Change Management for a Global System Upgrade

Challenge

One of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, with operations in more than 60 countries, was upgrading its T&E system. Moving from an in-house system to a SaaS (hosted) environment required coordination across internal stakeholders, including Data Privacy, Compliance, and Production Support teams. Multiple T&E help desks needed training. Diverse business groups required specially tailored communications and training on the upgraded system and revised policies. Staff needed to be informed about and trained on new system functionality, including online travel booking and a mobile application. In addition, the internal communications team had recently been scaled back and lacked the resources to manage this effort.

Approach: Think + Do

Acquis first organized a structure for project team meetings to ensure appropriate levels of communication for the governance board, interfacing system teams, and project management office. We developed global Change Management toolkits for end users, set up back offices and help desks to outline change management activities, and organized communications and training materials across all markets. Next, we created end user communications and frequently asked questions (FAQs) resources, and coordinated the review process with Corporate Communications and the project management office. We helped the training team, ensure that Web Based Training and Quick Reference Guides were updated appropriately. Lastly, we modified the internal websites that hosted project FAQs, and we translated market materials, training materials, and communications.

Results

Acquis enabled a successful and smooth transition to the upgraded T&E system. Overall we ensured all 60 countries had the necessary information to go live with the upgraded system before the go live date (including detailed cutover activities, back office processes, and end user communications and training), delivered training and communication tool-kits for the help desk, end users, and back offices which ensured consistent messaging to users as the new system was deployed across each market, and achieved high user acceptance of the new system through our communications plan, FAQs, and training materials.