communication and team collaboration platforms. For the APAC region, representatives from HSEA (IT Shared Service) were the key project team to lead the “APAC Together, Faster” project in this region, working closely with a selected person from each of the 8 countries. This change also came from Global Direction; it is not only the IT tools that are changing, but also the new working culture of information sharing in the APAC region.
We must carefully implement the new system with a clear work plan and also a communication plan in order to avoid possible disruptions in business and ensure the realization of the project. More than the importance of change management and values from research, we also need to consider the specific conditions in each organization, such as the organizational culture and details of each project, before carrying out appropriate change management activities. Coexistence between existing and new IT systems by country in a period of change in the region.
In this study, we will clearly understand from research and methodology how to effectively implement change management in a project and also avoid project failure. He will then analyze how to apply the change management lessons learned to the implementation of the “APAC Together, faster” project that began in 2013.
DATA COLLECTION METHODOLOGY
She is the single point of contact (SPOC) from the business team in 8 countries for contact with the regional technical team and change management. Then coordinate with the regional technical and change management team to transform the information into the regional project plan and approach and adapt the appropriate approach to each country. We asked her via the conference call the open questions on these following topics;.
He likes being an Early Adopter who uses the new and interesting tools before others. We also interviewed her as another type of end user who has less experience with Google. We asked her the same questions via conference call that we asked the Business Intelligence Manager;
Not only the interview of the project team and the user who got the impact of APAC Together, faster project, but we also studied from the experiences we learned that other Holcim Region are already starting to implement the Google application in their region and they shared their experiences under Global Lesson Learn workshop in October 2013. Current status is rolling out to end users in their region and planning to finish the project in mid-2014. The project started since January 2013 and plans to be completed by the end of this year (2013).
We learned about the change management approach and the activities that they did well and also the steps that need to be improved. The information is very valuable to us as it came from the direct experience of the Holcim colleague who has the similar deployment environment and also a similar type of users.
RESEARCH FINDINGS
They are responsible for managing the project to be successful in implementing the system within the project timeline. The IT-technical contractor was selected according to the HSEA criteria for the configuration and development of the system in the project. These people are the key factor that contributed to the project from the initial phase to the launch of the project.
The vision and mission of the project have been developed in line with the global vision to align the strategy with other regions. In the project planning phase - They set up a workshop for the project team, which, together with contractors and recommendations from global consultants, prepares a draft of new business processes. Since the project team has already requested the cooperation of the Core IT user manager, the Core IT user can assign his tasks to other colleagues and devote himself to the new system.
Since the project team selected the Core IT users from various departments who were interested in the new technology and were easy to change, they actively used the Google application in their works instead of the current system. The project team provided the training to the Core IT users and also set the discussion forum website in the company portal as the communication channel to report the issues and feedback. This step, the create short-term wins occurred in the project completion phase, the same time of Enable people to act.
While the regional team has already rolled out the solution to the Core IT user group as the first group of people to be involved in the first step of success in the project. The project team launched the satisfaction survey to gather feedback from key IT users. For positive feedback, the project team used these success stories from people as proxies to communicate this achievement to others in the company.
After continued deployment to the Core IT user group, the project team expands the success to other user groups with different strategies.
DISCUSSION
So, after the successful implementation of the new system and already deployed to all users, some functionalities of the Google application were not used and people still stay in the same ways they were working and still using the old approach of working in the system of new, e.g. Recommendation: Instead of declaring victory, management and the project team should define an evaluation matrix to monitor employee behavior change. The project team should monitor system usage of both the new system and the old system, and the satisfaction survey data should be analyzed so that they can develop strategies for each user group.
In addition, the project group must deal with the larger problems and adjust systems and structures that do not match the vision. The interviews revealed that although the project team had many communication packages in the project, and most of them focus on communication between the project team and stakeholders, it lacked the communication in each OpCo internally, such as communication between the OpCo's representative and staff at each department location. Recommendation: The project team should develop and support the communication package at the OpCo level with the OpCo coordinator specifically to suit the OpCos culture, location and impact on different organizational policies.
The change management team should act as a liaison between corporate communications and the project team and ensure alignment with the central project team. Communication activities should be reviewed and adjusted as needed based on feedback and needs, and communication progress will be part of each project coordinator's project status report.
LIMITATIONS AND FURTHER RESEARCH
CONCLUSIONS
