No change manager has ever delivered an ERP benefit

Business leaders deliver benefits. Or nobody does. Two programmes show the difference.

The first was sponsored by the CEO of a major bank. Every one of her executives was in the room from day one, each tasked with a slice of the profit target and given free rein to deliver it. The result: a NZ$500m profit uplift.

The second was a finance transformation at a major technology provider. Sponsored by the CEO and CFO. But the other executives were deliberately excluded to speed things up, and the existing finance managers were kept out of operating model design because they weren't seen as forward-thinking. Years later it is still running, and has never really got past the business case.

Same ambition. Opposite outcome. The difference was who owned it.

Adoption and benefits are questions of business performance. That responsibility sits with business leaders. Not the project. Not the change team.

1. Put a name against every benefit

Before the programme starts, every benefit in the business case has a business leader whose objective is to deliver it. Not sponsor it. Deliver it. If it lives in the PMO or the change plan, it belongs to nobody.

Check: can each of your executives tell you the number they own?

2. Let those leaders design the future

The people who own the benefits drive operating model and future-state design, and they bring their managers with them. Excluding the people who will run the new world to move faster is a trade you always lose: six months quicker, years slower. Adoption is not a communications plan. It is managers who helped design the process asking their teams to follow it.

Check: who was in the design room, and who was kept out?

3. Govern outcomes, not the Gantt chart

Most steering committees spend the hour on schedule, budget and scope. On the programmes I've seen double profitability, the leaders spend it on how they are driving the business outcomes. Whether the project is a month late matters far less than whether the strategy is landing.

And go-live is not the finish line. The programme team leaves after hypercare. The benefit owners stay, because the buck still stops with them.

Check: what did your last steering committee actually talk about?

Executive ownership, choosing your SI, scope discipline, data migration, adoption. None of it is hard. All of it is unforgiving.