“I see my role as being the advocate for the user community, ensuring they understand the value the tool is going to give them and working really hard to make sure they’re competent and capable of providing that value.”
On the 3rd episode of The Platform Rules: Digital Transformation for Product Companies, we chat about all things IT with guest Heather Multhaupt, VP of Information Systems and Product Change Processes at Alert Innovation.
Led by Propel CMO Dario Ambrosini, the wide-ranging discussion covers the intricacies of converging hardware and software business systems, the role of IT in product development, and how to handle resistance to change.
“I like to think of my group [the IT team] as the lubrication that makes for smooth, reliable operation of the system, and of the business. Without my team and the systems and processes they work so diligently to develop and rollout, there’s a lot of friction that makes it really difficult to do business.”
Alert Innovation is a leader in e-Grocery technology, building automated solutions for national brands like Walmart. Multhaupt and her team are integral to managing the cloud-based systems behind their product development process.
"Without a thoughtfully architected business system that can seamlessly facilitate handoffs between different stakeholders, the intention of the development gets lost.”
“Without a thoughtfully architected business system that can seamlessly facilitate the handoffs between these different stakeholders (including processes and policies to ensure data integrity), the intention of the development gets lost, communication becomes unreliable, and the ability to recreate a success is very difficult.”
In her career, Multhaupt has handled transitions from on-premise to cloud, and now from cloud to industry cloud solutions, so she’s no stranger to taming the natural resistance to change in the company users.
“I find that resistance to change is really a resistance to becoming less competent and being perceived as being slower. There are two mantras that I like to say again and again: “Worse before better” and, my favorite, “It will be okay.”
Click here to listen to the full episode, or hit play below.
