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Why organizational change projects fail and how to prevent implementation disaster

Retail ERP Software /

New IT installations often fail. At least that’s the widespread belief surrounding organizational change initiatives today. One frequently cited study from the 1993 book Reengineering the Corporation goes as far as saying that as many as 70% of the organizations that undertake a reengineering effort do not achieve the dramatic results they intended. A more recent McKinsey survey of more than 1,500 executives who had undertaken a significant change effort in the past five years found that only 38% of respondents said “the transformation was ‘completely’ or ‘mostly’ successful at improving performance. After two decades of hearing about high failure rates related to change, it’s unsurprising that business leaders are wary of organizational change projects. Organizational psychologist Nick Tasler explained that these negative biases can create a toxic self-fulfilling prophecy. “When a change project falls a day behind schedule, if leaders and employees believe that successful change is an unlikely outcome, they will regard this momentary setback as the dead canary in the coalmine of their change initiative. (Never mind the fact that three other initiatives are still on time or ahead of schedule),” he wrote in an article for Harvard Business Review. “Suddenly, employees disengage en masse and then the change engine begins to sputter in both perception and reality.” Yes, change is hard, and complex IT implementation projects, particularly ERP installations, can be particularly challenging. But it doesn’t mean they are doomed to failure. So where do you start? How can you choose the right technology for your retail business, and ensure that the implementation project runs as smoothly as possible and you get the most from your investment? Here are some of the main causes for failure in any organizational change initiative, and how can you prevent them from happening: Mistake #1: Failure to plan Issue: An outdated legacy system is impacting business performance, and it needs replacing quickly. In their rush to get the project going, business management jump straight into the implementation without taking the time to develop a well thought-out organizational change management plan. Solution: Don’t be tempted to cut corners in your planning. Analyze your business, decide what should be prioritized, and understand all the different ways the project will impact your routines at every stage of the process. “Companies should start by analyzing their current and future requirements and processes,” says Gunnar Ingimundarson, Chief Consulting Officer at LS Retail. “How many software solutions are they currently using, and what are they used for? Map out the disparate solutions in the stack, alongside their dependencies and interconnections. The next step is to figure out where they can draw the biggest – or quickest – benefits. Is your POS system not generating the information you need on stock levels and product visibility? Or, are there integrations that repeatedly cause problems or break down? Do you experience missing data? Identify the area(s) where a new system would bring immediate value in terms of savings or returns. That’s where you should start, and that should determine your priorities.” Once the priorities are set, break the project down into manageable chunks, from pilot phase to initial implementation to company-wide rollout. Consider when it’s most appropriate to start each phase of the installation so you won’t place unnecessary strain on your business during busy times. Mistake #2: Key stakeholders aren’t onboard, or have unrealistic expectations Issue: Management want the new technology in place quickly and only focus on the end goals. They get frustrated by how long the project is taking and threaten to pull the plug. Or they wonder why the new software isn’t being adopted widely and successfully when they failed to communicate the changes to everybody in the business and get company-wide buy in. Solution: All stakeholders need to be committed to the project’s success right from the beginning, and to clearly understand the project’s scope and goals. “Internal resistance can kill even the best implementation project,” says Eric Miller, Regional Director for the Americas at LS Retail, building on his 13 years of experience in software implementations. “Get the buy-in from all stakeholders from the start, and make sure that the goals, objectives and expected end results of the project are clear and communicated from you to the stakeholders, and from the stakeholders to all the customer parties involved. It never pays off to sell a dream you can’t deliver on.” Bring together personnel from different departments to understand their requirements and what outcomes they hope to achieve from the implementation. Similarly, they need to understand how much time should be devoted to a project like this and ensure project teams are given sufficient time to carry out the work. Set realistic timeframes from the start, and ensure everyone knows exactly what’s required of them. Mistake #3: Unforeseen changes throw the project off track Issue: Even the best prepared projects encounter hurdles along the way, but if unforeseen issues arise and major milestones are missed, it can be tempting to throw in the towel and deem the entire project a failure. Solution: Know that when you’re dealing with a large-scale IT implementation, it’s hard to plan for every eventuality. Be willing to adapt and take a different approach if it ultimately means the project will be a success. “What was deemed to be the best approach initially may need to change – this might even happen after the pilot is completed. I have seen companies that went through multiple pilots before finding the right balance. It’s a learning process, and it’s never over,” says Miller. It’s worth learning everything you can from the pilot implementation. Instead of rushing on to roll out store #2, take a moment to see how the system is working and to identify any issues that you couldn’t have planned for in your testing environment. Success comes to those who take a considered approach. Mistake #4: Picking the wrong technology partner Issue: It may be tempting to go for the cheapest technology provider, but cheapest upfront may not necessarily deliver the long-term business value you hoped for. You quickly realize they can’t help you achieve your outcomes, because they lack drive,

