How to Get Ready for Salesforce Change Management?

The mistake we commonly witness with our clients is: trying to initiate Salesforce change management post the change has taken firm roots. The change management procedure begins prior to that, in anticipation of what is coming. Just like the training needed before opting to run a marathon. You can't go the distance if you are short of prep work. The preparation phase comprises building your customised strategic approach to change management. The preparation phase comprises:

Holding a change assessment: What are you planning to change? Why? Which stakeholders are involved?

Having a risk evaluation: What about the risks involved, and the way to mitigate them? Alternatively, what are the risks of not changing the status quo?

Building a comprehensive change management strategy: What about your communication, adoption, and training strategies? Have you created your attack plan?

This preparation phase is akin to the project planning stage of any project. In case you wish to assure user adoption and performance, it’s ideal to opt for a robust plan that you will check and adapt in your entire initiative.

5 Ways to draw an Effective Salesforce Change Management Strategy

1. Set up a change management team and network

Begin with your internal team. They know everything about your digital transformation and the way it affects your organization, partners, and customers. Allot clear cut roles and responsibilities within that team, including:

Team Members

Executive Sponsor: He or she can clarify about vision and reason for change, assisting in eliminating obstacles pertaining to reluctance.

Change Management Lead: Daily lead for all plans and activities

Communication Lead: Builds and implement internal communication plan

Training Lead: Plans and handles all training and support activities

Change Champions: Offer feedbacks on change activities and enables adoption among team members

The first step showcases buy-in to the use of change management by validating the engagement of internal team members and realizing that with time and dedication desired results will also happen.

2. Assess initial change preparedness

Now, the time is to assess your readiness regarding new technology. Just think why you’re effecting the change, and the consequence of the change so you can have a smooth transition. So ask yourself:

What is the prevailing culture of your organization?

What are your business objectives behind this scheme?

Do you have an executive sponsor, and is your leadership team in sync with this vision and business objectives?

How well this would aid your organization? What about your team members and business units?

What will it change specifically, and how will it affect your employees and customers?

How internal procedures have to change consequently? Who will it impact? 

What is the magnitude of this change? How has your organization handled the change in the past? Will your team reject or accept this change?

How will your organization communicate and hold training? What all worked in the past and what hasn't?

3. Develop your standard Salesforce change management strategy and plan

Now think about the effect of the changes you’ll be effecting and how they discharge externally from one unit to another, both positively and negatively. Then you need to make a plan to deal with the change, dissected by specific tasks, dates, and owners aligned with your project phases. Inventively involve your stakeholders via surveys, interviews, and workshops, including customers and partners if needed, to verify and improve your knowledge about their needs, expectations, and issues.

4. Define your internal and external interaction strategy and plan

No matter what, communication is vital but more so in this scenario. This guarantees adequate help from every stakeholder, acceleration of user engagement, buy-in, and adoption.

You have to ensure that the apt messages are given to the right people at the appropriate time from the right person. For this, you have to first display your communication intent. What will be the regularity of your communication with internal stakeholders? What all information do they need to know (leave out those info that are not needed) What will be the best format? 

Next, how are you going to communicate with your stakeholders? Delineate the medium that would reach them smoothly on the basis of your organization. This would seem like a project-centric Slack channel, company-wide emails, intranet, or meetings.

Factor in these four communication initiatives to keep everyone on track, beginning with high-level messaging to wider stakeholder audiences and shifting towards in depth communications to those most directly affected: Awareness, understanding, adoption and reinforcement.

5. Develop a basic training strategy

As for the reinforcement phase, you have to execute training and assistance, both for current employees, but also for new team members while they join. Be ready for this by evaluating business unit centric personas and roles within your organization, such as requisite skills, knowledge, and tools every role demands.

Once you develop your strategy, you would like to:

• Find your objectives for every role and what they must learn
• Define what training comprises and how it’s offered
• Make a strategy for certain format and media, such as written collateral, recorded videos, or in-person/virtual sessions, and the way you will implement them
• Once you're through with these five steps, you will be game for implementation.