Managing IT Change—A New Role for HR

• Author: Thomas R. Weirich,,Frank Andera,Art Worster
• Date: 01 November 2015
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/jcaf.22112
• Published date: 01 November 2015

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© 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Published online in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com).

DOI 10.1002/jcaf.22112

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Managing IT Change—A New

Role for HR

Art Worster, Thomas R. Weirich, and Frank Andera

This is the second

installment in a

series of articles

that will appear in

the coming issues of

JCAF. Art Worster

and his associates,

Thomas R. Weirich

and Frank Andera,

will address matters

that arise during and

after the implemen-

tation of integrated

IT applications in a

business.

Any implementa-

tion of an enterprise

resource planning

(ERP) application

will require changes

to virtually every business

process that define the back-

bone of the operations of any

business. In the first article of

this series we discussed some

of the conceptual or cognitive

changes that are necessary in

our thought process in order to

fully understand how and why

these changes are necessary.

Further,if we were to try and

understand the new data defi-

nition requirements without

changing the fundamental way

we think about things such

as master data, standardized

transactions, unintended con-

sequences, level of detail, and

others, we would end up losing

some of (or often much of) the

value that we can gain by using

these applications. In addi-

tion, however, to the general

changes in the thought process

that span the new applications,

there are some very specific

opportunities in dif-

ferent functions that

will provide oppor-

tunities to create

value for the enter-

prise. HR is one of

the most important

of these, and the one

that we will discuss

in this article. We

will discuss two dif-

ferent ways in which

HR is impacted and

then discuss how HR

can lead in develop-

ing programs to mit-

igate some impacts

on the rest of the

organization. While

much of this relates

to HR leaders, it is also the

case that most of what will be

discussed here will affect both

overall costs and ultimately the

financial success of both the

organization and the project

itself. Without the understand-

ing and active support of

senior financial leaders, most

of the HR programs discussed

here will simply flounder and

often fail to produce projected

results.

This article presents some new and different

approaches to workforce management during the

times of dramatic change introduced by the imple-

mentation of enterprise resource planning (ERP)

applications. It requires strong leadership from a

combination of both HR and financial leadership

to develop and sell these programs; and once the

outlines are developed, tools to monitor and pro-

mote program progress should be developed by

HR. We have found that often there is resistance to

these programs by functional leaders if two things

are missing: (a) HR fails to define and oversee the

program; and (b) financial leaders fail to develop

the cost benefit justification and do not manage

the cash reserves necessary to fund it.

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