PLM and Cultural Change Management ? Too expensive ?

At this moment I am finalizing my session for PDT2016 where I will talk about the importance of accurate data. Earlier this year I wrote a post about that theme: The importance of accurate data. Act now!

My PDT session will be elaborating on this post, with a focus on why and how we need this change in day-to-day business happen. So if you are interested in a longer story and much more interesting topics to learn and discuss, come to Paris on 9 and 10 November.

Dreaming is free

Recently I found a cartoon on LinkedIn and shared it with my contacts, illustrating the optimistic view companies have when they are aiming to find the best solution for their business, going through an RFI phase, the RFP phase, and ultimately negotiation the final deal with the PLM solution provider or vendor. See the image below:

All credits to the author – I found this image here

The above cartoon gives a humoristic view of the (PLM) sales process (often true). In addition, I want to share a less optimistic view related to PLM implementations after the deal has been closed. Based on the PLM projects if have been coaching in the past, the majority of these projects became in stress mode once the stakeholders involved only focused on the software, the functions and features and centralizing data. Implementing the software without a business transformation caused a lot of discomfort.

Users started to complain that the system did not allow them to do their day-to-day work in the same way. And they were right! They should have a new day-to-day work in the future, with different priorities based on the new PLM infrastructure.

This cultural change (and business change) was often not considered as the PLM system was implemented from an IT-perspective, not with a business perspective.

Over time, a better understanding of PLM and the fact that vendors and implementers have improved their portfolio and implementation skills, classical PLM implementations are now less disruptive.

A classical PLM implementation can be done quickly is because the system most of the time does not change the roles and responsibilities of people. Everyone remains working in his/her own silo. The difference: we store information in a central place so it can be found. And this approach would have worked if the world was not changing.

The digital enterprise transformation.

With the upcoming digitization and globalization of the market, enterprises are forced to adapt their business to become more customer-driven. This will have an impact on how PLM needs to be implemented. I wrote about this topic in my post: From a linear world to fast and circular. The modern digital enterprise has new roles and responsibilities and will eliminate roles and responsibilities that can be automated through a data-driven, rule-based approach. Therefore implementing PLM in a modern approach should be related (driven) by a business transformation and not the other way around!

Benefits realization

In the past two years, I have explained this story to all levels inside various organizations. And nobody disagreed. Redefining the processes, redefining roles was the priority. And we need a team to help people to make this change – these people are change management experts. The benefits diagram from Gartner as shown below was well understood, and most companies agreed the ambition should be to the top curve, in any case, stay above the red curve

But often reality relates to the first cartoon. In the majority of the implementations I have seen the past two years, the company did not want to invest in change management, defining the new process and new roles first for an optimum flow of information. They spent the entire budget on software and implementation services. With a minimum of staff, the technology was implemented based on existing processes – no change management at all. Disappointing, as short-term thinking destroyed the long-term vision and benefits were not as large as they had been dreaming.

Without changing business processes and cultural change management, the PLM team will fight against the organization, instead of surfing on the wave of new business opportunities and business growth.

Conclusion

If your company is planning to implement modern PLM which implicit requires a business transformation, make sure cultural change management is part of your plan and budget. It will bring the real ROI. Depending on your company´s legacy, if a business transformation is a mission impossible, it is sometimes easier to start a new business unit with new processes, new roles and potentially new people. Otherwise, the benefits will remain (too) low from your PLM implementation.

I am curious to learn your experience related to (the lack) of change management – how to include it into the real scope – your thoughts ?

Addition:
As a reaction to this post, Oleg Shilovitsky wrote a related blog post: PLM and the death spiral of cultural change.  See my response below to this post as it will contribute to the understanding of this post

Oleg, thanks for contributing to the theme of cultural change. Your post illustrates that my post was not clear enough, or perhaps too short. I do not believe PLM is that difficult because of technology, I would even claim that technology is a the bottom of my list of priorities. Not stating it is not important, but meaning that when you are converging with a company to a vision for PLM, you probably know the kind of technologies you are going to use.

The highest priority to my opinion is currently the business transformation companies need to go through in order to adapt their business to remain relevant in a digital world. The transformation will require companies to implement PLM in a different manner, less silo-oriented, more focus on value flows starting from the customer.

Working different means cultural change and a company needs to allocate time, budget and energy to that. The PLM implementation is supporting the cultural change not driving the cultural change.

And this is the biggest mistake I have seen everywhere. Management decides to implement a new PLM as the driver for cultural change, instead of the result of cultural change. And they reason this is done, is most of the time due to budget thinking as cultural change is ways more complex and expensive than a PLM implementation.