IT transformations in time, budget and expected quality

Most of our long-term customers would not think of us in the context of IT transformations. Usually, BBH is associated with change management for organizational changes, strategic realignment, cultural change or increasing sales fitness.

Change Management is a crucial success factor in IT transformations

However, for many years we have been applying our change management expertise to IT transformation projects. Why? Because almost every IT project runs out of time, budget or quality and causes a lot of dissatisfaction. And this is rarely due to technological issues. In fact, the projects suffer from

• internal resistance,
• conflicts between technology implementation partners and the IT/business organization,
• conflicts of interest and misunderstandings between IT and the business units or
• the lack of organizational structures that a new system requires.

BBH as change driver in IT transformations

These interpersonal and organizational challenges are exactly what we take into account with our involvement in IT projects: As a sparring partner, we work together with the project managers, process owners and key players to implement the necessary change management in terms of

• communication
• organizational development
• stakeholder management
• coaching of the project team and
• real-time change monitoring.

Successful S/4HANA implementation by integrating technology, process and people change

Our main area of application is currently the implementation of S/4HANA, which usually means a real business transformation (and not just an IT system change): a transformation that requires a high degree of willingness to change, flexibility and openness from the people involved. In order to ensure that such projects can be successfully implemented in time, budget and quality, it is essential to take care not only of the technological and process-related change, but also of the people change from the very beginning.

Our and our customers’ experience is that the conscious design of “people change” cannot be sufficiently supported by the IT implementation partner besides the technological change for mainly two reasons. First, IT experts will always focus on the technology and possibly the processes. People change-related aspects will be neglected. Second, IT experts are very rarely also experts regarding human thinking, feeling and behavior and therefore no people change experts. As experts for “people-driven change”, we cover this blind spot and complement the project team, consisting of IT and business experts, in order to jointly ensure that the potential of the new software solution arrives quickly and without additional effort and obstacles in day-to-day processes.

If you would like to find out more about how we support IT transformations with our people-focused change approach, please contact us or visit our microsite (www.ittransformation.de) or blog about our S/4HANA case at Freudenberg (https://www.bbh-gmbh.de/blog/implementation-consulting-at-an-it-transformation/).