Question

Caterpillar is the world's leading maker of earth-moving machinery and supplier of agricultural equipment. Caterpillar wants to end its support for its Dealer Business System (DBS), which it licenses to its dealers to help them run their business. The software in this system is becoming outdated and senior management want to transfer support for the hosted version of the software to Accenture Consultants so it can concentrate on its core business. Caterpillar never required its dealers to use DBS, but the system has become a de facto standard for doing business with the company. The majority if its 50 Cat dealers in North America use some version of DBS, as do about the half of the other too or so Cat dealers in the rest of the world. Before Caterpillar turns the product over to Accenture, they call you in as a change consultant.

1. What factors and issues should it consider? What are the pluses and minuses?

2. What questions should it ask?

3. What questions should it ask its dealers?

4. How would you recommend that Caterpillar implement this change?

Answer 1

This is a situation being faced a big number of major companies. Due to the ever-developing technology in IT and otherwise, there is a constant need of change in the practices being followed to keep the company up to date with industry standards.

For Cat’s situation given.

1. The biggest factor for this change would be to train the dealers and other users on the new interface. As a change consultant, I believe that moving on with new technology is the best option a company can take provided its employees and other associates are trained well and are supported by the company in this change. The biggest advantage would be staying up to date with industry standards. This, along with providing more efficient business processes, would also keep the company image strong in the industry. Now, this can also be a very big reason for underperformance if all users are not supported / trained properly for the new interface.
2. The questions to the dealers from my side would be entirely based on their experience with the old systems. Were there any features that made work easy? What were the limitations of the previous systems? What did you like about the previous systems? How much impact did the system have on you and your performance? And most importantly, were you comfortable with the previous systems.
3. To implement these changes, there should be phases of rollout. First phase should be of asking the questions mentioned above and getting feedback from them. Then, as the change consultant, all of these feedbacks should be linked to features on the new system. For example, if a user liked a particular feature on the previous system, they should be explained how to easily perform the same on the new one. As another example, if a user felt a drawback/limitation in the previous systems, they should be explained that how it is being included in the new Accenture system. This is a very important phase as this will increase the acceptability of the new system across users and company won’t face many issues in performance. After this counselling phase, they should roll out the new system area wise. For example, as North America has most users, they can roll it out to them first. Then after feedback they can slowly roll out to the rest of the world as well.

Following a phased change will be a good idea for a company as such to keep the performance on track even on changing work environment.