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6 tips to help you win at omni-channel

Retail ERP Software /

Even if retailers have been talking about investing in omni-channel for over a decade, many still lack basic omni-channel capabilities. For example, only 5 percent of retailers can successfully give consumers the ability to start and finish a sale in their preferred channel, Luxury Daily reports. But consumers aren’t waiting for retailers to get their act together. In the past year, almost 9 out of 10 (88%) shoppers have researched and selected options online before heading out to a store, the Ecommerce Foundation reports. And when in-store, Google reports, 50% of them turned to the internet: to research products they’ll then discuss with the sales staff, to remind themselves of what to buy, to see product specs, and more. Retailers have no time to waste. They need to be where their customers are, with answers to their questions, smooth and simple shopping journeys, and timely information and support. In your journey on improving your omni-channel strategy, here are seven points on which you should concentrate your efforts: 1. Be consistent with your branding There’s nothing worse for an omni-channel brand than to offer a disconnected experience across the different channels. Successful brands are consistent in both brand image (think color scheme, corporate story, style, products, voice) and quality of service (customer support, return policies, personalization, product suggestions) in-store, on their website, on the loyalty app and on social media. International coffee company Nespresso is a great example of cohesive visual branding. The graphic design and color palette are kept consistent throughout the channels, and they function as a common thread that guides every step of the customer journey, from e-commerce website, to mobile app, to the confirmation e-mail customers receive after placing an order — all the way to the package that arrives to the customer’s doors. If your offline presence is hip, youthful and colorful, but your app is dull and offers few options to interact with products; if you emphasize customer service, but then don’t respond timely (or don’t reply at all!) to customer queries on Twitter; if customers receive different information depending on which representative they contact – you will confuse and lose customers. 2. Unify the sales channels Customers want to be able to see on your website whether the latest smartphone model is available in gold in a specific store. They want to go on your e-commerce, and add to their cart that art deco lamp they saw in your shop while they were on holiday. They want to send back at their convenience the too-tight shoes they bought in one of your store locations. These are all common requests – and yet, too many retailers can’t fulfil them. That’s because many of them are still using separate best-of-breed, badly-integrated solutions. “Many retailers have pieced together disparate systems and processes to try and create a holistic shopping environment, but it really doesn’t provide what the customer is looking for,” says Kathleen Fischer, director of marketing at Boston Retail Partners, Boston. The result is Inability to see what products are available in real time – or where they are located; Inability to accept returns across channels; Risk of selling items that are not in stock; Inability to offer highly in-demand services like click & collect, ordering from store, or online inventory search. The only way you can fulfil these demands is by implementing technology that gives you centralized visibility and control over your stock, locations and sales. A unified commerce platform like LS Central gives you the visibility you need to know how many items are still available and where they are located exactly, and lets you easily accept exchanges and returns across your whole retail network. 3. Be honest and clear Research shows that seventy percent of online shoppers abandon their shopping cart before finalizing their purchase. The most common cause? Unclear or excessive shipping costs, which often become apparent too late in the buying process. Successful retailers display their sales conditions in clear and visible format on their website. Take, for example, sportswear and outdoors retailer Transa. When you browse the product selection, the key sales conditions (delivery time, shipping costs, return conditions) are stated clearly next to each item. Buyers know the conditions of the sale before they have added an item to their cart, so they can make an informed decision early in the shopping journey. To decrease the chance of shopping cart abandonment, create a relationship of trust with your customers, and be upfront about shipping prices and times, shipment restrictions and special conditions. You don’t want to tell a customer that their country is not eligible for delivery when they are ready to check out a full cart of products. 4. Let customers check product availability According to Forrester research, 71 percent of customers expect to be able to see available inventory online. Leading retailers are taking note, and even taking it one step further: on its e-commerce website, IKEA lists where each item is available alongside the quantity left in stock in each store. Even if you don’t want to go to such lengths, your product listing should at least: Be complete and updated. Customers should be able to see in which location the product they want is available, in their preferred variant. If you use a unified commerce system, you can maintain information in one database, and then distribute it to the e-commerce, POS and back office. This way, both staff and customers can access the same real-time data, and if the inventory changes, for example if an item is sold, this is instantly reflected on all touchpoints. Include detailed product information. When shopping for items online, customers don’t have the touch-and-feel element. Make up for it by including the item materials (or ingredients), any special care warnings, warranty information, and special return policies. If you stock similar products, you should ensure that you give enough information so consumers can make an informed choice. Better yet, include a comparison table. Feature clear, high-quality pictures. According to research by Field Agent, 83% of consumers believe product images are very important when selecting and purchasing a product. If you can, consider including videos: according to a survey by Wyzowl, 80% of people say that product videos give them more confidence when purchasing a product online. From showing

