Camden Delta

Resources

City of Hope

City of Hope: Helping to Transform a Leading Research and Healthcare Provider

Background

In 2013, City of Hope marked its centennial year with a new strategic plan, articulating objectives for the first decade of its next century. The strategy identified several operational enablers to ensure the achievement of strategic objectives, including significant investment in data/analytics/information management capabilities as well as development of efficient work processes to reduce the cost of doing business. Translating the strategy into actionable plans, the organization identified 11 major technology upgrades/implementations to be rolled out in 2013, to be led by their Project Management Office (PMO).

Among the 11 technology implementations: Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), a business management system that integrates processes and manages data from finance, supply chain, human capital and grants. Camden Delta had been engaged by City of Hope a year earlier to provide organizational change management (OCM) support for other HR-related change initiatives. Based on that relationship, City of Hope engaged Camden Delta to partner with their PMO to design and lead a comprehensive OCM strategy to prepare the enterprise for ERP adoption.

Our Process and Methodology

Camden Delta—one of five external resources engaged for the ERP project—worked with the PMO to design an OCM strategy that would fit the corporate culture of City of Hope and synchronize with the project schedule mapped out by the technology partners. We kicked off the project with change management discovery workshops to identify stakeholder groups, articulate the key change impacts for each group, the benefits and challenges they’d likely perceive, an assessment of their readiness, and optimum modes for communicating with each group identified. The information gathered was used as the basis for creating a comprehensive OCM strategy, which became the blueprint for engaging and preparing the organization for ERP go-live.

OCM strategy for the 12-month project began with building general awareness, later augmented with training for targeted end-users, and concluded with designing a command center to support the enterprise at go-live.  Along the way Camden Delta facilitated weekly meetings with functional track leads to drive execution of the OCM blueprint and manage production of the agreed-upon deliverables. These included cadenced presentations to executives and directors, development of an ERP website, and regular assessment/reporting of OCM health and recommendations for recalibration. A unique component of the strategy was the engagement of about 50 employees as ERP Change Ambassadors—representatives from across the enterprise who met monthly to receive updates/messaging to share back to their stakeholder groups, and served as 2-way conduits to provide employee feedback to the ERP project leadership.

Tangible Benefits/Results

Project leadership reported that this rigorous and systematic approach to OCM resulted in a much greater appreciation of the work effort and resources required to adequately equip the organization to embrace and adapt to significant change initiatives. PMO leadership adopted the approach as one that will become the new standard. The insight gained about the critical importance of effective OCM to successful adoption of enterprise change initiatives will be leveraged by the PMO and executives in making future decisions and in project resource planning.

Why Camden Delta

Camden Delta proposed an OCM strategy planning process that would engage project leadership, functional leads and SMEs in its creation and review for approval. This process allowed us to craft an approach that aligned with the corporate culture and later positioned us to respond with flexibility as the project unfolded. Our solution included not only onsite expertise, but also provided a real-time learning experience in what it takes to effectively prepare the organization for significant enterprise change initiatives.

Camden Delta was quickly viewed as the go-to expert resource for comprehensive organizational change management support. Our highly collaborative work style coupled with deep respect for our client’s culture ensured a great partnership for the long term.

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