Top 3 Change Management Guidelines for Your CCM Migration

Tuesday, Jun 28th 2022
Top 3 Change Management Guidelines for Your CCM Migration

Recently, I wrote about how Quadient’s new AI, ML and NLP-based technology can help in the RFP writing process by reading through thousands, or even millions of your customer communications to analyze how your applications can be best grouped as you create the customer communication portfolio of the future. Now that we have some rough architectural diagrams and a good feel for rules and content reassembly, let’s explore how that helps you get to the next phase of your journey.

The next phase of your journey will require calming a lot of people down. There are bound to be people within your business who are freaked out about a change like this. But, there is room for everybody. While Quadient strives to remove 30% to 50% of the time and effort from a transformation, our clients need the cooperation of their peers to make it happen. Let’s talk about some of the people who may be freaking out about the changes that are coming. Let’s talk about three roles; the person who built the last system, the corporate information architecture team, and the compliance team.

1. Involve those who built the legacy system(s)

The person who built the system may feel an impending sense of loss of control, as they know the system at a detailed level. They understand how it operates. They may not see some of the flaws, because they have worked around them for years. To engage these people, it is important to let them know the value of what they do is not linked to that specific legacy system. Their value is in combining rules, data and content in a way that reaches customers accurately. It helps to explain how a new system will reduce some of the re-keying parts of their job, tracking down business people, and double-checking rollout with compliance people.

2. Get buy-in from the corporate information architecture team

The corporate information architecture team is fearing change because they are too busy. They are so busy, in fact, that they don’t have time to save themselves time. They fear that a new solution will destabilize their operation. But, a digital-first CCM system can often replace many systems. This reduces the amount of data integration points, decreases opportunities for breaches and simplifies the process for making changes needed by customer communication content experts. Explaining the post-transformation world helps, because much of the complexity can be removed from the architecture, enabling better control.

3. Engage compliance early

Lastly, we’ll look at the compliance team. The compliance team is designed to freak out about change. With an AI deriving most of the rules, there is a chance that the output studied potentially overlooked a rule. While this can be covered in testing, the current state often has vestigial rules from regulations that changed 5, 10 or even 20 years ago. Most compliance teams overestimate the state of their regulatory compliance because they underestimate the amount of old code that still remains in their old applications.

As you consider your digital transformation, think of the people who may object. They have valid criticisms, valuable insights and information critical to your success. Quadient’s advice is to build a strong internal team and confront these questions early. When everyone understands the project from their perspective, the project has a better chance of success.

Want to know more? Check out Scott Draeger's video series, "Migration Made Easy" below.