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How the self-service trend is transforming restaurants

Restaurant Management ERP /

Modern consumer places a huge value on convenience. A recent report by the National Retail Federation found that 97% of consumers have backed out of a purchase just because it was inconvenient for them. And in quick service restaurants, figures show that lengthy queues can be off-putting: almost three out of four guests say they would leave if there were seven people in line. More than nine out of ten said they would go elsewhere if there were more than 10 people queuing before them. Taking the example of supermarkets, which have successfully alleviated queues with self-service checkouts, fast food brands are now adopting touch-screen self-service kiosks. And as more report the positive impact of these kiosks, adoption is rapidly taking off. The rise of self-service kiosks McDonald’s now has self-service kiosks in all 14,000 of its US restaurants. When it began rolling them out in 2017, it said its intention was to enhance the customer experience by speeding up ordering time, reducing human error and allowing for easier order customizations. Almost three years on, McDonald’s is living proof of the success of self-service kiosks. During its 2019 Q2 earnings call, CEO Steve Easterbrook said the chain is seeing impressive incremental sales rises from its use of kiosks. “As we convert the restaurants, we’re getting an incremental sales lift from that, some of which will come through growing and increasing use of the self-order kiosks where we generate higher average checks,” he said. Interestingly, not only are self-service kiosks delivering on consumer desire for ultimate convenience, they’re altering behavior too. As the use of the technology grows, self-ordering has been demonstrated to boost sales by increasing the average order size per customer, while at the same time lowering costs in the restaurant by improving efficiency. There are some compelling statistics to illustrate the impact. When the Dodgers Stadium concession stands in the US tried out new self-service kiosks, the average order size increased by 20%. Similarly, Subway noted that kiosks encourage more consumers to purchase add-ons and generally spend more. The traditional experience Lee heads to his local Easy Burger for lunch. He isn’t a regular customer so he doesn’t know the menu well. It’s a busy Friday afternoon in the restaurant and as he joins the queue he starts scanning the menu board behind the counter to see what he would like. When he gets to the front, he still isn’t quite sure what he wants and spends a few more moments deciding. By this point he’s a bit flustered. He doesn’t want to hold up the queue, so he quickly orders the standard burger meal with no cheese and large fries. It’s noisy in the kitchen, and the server asks Lee to repeat his order. She presses the buttons on the cash register to input Lee’s choice, and politely waits for him to decide which drink he’d like before finalizing the order and taking his payment. This all takes place in the midst of noises coming from the kitchen, voices of customers waiting, and general pressure from people standing in line waiting for their turn. It’s clear to see that there are several opportunities for mistakes, delays and general frustration from both the customer and the cashier. The self-service experience What would the same scenario look like with a self-service kiosk? Again, Lee heads to Easy Burger to pick up his lunch. It’s busy, but Lee heads to a self-service kiosk, where he doesn’t have to queue to place his order. Lee hasn’t actually used one of these kiosks before, but because it looks just like a large version of his mobile phone and all the menu items are clearly labelled, he has no qualms about trying out the technology. With nobody standing behind him putting pressure on him to quickly place his order, Lee feels he can take the time he needs to choose his lunch. He scrolls through the menu and takes in the appealing pictures of food, drinks, and add-on items. He ends up trying out a new meal deal and customizes his burger (no pickles, extra onions and mushrooms), adding the curly fries with cheese – they look too good not to try them. It’s a pleasant, stress free experience. After selecting the items, Lee taps his credit card on the contactless card reader and heads to the counter to wait for his order. He can clearly see his order on the screen above him, so he know there are five orders before his – a bit of a wait, but not too much, before it’s ready. A few minutes later, his number is called out. He picks up his food and heads straight to a clean, empty table. That’s another added bonus. With fewer employees required at the counter, they can spend more time in the kitchen, speeding up food preparation, and on the floor, making sure the restaurant stays clean and tidy. Embracing the trend with LS Central Restaurants are embracing the trend in different ways. Some are buying self-service kiosks running systems and interfaces separate from what is used across the rest of restaurant. This decision entails a lot of extra work, as these systems will have to be integrated with the IT setup, and then updated and maintained individually over time. Thankfully, there is another option. If you selected a unified restaurant management solution like LS Central, you enable customers to order and check out for themselves using the exact same POS system that cashiers use at the manned tills. This wouldn’t be possible with many other restaurant management systems because they are too complicated, and can’t be used effectively without previous training. Not LS Central. There are more benefits, too. You can easily amend and customize the looks of the kiosk to suit your needs. Just as you would customize the POS, you can change interface and menu options to suit your branding, and apply the changes across all your locations – no headache of setting up the brand look for each individual kiosks. Simple menu customization also means you have the

