Breaking Old Patterns for Successful Transitions

Overcoming Paradigms to Drive Effective System Change

I recently sat with a client discussing SAP’s roadmap to S/4HANA, aiming to align it with their IT strategy and our recommendations for their Supply Chain initiatives at Reveal. The conversation was spirited, with a touch of tension around evaluating S/4HANA when its Supply Chain components didn’t yet seem ready for prime time.

What struck me most was a recurring truth: as individuals and organizations, we gravitate toward what we know. Call it staying in our comfort zones or leveraging our strengths, but this tendency forms a powerful pattern I’ve observed over my 25-year career in technology. This pattern often stifles our ability to achieve successful transformations—whether of people, systems, organizations, or processes.

Let me clarify—I’m speaking about most organizations, though there’s a minority who’ve successfully navigated transformation. If you’ve transformed your Supply Chain or seamlessly transitioned software platforms, this may not resonate. You’re among the few who’ve overcome a potent paradigm constraint. For everyone else, consider this scenario:

Imagine you’re part of a young company with processes for selling, manufacturing, and shipping products to a growing client base. These processes get embedded in a software system, which, alongside human effort, runs the business. Over time, you master the system, reaching an equilibrium where humans and software share the workload. Then, one day, you realize the software is outdated, and humans are doing most of the heavy lifting, working around a system that hinders rather than helps.

Here’s where things often derail. You hire external implementers, negotiate a fixed price, and trust their expertise in the software and industry best practices. But they don’t know your business—how could they? They hold workshops to learn your operations, producing business process documentation that turns into functional specifications for the new system. The catch? Your team describes their needs and problems based on their knowledge of the current system. Those descriptions shape the new system’s wishlist, locking the implementer into designing a system within the old paradigm. This leads to excessive customizations, cost overruns, delays, and a system that’s hard to maintain.

The solution is twofold:

1. Acknowledge the translation gap. The terms, descriptions, and issues from the old system are signals of priorities for the new system, not literal requirements to replicate.
2. Embrace robust change management. Implementers must deeply understand the new system’s capabilities and translate requirements into its framework. This isn’t about posters or meetings—it’s about tough, honest debates with your team to design the system correctly. Shifting paradigms is hard but essential.

This is change management in its purest form: educating and shifting mindsets to align with the new system’s rules and paradigms. You chose the new platform because it better fits your business and can propel you forward. It’s illogical to expect the old system’s rules to apply or for your team to instinctively articulate needs in the new system’s context.

The takeaway? Ensure you’re adopting a new software system for the right reasons. Then, choose an implementer you trust to navigate the tough change management, master the system, and guide you forward. If you’re wondering whether your current SAP system can perform better, contact Reveal. We specialize in optimizing your SAP Supply Chain without chasing new software.