Don’t Just Upgrade Your Systems - Support Your People Through The Upgrade

You’ve decided to invest in a new enterprise-wide software solution - an excellent move. With it comes improved functionality, performance, and innovative features. But amidst all the technical preparation, have you considered the people who will actually use this technology every day?

Too often, implementation teams focus so heavily on systems, timelines, and go-live checklists that they overlook the most critical success factor: the skills and readiness of end users. Successful implementations don’t end at deployment, they thrive when users are empowered, confident, and capable.

Why Skills Matter in System Implementation

Ensuring your workforce can effectively use your new software is not just a training task, it’s a transformation strategy. With varied skill levels across your organisation, identifying and addressing capability gaps requires sensitivity and strategy. No one wants to feel left behind or exposed as incapable.

The best place to start? Core, future-focused skills that benefit all users, regardless of role. The World Economic Forum’s “Future of Jobs Report 2025” offers a solid framework to guide your planning. Inviting users to self-assess their capabilities and identify what matters most to them helps foster engagement and ownership during the transition.

The Future of Work and System Success: A Shared Skillset

According to the WEF, the most in-demand skills for 2025 and beyond are increasingly human-centric, adaptable, and strategic, making them vital for any successful system rollout. These macro trends, including AI adoption, digital access, aging workforces, mirror the challenges of enterprise software implementation.

Let’s explore how the top future skills from the WEF apply to your workplace transformation:

1. Analytical Thinking: Used to interpret and analyse complex datasets, interpreting data insights, business processes, and cross-functional workflows and navigating dashboards. Whether configuring systems, optimising reporting, or identifying inefficiencies, analytical thinking enables evidence-based decision-making and system design. 

2. Resilience, Flexibility, and Agility: Supports staff to pivot quickly, adapt to new modules, business rules, and integrations, and stay productive through uncertainty, especially during cutover, go-live and upgrades which are commonly known to have change fatigue and evolving requirements as an outcome

3. Leadership and Social Influence: Influencing stakeholders, guiding cross-functional teams, and driving adoption are key critical success elements. Whether leading change, training end-users, or managing governance, strong leadership and credibility are essential, even in non-leadership roles. It’s a journey that can have sometimes unexpected activities, timelines and decisions to be made. Staying the distance as a leader is critical to support those around the team

4. Creative Thinking: Implementing a new system isn’t just about configuring standard solutions, it’s also about solving unique business challenges. Creative thinking helps teams design workflows, reports, problem-solve unique use cases or automation that improve user experience and business outcomes. 

5. AI and Big Data: Systems are increasingly integrating AI (e.g. predictive analytics, chatbots) and require interpreting and acting on large volumes of transactional data. Understanding how AI tools interact with a system (e.g. in finance or supply chain) is essential.

6. Technological Literacy: Your teams must be fluent in understanding how systems work, from architecture to integrations (e.g. APIs, cloud vs. on-prem, data models). They often act as bridges between business users and IT teams. Being able to describe in specific terms how a piece of functionality is working (or not) is critical to keeping the workflows optimised. Empowering users to embrace automation, self-service tools, and data visualisation enables the system to deliver the value it was designed for.

7. Networks and Cybersecurity: Systems typically handle sensitive information (e.g. payroll, financials). Awareness of access controls, authorisation roles, audit trails, and system vulnerabilities is key—especially for those involved in system configuration or governance.

8. Curiosity and Lifelong Learning: Systems evolve constantly, with frequent updates, new modules, and evolving business needs. Those of us in the field call it continuous improvement. Users may not always see it the same way. Staff who keep learning (e.g. through certifications, webinars, knowledge share and community forums) stay relevant and valuable. Finding ways to encourage exploration of new features and innovation post go-live are ways of progressing this skill.

9. Empathy and Active Listening: Understanding user pain points, process bottlenecks, and business context is critical to solution design and support. Empathy allows consultants and super users to bridge technical solutions with human needs—especially during change or disruption.

10. Environmental Stewardship: Systems can help organisations track and report sustainability metrics (e.g. energy use, emissions, ESG compliance). Teams need to understand how a solution can support environmental goals through reporting and operational controls.

11. Service Orientation and Customer Service: Users often rely on support from super users, consultants, or help desks. A mindset of helpfulness and responsiveness ensures system adoption, smooth operations, and positive relationships, especially during transitions or bug detection or outages.

12. Talent Management: Systems often underpin HR and people systems (e.g. SuccessFactors). Understanding workforce planning, succession, and skills tracking within the system enables teams to align systems with strategic talent goals.

Embedding Skills Development into Your Transformation Plan

To ensure a smooth transition and long-term adoption:

• Conduct a skills audit alongside your readiness assessment.

• Align training to in-demand skills outlined by the WEF.

• Use real scenarios in training to boost confidence and practical understanding.

• Empower Super Users and Change Champions with advanced skills.

• Celebrate progress and provide timely feedback to maintain motivation.

Upgrading your enterprise system is a powerful step. But if you don’t equip your people to drive it, you’ll never reach its full potential. Think of it this way: implementing a new platform without user upskilling is like buying a race car and never teaching the driver how to shift gears.

Make your people your priority, and watch your system transformation thrive.