Change for change!

Encounter 1

Once I was visiting a prospect who wanted to migrate his organization to an ERP application. The motive was to make work easier and less complicated – by going away with those excel sheets and bringing on real-time transparency so that he can view reports from anywhere and on his multi devices. Being in a physical security and facility management sector, they would have loads of paper works and files, which they would like to get away from – by creating a centralized document repository. They had stacks of files rotting in their steel almirahs across their office.

I was confident – I am onboarding this guy! Such requirements can be met easily – as I was selling them a cloud-based ERP solution and at an economic price, of course.

Encounter 2

I got a requirement from an HR head of an US-based organization a few years back, who wanted to get away from their macro-based excel sheets and move to something automated and make their life non-repetitive.

I still thank god to make the meeting possible as I was fortunate to meet the god of excel sheet – sitting right in front of me. This keyboard-happy guy didn’t use a mouse to navigate or work on excel rather he was pressing all the shortcuts on the laptop keyboard and getting his work done! Moreover, he had created a software out of excel all by himself with all that macros and formulas. My eyes all popped out as it took me some hours to understand their work structure and few more to soak it all in.

Problem

For people who are working in the same work culture and convenience, the problem is common which is “the reluctance to change”. It’s hard to bring them to reality when their comfort zone, which otherwise looks as cozy as an afternoon nap, is deceiving and old school.

Both of the folks wanted to customize the ERP software in their own work culture – meaning humanize it. They wanted to implement their processes in the application which can give them their sense of security and closeness. No one wanted to follow new work processes which would have made their work easier, hassle-free, transparent and faster.

Over the years what I have seen is that people see a reflection of their own in an enterprise based software solution which is robed in to make their work easy. There are few who see a software as a replacement for themselves as well. The very meaning of a software solution dissolves right there once it’s made (customized) to work like humans. Whereas in reality, the purpose of having a software is totally different.

Change for change is nothing but changing ourselves to bring in the technology changes we want to experience. Change of habit, Change in mentality, Change in perspective.