Organizational Change Management - Policy and Claims Systems replacement

They say about habits - When you take "H" out of a habit, "a bit" remains,
If then take "A" out, still "bit" remains,
If you then take "B" out, still "it" remains  - habits are hardwired.
If you teach a person to do something a certain way, no matter what are the repercussions, he will continue to do things the old way. I have seen this happen at several of my claims system implementations where people were asked (say), not to follow a long winded process to input claims, rather use the structured application process for this which was quick and easy, but people were hesitant to do that for multiple reasons. This brings us to our topic for today - "Change" and "Change Management".
Insurance Transformation projects (or any large projects for that matter) as such are pretty complex, with lots of factors in play such as - multiple systems to integrate, legacy data dependencies and statutory requirements and restrictions, business and competitive pressures etc. For all the Policy and Claims transformation projects that i have been, there is always and will be a need for change management.
For a multi million dollar project, involving hundreds of people, impacting hundreds even thousands of people in the insurance organizations, you cannot afford to ignore change, you have to make sure this change happens effectively and smoothly throughout the organization.

What is Change Management?
Change management is simply transitioning from current state to future state and addressing the problems that come along the way. The most important aspect in change management in 'Awareness'. This one factor changes the game altogether, An aware and trained organization accepts and adapts to change more easily than one that is not. Change Management is not just user training, but it also requires changing and shaping user attitudes and perceptions towards the change overall. Change Management begins from the time you start your project planning. First you have to identify the correct stakeholders, their roles in the organizations, how they can help shape and translate the change throughout the organization, followed by training needs, pilot roll out, issue resolution etc all goes hand in hand.

There are some factors that should definitely be considered for Change Management.

Perform a Organizational readiness study
Study the overall organizational perception towards the change, are they people open to change?, are they defensive?, subdued? not concerned?, worried? etc. Have a plan to address each of these areas by either one on one sessions or having regular meetings and get togethers to sort doubts. Remember it is very important that you have the buy in from your people on the change and they are not just 'sold' on the change..

Stakeholder study
As i mentioned earlier, after identifying individual stakeholders, perform an individual stakeholder study so as to understand their viewpoints and then produce a focused training material. There should be a detailed issue resolution process spelled out for the pre deployment and post deployment stage.

Develop your own change leaders
Executive and higher Managment cannot reach each and every person in the organization to explain the need to change. The organization has to identify, develop and nurture the right change torch bearers. I say, the 'right ones' because the change champion has to be very clear on what is changing and why. How is it going to benefit the organization in the long run.
These ideas have to be translated to all levels in organization, so that all involved are engaged and are a part of the whole change movement.
If they see any concerns, they should try to address those and if they cannot, bring it out to the top management.

Highlight the organizational directive
It is not enough for you as a project manager to provide your version of the change, but you have to focus on the overall organization objective and group direction. For instance in the Insurance world, organization direction is not to use the old excel sheets method to calcuate the reserve estimates or calculating policy rates, but use the application reserve setup, rating  worksheets etc. Do not use notes to capture the claims history, but use the data fields and elements to create and develop the claim file story.

Visual Training, Support and Learning
Sometimes as i mentioned above, it becomes very important to visually depict a particular paradigm shift (like showing the 200 MPH bullet train to travel from point 'A' to point 'B' rather than using the 70 MPH subway or in my world, using the highly structured and organized new policy and claims administration systems vs the old rigid legacy system with only notepad functionality).

Plan, plan and plan
Each organization has different dynamics at play in terms of different organizational structures, different executive priorities and politics. So this means you need a unique plan for your organization. A plan that is well though of, has bench marking and change tracking templates, regular communication meetings and bulletin board updates scheduled, undergoing a few levels of pilot testings and dry run implementations definitely helps.

Organizations that down play or underestimate the importance of change management, do so just because there is not enough awareness of the Change Management factors or the impending implications if it is not implemented or implemented incorrectly. It is the job of the C Level executives, Project Managers, Business executives to make sure that any implementation has minimal disruptions during the change imlementations and the change leaders are there to support the end user needs. The business is happy with the change and ultimately realise the application really does help them do their jobs better.