Whether you’re implementing a cloud platform, an HCM system, or a digital collaboration tool, the promise of a unified solution often clashes with the practical reality of rolling it out across diverse regions. What works in one country may stumble in another due to a variety of factors.
The key to a successful rollout? Start by building alignment early.
Aligning Early for Global Success
If your enterprise intends to implement new technology that will be a “single version of the truth around the globe,” consider dedicating time on the front end of a project for team members to discuss and align on:
- How to achieve a unified strategy for implementation, change management, and training.
- A templated approach for all workstreams, across geographies, with slight adjustments where required by local law, custom, or culture.
Most technology implementation methodologies—whether agile, waterfall, or hybrid—include a “prep” phase followed by a blueprint or explore phase. These early stages of a project timeline are when representatives from all project workstreams, consultants, and employees collaborate on a vision, strategy, and goals for the rollout.
During visioning sessions, facilitators should ask questions in a way that allows for a unified strategy and global template to be shaped while acknowledging and noting local differences that will need to be accounted for.
Local Factors That Can Derail a Global Rollout
To ensure a successful global rollout, project teams must assess and address local factors that can influence adoption and execution. By identifying these factors early, organizations can proactively build them into the global strategy and template, making space for flexibility without compromising alignment.
#1. Digital Skill Levels
A successful digital transformation depends on end-user adoption. To ensure the greatest adoption of technology, training and performance support content must be accessible and understandable by the intended audiences.
This means accurately assessing digital skill levels by role and location well in advance of training. Conducting a data-driven survey allows the training team to acknowledge and address skill gaps ahead of time where possible and to design content for the appropriate literacy level of each group of learners.
#2. Change Fatigue
Change fatigue is real, not imagined. Ensure that your organizational change management (OCM) team has visibility outside the project into all workplace changes that are impacting workers around the globe, whether technology- or policy-driven. If one doesn’t already exist, OCM should suggest and contribute to a shared corporate calendar that notes when and where technology and policy changes will impact users and locations across the enterprise.
#3. Local Workplace Culture
Acknowledge and be sensitive to cultural differences that intersect with the work environment at sites around the globe. Locally observed holidays, shift schedules, and seasonal weather may impact the availability of workers to meet with the project team. Likewise, those same factors may demand that a “standard” project training schedule be modified from place to place. Taking time to build and engage change champions and super user networks at each site will help a project team identify and address the unique factors associated with each site or region.
#4. Labor and Legal Requirements
Local work rules are influenced and dictated by federal, state/province, and local labor laws, as well as works council and union rules. Ensure that your project team leaders (including but not limited to OCM and training) work with HR and bargaining unit representatives so that legalities are understood and built into OCM and training plans and timelines.
#5. Language and Communication Needs
Local language needs and fluency will influence the project’s training approach and the rate of adoption.
Key questions for OCM and training teams to consider in their respective assessments:
- Will the new technology user interface be available in all local languages, or is it being deployed in a single common language?
- Do any impacted global sites hire workers who have low or no fluency in the language of the technology user interface?
- If fluency is an issue, should communications, training, and performance support be translated into multiple languages for easier consumption by users? What tools or third parties will need to be secured to deliver high-quality translation in accordance with the project timeline?
Engage Early, Listen Often
To successfully deploy new technology globally, project teams and sponsors should establish processes for collecting and responding to questions and concerns from impacted locations and multiple levels of the organization. A forward-thinking project team engages local leaders and employees early and throughout the project lifecycle and adjusts based on their needs and feedback.
About the Authors
