Managing Change Effectively: Lessons From The Front Line | Propulsion 2024

Many companies striving to optimize business processes with technology run into the same problem: most humans don’t like change. Upgrading to the latest and greatest software won’t do anything if end users don’t adopt it, which is why more companies are asking product, quality, and IT teams to also be change management leaders. 

This session explores the lessons learned by three change agents who successfully launched new technology solutions and updated business processes to help their companies scale efficiently. The discussion centers on the teams, strategies, and best practices used to modernize their companies’ processes — lessons we can all use to better navigate the constant changes in modern manufacturing.

Panelists include:

• ‍Lori Lundergan, Senior IT Business Analyst, Allegro MicroSystems
• Diana Sehawneh, Quality Project Coordinator, MaryRuth Organics
• Kirstin Sims, Assoc. Director, Quality, Guardant Health.
• Moderated by Dario Ambrosini, CMO at Propel Software.

Key Insights

LORI:

"I wish we had a playbook. We were implenting outside the IT world. Instead, we broke the mold, we said we're going to communicate often and ask the questions very clearly."

"You want the louder folks in the room on your team, even if those people are saying they don't like the change. Because once you have them on your team, you're setting yourself up for a better launch process, and a better optimization and utilization of your solution."

DIANA:

"I met with every team to hear all their pain points, and how I can optimize their solutions. After I had all of those summaries, I was able to find the connections for their processes within Propel. Every little initiative that I focused on, it really brought our teams together and helped them understand how we can utilize Propel to its full efficiency and its capabilities."

"In leveraging Propel, we've seen an increase in collaboration. Having all of our technical teams able to collaborate in one space and really understand how we're going to move forward. For example, we do change orders for our products quite a bit. A few months ago, we were taking about a week to get through a label change order. Now we've gotten it to 30 minutes. We're launching our products so fast now with this collaboration."

KIRSTIN:

"Buy-in is so important. As we've gone through our Propel journey, what we're learning is to continuously have those conversations with your management, continuously talk about the challenges as well as the wins, and they're both equally important."

"You're hiring people for their expertise, not necessarily their industry. How can they come in and challenge the norms? How can they help you grow, become better? Having those conversations really drives change. If you have a cultural shift, you can grow exponentially faster than if you don't have that. You're getting people buying in from the beginning."

Click here to watch all the inspiring speakers and panelist presentations from Propulsion 2024.