The first few months after implementing a new reporting platform is spent on change management — and silencing the critics

The platform that I’m running is the second large scale reporting platform that I’ve ran during my career. I ran the global commercial reporting system for a large pharmaceutical company for 3 years. Now I run a global platform for a SaaS company.

In the first few months (or years), a lot of time is spent trying to convince people that the data is correct. There is no avoiding this. While I am far from perfect, my track record is pretty good. I’ve found that during the first while, there are many reporting experts that come out of the woodworks, and their soul purpose in life is to prove you wrong.

Often, these could be the owners of the reporting system that I am replacing. It’s just human nature. Whether consciously doing it or not, they feel animosity toward the new system that is replacing their baby, and all the years of sweat and blood they’ve poured into it. The first step is overcoming this animosity is to invest additional time with these legacy system owners, and let them see the value of the new system. For example, as the new system typically uses newer tech and reduces technical baggage, it often is much more efficient. Sell to the legacy owner that they no longer have to spend days and days manually crunching numbers in each reporting cycle. If they aren’t stuck in the trenches, this feels up their and their team’s time to actually provide more business value.

Then there are people who are well intentioned. In their past work life, they’ve ran some smaller scale reporting system, and they don’t understand why a global system cannot do all of the little things that their old system used to do. Time is required for change management, to explain that the purpose of a global reporting system is not to cater to every need. It is to cater to the needs of the mass majority of people. For example, it provides 90% of the functionality that 90% of end users need. We do not run a global system to cater to a specific local business rule.

Then there are people that spend a lot of time trying to prove that the new system is wrong. I would get emails that looks like the person spent 2 hours writing up a complex scenario. In these cases, the best resolution is not to just dismiss their concerns. I would reply with how the current system calculates the metric in detail, and kindly point out a flaw in their methodology without getting personal. Anyone that puts in 2 hours writing something up, typically appreciates a very detailed response back.