If you read a good number of CPQ articles, blog posts, websites, tweets and so on or listen to podcasts, videos etc you can’t help but get the feeling that CPQ Change or Change in general is easy and that everyone who considers himself/herself open and modern is very excited about change. Really? That is not my experience, is it yours?

Let’s first agree that if you are the person who is prescribing the change it is definitely easier as when you are the person who gets the change prescribed. I’m sorry to say but CPQ change is NOT easy. Here are some very simple examples from everyday life that help illustrate what I’m talking about. How easy or difficult is it for you to

  1. Get up in the morning at a different time?
  2. Start exercising on a regular basis?
  3. Start eating a different diet?

These changes are not easy for most people! You might be excited in the beginning when you talk about it but it gets hard when you try to do them on a regular basis because you have to break your old habit and establish a new one. Which is easier said than done.

This is the same with a CPQ Project! You have a number of teams who work a certain way today and you ask them to change. While I realize that this topic can’t be covered sufficiently in a Blog Post I will provide some basic suggestions to make it a little easier to get started and also provide some useful Change Management related links below. In order to effectively manage CPQ related changes you have to at least

1. communicate regularly with all stakeholders (Teams)

  • Sales and Sales Operations
  • Marketing
  • Product Management and/or Product Engineering
  • IT
  • Legal
  • Finance

2. give the impacted teams some time to digest the information

3. provide these teams as much help as possible to make it easier to build new habits

Notes for 1. above

  • Assign a Change Management Lead + a Team Lead for every Team mentioned above
  • Communicate! Communicate! Communicate! with all stakeholders! There should be no surprises for your stakeholders! You have two ears and one mouth for a reason. Listen twice as much as you talk and you will learn a lot.  Provide regular communications in a number of different ways like email, phone calls, Face-to-Face meetings, Coffee Talks, Project Newspaper etc. Determine what communication channel(s) works best in your organization.
  • Start a Change Impact Analysis to learn who is going to be impacted in which way and develop a Change Management Plan. You can check an app like MindTools to see some examples for a Change Impact Analysis or this link for an example of a Change Management Plan

Notes for 2. above

  • involve all teams mentioned above BEFORE you start the CPQ implementation project
  • LISTEN to your stakeholders and determine who is supporting and who is resisting the change. Determine how you will address your supporters and nay sayers
  • Determine what time is required and/or appropriate for your organization to digest the change. This usually depends on company size, organization maturity, willingness to change, company culture etc

Notes for 3. above

  • Spend more time with the change supporters and less time with the nay sayers!
  • •Allow for a transitional period to achieve all desired results. E.g. adopt your KPI’s as needed before you reach the full benefits of your CPQ Project
  • •Start training your (Super) Users at the beginning of the development phase of your CPQ implementation project. Include them in testing (User Acceptance Test) as much as possible and ensure that they are evenly spread across your impacted organizations (see teams above).

To read more on this topic I suggest you check Google, Youtube, Amazon and so on for books, articles, podcasts and videos. In addition to that I recommend the books and podcasts below

  1. Leading Change – John P. Kotter  —> This author is a very popular Harvard Business School Professor and has written multiple must read books on this topic
  2. Turn the Ship Around – L. David Marquet —> A true story of a change that turns followers into leaders
  3. HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Change Management – check Amazon
  4. Manager Tools Podcast – Leading Change: The Ore Cart – Chapter 1 here