A Managed Services Provider (MSP) acts as application management, providing technical support, maintenance services and enhancements to your IT investments. You may be already aware of how an MSP works as technical, day-to-day production support to organizations. For example, an MSP may address potential infrastructure malfunctions or aid in upgrades to optimize applications.
While this is a crucial component of the work that an MSP does, many are unaware of how an MSP can provide valuable and necessary support to your organization’s people and processes with Change Management expertise.
A valuable MSP likely has experience leveraging Change Management initiatives and provides this knowledge to project teams. Using a Change Management approach allows businesses to not only have the support of Managed Services, but it also provides the security of long-term maximization to the system’s value. The element of security also translates to an increasingly important aspect of project success: sustainability.
If project teams want to achieve success in implementation or upgrades, sustainability of employee engagement will be vital. The introduction of new technology means that employees will face learning curves and changes. If proper training and engagement isn’t involved to assist with learning curves, employees will likely resist the new technology and revert to the ways of the previous system. A lack of engagement and training also could create a sentiment of resistance between different departments, and even a general sentiment that resists future technology. Ultimately, push back within the organization to adapt to changes could potentially result in the technology to be under-utilized, and your investment may lose its value.
To aid in the learning curves of a new implementation or upgrade and help users adapt to changes, Change Management initiatives must ensure that proper training and engagement is sustained throughout and after the project. This is where an MSP steps in.
How does an MSP help with Change Management?
If your organization is looking to implement cloud applications, the support of an MSP can ultimately help project teams address the inevitable and complex change that comes with new implementations. For example, many organizations have a current system in place for an extensive duration prior to implementation and haven’t experienced a new infrastructure transformation. When they decide to transition to the cloud environment, there will be numerous changes that will impact existing employees in both technology navigation and processes adaptation.
An MSP helps project managers evaluate and address how the new requirements will accommodate the current processes. Project managers can use this to swiftly and thoroughly prepare their employees to adapt to new processes and avoid initial pushback from team members.
Further, an MSP also supports teams by assisting in training and preparation. An MSP will ensure users of a new system are fully ready by providing clear training and engaging them throughout the design and testing process. An MSP will focus training efforts on the super-users, which are typically the administrators, managers, or trainers who are in charge of providing formal training to other business users. Establishing expertise and trust in these leaders through proper training allows knowledge to streamline to other business users. In most organizations, business users are the ones who will be using the applications on a daily basis, thus it’s vital that they are well-equipped to work with the new functionalities that a new system brings.
If your organization isn’t implementing a new system but is instead focusing on updates and improvements, an MSP will assess your current process and uncover pain points and needs that should be improved. Training is provided to these initiatives, ensuring that employees are ready to adapt to the improved solutions that the upgrades or enhancements offer. Not only does an MSP help teams adjust to changes, but their support also instills sustainability to project success that will translate to more control to train and improve other processes that an organization has in place.
Elire’s experience working with the American Lebanese Syrian Associated Charities (ALSAC) – St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital can highlight how an MSP helps with sustainability and continued process improvement of applications. Prior to the implementation of the Oracle Cloud Project Financials module, ALSAC’s process of tracking their project costing information required extensive manual effort from business users.
Elire experts implemented a Project Financial Management tool in Oracle Cloud, which allowed the business to budget, forecast, and track real-time project costs. The implemented solution helped bring costs from the Oracle Cloud Accounts Payable module into projects, allowing project managers full visibility into costs and budget.
Although Elire’s experts supported ALSAC with the technical and functional implementation of the modules, Elire also assisted in ensuring that change management was incorporated throughout the entire project. During the initial pilot phase, Elire’s project team actively involved business users in functionality workshops and requirement elicitation sessions to ensure these users developed an understanding of the new systems’ capability and determined how it could improve their business process.
Throughout testing phases, the project team collaborated with ALSAC leaders to encourage business users to provide their honest feedback, helping necessary modifications to be validated and executed properly. In addition to providing live training sessions and hyper-care daily check-in sessions during testing, Elire also provided step-by-step job aid documents that the business users utilized throughout their technology adaptation journey. These documents are also crucial to the new employees during their on-the-job training.
At Elire, we believe that people are the most valuable asset to a business, but this asset is many times overlooked after an initial system implementation. The most valuable company asset cannot be left without support, and that’s why prioritizing both the system and the people who interact with it equally is key to sustainable delivered success.
Elire Managed Services can provide Change Management expertise to ensure that all team members are on-board to leverage the value of your technology investments. To learn more about Elire’s Managed Services, visit our Managed Services Page and reach out to [email protected].