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Microsoft Azure AIOps dashboard displaying AI-powered monitoring, predictive failure alerts, and real-time infrastructure health.

Advancing Azure service quality with artificial intelligence: AIOps

Microsoft Azure Cloud Services /

INTRO Somewhere on Azure’s infrastructure, a disk was predicted to fail — and your workload was migrated off it before that failure ever happened. That’s not a hypothetical. It’s Azure AIOps, Microsoft’s use of AI and machine learning to detect, predict, and fix infrastructure problems before they become customer-facing outages. For a business evaluating cloud reliability, this matters less as an engineering curiosity and more as a straight answer to a practical question: why does Azure keep improving its uptime numbers year over year? Failures Get Predicted, Not Just Detected Traditional infrastructure monitoring tells you something broke. Azure’s hardware failure prediction model tries to catch it before it does — flagging disks, memory, and networking hardware likely to fail, then automatically live-migrating affected virtual machines to healthy nodes. The customer impact of a hardware failure, in the cases this catches, is zero downtime rather than an outage ticket. Faster VM Provisioning, Powered by Prediction Azure’s pre-provisioning system uses historical deployment patterns to predict what VM configurations customers are likely to request — and creates a pool of them in advance. When a matching request comes in, it’s assigned from that pool instead of built from scratch. The practical effect for a business is faster deployment latency, without needing to know any of the prediction modeling happening behind it. Incidents Get Resolved Before They Escalate Azure tracks incident response against three metrics: time to detect, time to engage, and time to mitigate. AI-driven anomaly detection — built to catch not just obvious spikes but slow-building patterns like memory leaks — feeds directly into routing the right engineering team to an issue immediately, and in some cases triggers automated fixes with no human step at all. For a business running production workloads, that translates to shorter, less frequent disruptions. Safe Rollouts Prevent Widespread Impact Microsoft rolls out infrastructure changes constantly, which creates real risk of a bad change spreading before anyone notices. An internal system (code-named Gandalf) analyzes rollout patterns to catch issues that surface hours or days later, flagging suspicious changes before they propagate further. This is part of why platform-wide incidents from routine updates are rare rather than common. What This Actually Means for Your IT Roadmap None of this requires action on your end — it’s infrastructure Microsoft operates on your behalf. What it does mean is that Azure’s reliability improvements aren’t marketing claims; they’re the output of a systematic prediction-and-automation investment, which is a reasonable thing to weigh when comparing cloud providers on uptime and reliability, not just price. Want to know how Azure’s reliability engineering translates to SLAs for your specific workload? Talk to Trident about your cloud infrastructure options. FAQ What is Azure AIOps?Azure AIOps is Microsoft’s use of AI and machine learning to predict, detect, and resolve infrastructure issues on Azure automatically — including hardware failure prediction, faster VM provisioning, and automated incident response. Does Azure AIOps require any setup from customers?No — it operates at Microsoft’s infrastructure level. Customers benefit from improved reliability and uptime without configuring anything themselves. How does Azure predict hardware failures before they happen?Microsoft Research and Azure built models that analyze disk, memory, and networking behavior to flag components likely to fail, then automatically migrate affected virtual machines to healthy hardware.

