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Driving Adoption Through More Effective E-Procurement Change Management

Change management, as a business discipline, dates back to the 1960s. Despite steady growth, dozens of “breakthrough” discoveries and countless books on the topic, the practice of change management hasn’t been very successful. According to McKinsey & Company, only about 30% of change management initiatives are successful in achieving their intended business outcomes.

How should finance and procurement leaders who seek to drive adoption for e-procurement platforms regard change management? As John Hu, Shelby’s vice president of client services, is fond of saying, “change management isn’t a project workstream, it’s the entire project.”

There are numerous theoretical frameworks for enterprise change management. These can be helpful references for understanding the challenges and principles for managing change in today’s business environment. However, trying to apply any of these models to the practice of rolling out your procurement transformation initiative won’t get you very far.

The need for a purpose-built approach: Conventional enterprise change management approaches are too generalized to address e-procurement adoption challenges. Our latest e-book, E-Procurement Change Management Strategy, offers a six-step, purpose-built framework for e-procurement change management that can be adapted to fit the needs of organizations with different requirements, cultures and business objectives.

Shelby’s framework, which was developed over the course of working with many talented finance, procurement and IT executives on hundreds of engagements, is a stakeholder-centric approach that champions the advantages of digitizing business processes (a top goal among CEOs) and promotes a broader role for procurement that extends beyond driving transactional savings.

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John Dreyer is president and CEO of The Shelby Group.

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