I have already touched on my opinion regarding the need to manage change processes associated with a new or upgraded HRIS and my surprise regarding the number of organisations that appear to underestimate challenges in this area. If you agree with me that organisations need to in fact allocate significant time and monetary resources to manage the change then the next decision for HR to make concerns who is best equipped to manage the change?
It appears that many vendors, including SAP believe that organisational change is most effective when it is lead and managed internally and such organisations should educate themselves about change management and the activities that could be undertaken. In contrast, the number of available consultancy organisations that can be contracted to assist with this area appears to be increasing.
As always there are advantages and disadvantages associated with both of this approaches. I would be interested in hearing more about your opinions regarding who is best suited to manage change- employees or consultants- and also some of the advantages or disadvantages which you think are associated.
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Some advantages of external consultants are:
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- Objective, independent away from internal power politics
However, they are:
- Lack of familiarity of the client and need time to warm
- Cost issue is usually daunting to be considered.
Internal consultants are familiar with organization but they have the following inherent weakness:
- Lack of experience
- Compromised by power relations
- Hard to be objective
- Cost of being offline to the project
Usually an external-internal consultant mixed teams could combine the strength from both sides while minimizing the weakness:
- Skills and advantages can be combined
- Compatible with collaboration, skill and knowledge transfer
Finally, while technical challenges will always remain in implementing complex HRIS, the major challenge to successful implementation is more behavioral than technical. It requires an effective blend of good technical and good organizational skills.
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