One of the biggest changes higher education institutions can experience is the implementation of an enterprise system…

…technology that impacts how services are delivered and consumed by all faculty, students and staff. It might be a new student system, an enterprise CRM, a BI/analytics solution or an entire ERP suite.

While these implementations are about making a technology solution work – they are really people projects at the core. And people issues like communications, politics, change resistance, teamwork and leadership all pose significant risks to a large implementation project. Institutions need to proactively address and manage these risks to avoid barriers to change, delays in project timelines, project budget overruns, and underutilization of the new technology. Simply put: institutions need to create a culture of change.

This paper will explore some fundamental principles of change management and lay out actionable strategies for effectively creating a culture of change on an enterprise system implementation.