“These gaps frequently lead to poor overall adoption and significantly increase the likelihood that the ERP implementation will fail to deliver on its intended outcomes,” Kwok said.

Project leaders can start by understanding how employees work currently and exactly what changes the new ERP system will require of them. Then they can consider what the benefits of the new ERP system are and market those.

From there, it is a matter of consistent guidance to keep employees on course.

“Most importantly, effective change management with a strong leadership commitment, regardless of the magnitude of change, sets the tone for all stakeholders,” Kwok said. Leadership must be united in its approach to change management, he said, or misalignments could result that lead to confusion and disengagement.

But change management is no set-it-and-forget-it effort. Follow-through is crucial.

“The commitment must also be sustained and visible. That includes senior leaders holding each other accountable for supporting the change. Otherwise, it can lead to an environment where employees feel free to ignore new processes and ways of working,” Kwok said.

4. Consider past change successes and failures

Change management strategies vary with business goals and cultures.

Looking to the organization’s strengths and weaknesses as they relate to change resilience is an important factor in change management. What other changes has the organization weathered? How did leaders and employees handle those well? Which did they handle poorly? What can everyone learn from those lessons and apply to the current ERP implementation?

“The organization’s history of successful change in the past will have a big impact on how successful any change efforts are,” Ogilvie said. “Similar to sports where winning is a habit [or not], if the company does not have the habit of successfully making changes, this significantly increases the effort required to be successful with an ERP project.”

5. Customize best practices

Whatever strategy CIOs and other leaders choose, it’s important not to take a generic or cookie-cutter approach.

“Don’t make change management a set of [generic] best practice communications, meetings and project protocols,” said Lisa Anderson, founder of LMA Consulting Group, a consultancy specializing in manufacturing strategy and supply chain transformation.

Instead, leaders can create a customized strategy of how each stakeholder can support the business objectives and get people on board, Anderson said.

6. Create a change roadmap

As with many complex endeavors, real-life ERP change management doesn’t have neatly demarcated stages. Still, creating a roadmap is important.

To that end, leaders can use the following roadmap as a starting point:

• Stakeholder analysis. Engage executives, department leaders, process owners and frontline employees early to build support and reduce resistance throughout the implementation.
• Current state analysis. Document existing workflows, dependencies and obstacles to identify operational risks and areas likely to be disrupted by ERP standardization.
• Future business process. Define how business processes, reporting structures and employee responsibilities will function after deployment.
• Check-ins. Conduct regular reviews to identify adoption risks, training gaps and workflow conflicts before go-live. Then conduct change impact assessments at several intervals throughout the project — for example, after design, initial builds and initial testing.
• Opportunity identification. Use change impact assessment findings to drive training, communication, support and any policy changes that are needed.

Editor’s note: This 2020 article was updated in February 2024 and again in July 2026.

Pam Baker is the author of eight books and hundreds of technology articles published in leading online and print publications. She is also a speaker and industry analyst and a member of the National Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists and the Internet Press Guild.