Purchasing items like safety equipment and paper supplies shouldn’t be that difficult for most companies. But it can be without the right shopping tools in place. For the past year, I’ve been working on a Change Management project to help a global corporation evolve its requisitioning tool (an old, outdated dinosaur), to a new software tool for those who purchase items for the company.
Why hire a Change Management contractor for a simple software update? Because change is hard, and it’s not as simple as one might think. For this project, we knew going in that there might be some resistance to change (there was), and that a comprehensive way to communicate this change would be in order. My approach was to not only communicate to the different stakeholders and users, but to include and engage them in the process. We had key user focus groups who gave input into how to design the product for their unique needs. We had open house events. We even had delays. (surprise!) And we had a few fun contests along the way.
My favorite part of communicating change was a series of videos with recurring characters, “Mark and Marcie,” who needed to learn this tool and adapt to change. Their adventures in one-minute stories helped break the tension with humor and fun. When it came time for training, a new character, “Helpdesk Hank,” assisted Mark and Marcie with the finer nuances. Hank’s smarts and deadpan delivery was a nice contrast to Mark’s cynicism and Marcie’s nerdiness. I created the characters and their stories with GoAnimate, which is an easy cloud platform.
The final launch happened in late spring, and I wrote this article for the company’s intranet home page:
K-C MarketPlace Wows North America’s Requisitioners
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