Change management is the implementation

There is a ritual in ERP programs. A change plan is written early, stored, and remembered twelve weeks before go-live, when someone books a training room. The courses are thorough. The operation is not ready, because nobody redesigned the Monday meeting in which the new number was supposed to be used.

People adopt routines, not software. A planner adopts a system when the schedule she is willing to defend comes out of it. A partner adopts it when the timesheet is faster than the workaround and the margin conversation uses its figure. A store lead adopts it when the cycle count has a point.

That means the 'change' work is the design. Role impacts belong next to process decisions, while there is still time to make the path shorter. Manager routines belong in the same workshop as the report. Training is the rehearsal of those routines, with data that misbehaves, because the first month will misbehave.

Measure something plain at day 30. Late timesheets. Orders touched by the old spreadsheet. Inventory adjustments above a threshold. If the measure is a survey of enthusiasm, you will get enthusiasm. The operation will tell a different story.