Change management in a rollout across countries and teams

In a global Salesforce rollout every country goes through the ADKAR stages from the start. So change management belongs in every wave. Per country you need a sponsor from local management, key users who know the template, communication in the local language explaining why something changes, clarity on co-determination and a look at usage after go-live. A country’s list of deviation requests shows where awareness is missing. The first wave is as much a test for change management as for the technology: what goes wrong there is fixed before the next wave. The same applies to waves by region in field service or to dealers.

Why is change management at headquarters not enough?

The strategic goal of a global rollout is usually to harmonise processes. At headquarters that goal is clear, in the countries often not. For a subsidiary that has worked successfully with its own processes for years, the global template is first of all an outside requirement. Whoever does not explain there why it is worth it gets deviation requests instead of support.

In the ADKAR model from chapter 1, the first two stages are missing in this situation. Neither can be produced by a circular email from headquarters. An English email reaches the people it is sent to, but it rarely convinces them.

The same building blocks in every country

I plan the same building blocks for every country. The content differs, the list does not:

Building block	Who	When
Sponsor in the country	country managing director or head of sales	from the country’s planning
Review of country deviations	sponsor, key users, architect	before the country configuration is built
Key users	one or two per team or site	from the first workshops
Communication on why things change	sponsor, in the local language	weeks before go-live
Training on real cases	key users with project team	shortly before go-live
Co-determination	HR, works council where one exists	before setup, different per country
Measuring usage	sponsor, project team	from the first month after go-live

The two most underestimated are the sponsor in the country and co-determination. A global sponsor does not replace the person who stands in front of their team in the country. And whether and how employee representatives are involved differs per country and needs to be clarified early. The building blocks in detail are in Change management in a global Salesforce rollout, the order of countries in the Manufacturing Cloud chapter ERP, AI and rollout.

What must the message in the country explain?

Communication before go-live explains what changes and why, not just where to click. I give each country’s sponsor these questions their message should answer:

Question	What the message says
Why is anything changing?	The reason in one sentence, for example a global view of group customers who buy in several countries.
What does the country gain?	A concrete benefit for the employees on site, not only for headquarters.
What changes for whom?	Split by group, because inside sales has different questions from field sales.
What stays as it is?	Almost always forgotten, and it removes a lot of uncertainty.
Where is help?	Names of the key users, not a support address.

Deviation requests show where awareness is missing

Every request to deviate from the template is also a change management question. Requests out of habit almost always come with a business justification. When the sponsor in the country understands why the template is built the way it is, they can sort these requests before they reach the architect.

The other way round, the list of deviations shows where change management has to start. When one country submits twenty requests and the others three, awareness is usually missing there. So I take the deviation list into every conversation with a country’s sponsor. How to separate legal, business and habitual deviations is in Global Salesforce template: how much local variation?.

Waves in field service and with dealers follow the same logic

The same logic holds for waves that are not cut by country. I roll out Field Service region by region. Each region brings its own dispatchers, technicians and master data, and the works council belongs in the planning of the first wave, as described in Salesforce Field Service rollout: why in waves?. Dealers are a group of their own with their own leadership: a dealer portal or B2B shop is adopted when the dealer sees an advantage, and the message comes from the sales manager the dealer knows. More in Rolling out a B2B shop to dealers.

After the first wave: a review before the next country

After go-live in the first country or region, I review three questions with the sponsor and the key users:

1. Which questions came up most often? They show where training or communication was missing.
2. Where do people keep working with their own lists next to Salesforce? That shows which stage was missing. How to measure it is in chapter 5.
3. What would the key users have liked to know earlier? The answer goes straight into the plan for the next country.

That needs breathing room between two waves. Whoever starts the next wave while the first country still has questions spreads the project team’s attention too thin. So name the sponsor for each country before it enters planning, and plan a review after the first country. How key users and training run per country is in chapter 3.