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Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Manufacturing dashboard displaying production planning, inventory, supply chain management, and quality control.

Manufacturing’s Biggest Inefficiency Isn’t the Plant Floor — It’s the Gap Between Systems

dynamics 365 business central, Microsoft Dynamics 365 /

INTRO A machine on the shop floor and a service technician in the field often work off completely different data — one sees production output, the other sees a support ticket, and neither sees the customer’s purchase history. Dynamics 365 for manufacturing exists to close exactly that gap, by ending the divide between CRM and ERP instead of running them as separate systems that happen to sit on the same network. Here are the six shifts that gap-closing actually produces on the ground. 1. Supply Chain Visibility That Goes Beyond a Dashboard Collecting and visualizing supply chain data across every location does more than create a nicer report — it changes how fast a disruption gets caught. Manufacturers using remote monitoring across distributed installations have shortened time-to-market by catching supply issues before they cascade into production delays, rather than discovering them after a shipment is already late. 2. Asset and Production Management, Consolidated Into One View When production oversight and real-time equipment monitoring sit in one system instead of three, manufacturers stop reacting to breakdowns and start resolving issues remotely before they cause downtime. This is the operational basis for near-continuous uptime models in equipment-heavy manufacturing — and it also opens a second revenue line: monitoring and proactive support sold as an ongoing service, not a one-time sale. 3. Customer Engagement Built on Usage Data, Not Guesswork Personalized service at scale requires predictive analytics and self-service options that are actually relevant to what a specific customer does with the product — not a generic contact form. Manufacturers with a connected sales-through-service platform can flag potential equipment issues before a customer notices a problem, while also tailoring offers based on that customer’s real purchasing and usage pattern. 4. Service Centers as a Profit Center, Not a Cost Center Falling costs for IoT sensors and mobile devices have made remote monitoring and proactive maintenance commercially viable additions to standard break/fix support — not just a premium add-on for enterprise accounts. Combining customer records, technician availability, and inventory into a single mobile-accessible system is what lets a service team actually deliver on that model instead of just theorizing it. The Data Advantage: Better Products, Not Just Better Service IoT-connected parts and equipment feed usage data back to engineering — which components fail early, which are over-built, how products actually get used in the field. That feedback loop is what shortens the cycle between a design flaw and a fix, rather than waiting for failure reports to pile up. 5. Technicians Who See the Full Job, Not Just the Ticket A 360-degree view of a customer’s asset and service history changes what a technician can do on-site — they’re working from context, not just a work order. Paired with machine learning that surfaces similar past cases, this turns troubleshooting into pattern-matching against real precedent instead of starting from zero on every call. 6. One System Connecting the Floor to the Front Office Manufacturers that unify production and project management data with CRM stop treating customer service and customer engagement as separate departments working from separate records. The practical result is service and recommendations grounded in what a customer has actually bought and experienced — not assumptions. Why Dynamics 365 Specifically Dynamics 365 for manufacturing removes the artificial line between CRM and ERP, running both on one system with embedded analytics rather than bolting a reporting layer on top of disconnected tools. For a mid-size manufacturer, this matters less as a technology upgrade and more as an operating model change — supply chain, service, and sales working from the same data instead of reconciling three versions of it. Curious what a unified CRM-ERP model would look like on your production floor? Talk to Trident about a Dynamics 365 manufacturing assessment.

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