How Training and ERP System Formatting Can Impact User Adoption

If your company wants to get the most value out of your ERP software investment, you need to make sure everyone on your team actually uses it. Employees who resist change can be a roadblock to taking your organization to the next level.

So how can your company make sure that its new Acumatica business management system will be fully embraced by everyone?

Take Advice From the Experts

If you want to know how to deal with a problem, the best route is to get advice from those who have successfully handled the same challenge.

CAL Business Solutions is a practical, hardworking team that will give you honest advice, clear goals, and an ERP system that works. CAL has installed over 300 accounting systems for companies nationwide across a variety of industries.

In the white paper “19 Brilliant Ways to Promote ERP User Adoption“, George Mackiewicz, the president of CAL Business Solutions, gave his professional advice on how to successfully promote user adoption. His experience in this area can help companies like yours get future users on board and excited for the change.

Train With Real Data

Many companies might be tempted to go the easy route and train their employees using a sample company. But this can be a big mistake. As George explains:

“The only way people are going to get excited is if they see themselves in the new system from the beginning.”

The best practices are to build up real data, and then move that into a test company.

“Training needs to be done with your real data, in a test environment. Not in a demo system. Users will adopt the system faster when they can focus on the process and not on why the data is not relevant for them.”

Why does training with real data help user adoption? The more you use familiar data during the training process, the more your employees will feel comfortable with their new system. And the more comfortable your employees are, the better your user adoption is going to be throughout the implementation process, the training process, and when you finally go live.

Make the System Familiar

George Mackiewicz recommends making the new system look as familiar as possible to your employees. What positive effect can this have?

“You want your users to feel comfortable. The best way to do that is to keep things that are familiar to them. If they used certain terminology, rankings or color coding to represent tasks in the past, try to mimic that in the new system. Even something as simple as adding the company logo and color theme to the new system can automatically make the user feel more comfortable.”

One way to diminish change is by keeping familiar terminology. If your employees used words such as “cold, warm, hot” instead of “level 1, level 2, level 3” then keep it that way. These little things make your employees feel comfortable. Unnecessary changes are sure to slow down user adoption across the company.

“It makes sense to do an implementation in a phased approach, but you should never take away functionality or integrations that users had in the past. You can’t break what they already have and expect them to like it.”

This type of formatting and personalization is easy to do in Acumatica.

• Acumatica 2019 R1 Feature of the Day: Personalize Color Theme to Differentiate Multiple Companies and Branches
• Video: Acumatica-Quick Look at Generic Inquiries (GI), Color Conditioning, Filters and Pivot Tables in Acumatica

Next Steps:

Never lose sight of your end goal: to implement a superior business management system that your employees will understand and quickly embrace. By training with real data and making the system look as familiar as possible, you will lay the groundwork for quick and successful user adoption.

To hear more from the experts and learn tips that you can put into practice today, download the full white paper “19 Brilliant Ways to Promote ERP User Adoption” at www.calszone.com/19brilliant.

Are you ready to evaluate Acumatica or Microsoft Dynamics GP? Contact CAL Business Solutions at sales@calszone.com or 860-485-0910x4.

By CAL Business Solutions, Acumatica and Microsoft Dynamics GP Partner, www.calszone.com