Short answer: Change management is the planned work of preparing, involving and training people as they move to a new system. When staff resist an ERP, the cause is usually confusion, fear and poor training; the fix is a clear purpose, key users, a native-language interface and measuring adoption. According to Prosci, projects with excellent change management are about 7 times more likely to meet their objectives than those with poor change management.
The new ERP was bought, configured and launched. A month later, the CEO notices the storekeeper still keeps a notebook, sales reps take orders on Telegram, and the accountant says "the old program was faster". The system exists, but nobody uses it. That isn't a technical problem; it's a change management problem. This practical guide covers why employees resist a new system, what the ADKAR and Kotter models are, and how to reduce resistance in practice.
What is change management?
Change management is a set of planned actions that move people from the old way of working to the new one: explaining, involving, training and reinforcing the result.
An ERP rollout has two parts: the technical side (configuration, data migration, integrations) and the human side (people actually starting to work in the new system). Many companies spend the whole budget on the first and assume the second will "sort itself out". That is exactly where projects stall. We cover other rollout mistakes in 7 mistakes in ERP implementation.
Why do employees resist a new system?
The reasons we see most often in projects:
- No understanding: nobody explained the "why", so people see only extra work.
- Fear of control: the system logs every action, and some people feel threatened.
- Fear of losing status: the expert in the old program becomes a "beginner" in the new one.
- Language barrier: if menus are in Russian or English, staff in the regions struggle more.
- Poor training: one general presentation, then "you'll figure it out".
- Two systems in parallel: the old spreadsheet is still open, so everyone goes back to it.
This isn't just a mood issue. In a McKinsey survey, fewer than a third of respondents who had been part of a transformation in the past five years said their companies improved performance and sustained those gains (McKinsey).
Which change management models are there?
The ADKAR model
Prosci's ADKAR model follows each employee through five stages: Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability and Reinforcement (Prosci, ADKAR). In an ERP project, that means the employee knows why the change is needed, wants to take part, learns the system, can use it in daily work and doesn't slip back to the old way.
Kotter's 8 steps
John Kotter's model works at the organization level: create a sense of urgency, build a guiding coalition, form a strategic vision, enlist a volunteer army, enable action by removing barriers, generate short-term wins, sustain acceleration and institute change (Kotter, 8 Steps).
In practice the two complement each other: Kotter shows what leadership does, ADKAR shows what each employee needs.
How do you reduce employee resistance in practice?
1. Leaders work in the system themselves
If the CEO still asks for reports in Excel, staff won't take the ERP seriously. Leaders should get reports and approvals only from the system.
2. Explain the "why"
Show each department its own gain: fewer stock counts for the storekeeper, full customer history for sales, automatic journal entries for accounting.
3. Appoint key users
A key user is an employee from each department who learns the system first and helps colleagues.
Key users take part in configuration, so the system feels like "ours" rather than "imposed from above". Gartner found that approaches involving employees throughout the change process reduce the risk of change fatigue by 29 percentage points (Gartner, 2022).
4. Train by role
A cashier doesn't need the accounting module. Each role gets short, hands-on training on its own data. Starter guide: how to use Odoo.
5. Use a native-language interface
For a storekeeper or cashier in the regions, Uzbek-language menus shorten training and reduce errors. Odoo 19 works fully in Uzbek; more in Odoo in Uzbek.
6. Switch off the old system
After an agreed date, old files become read-only. As long as two systems run in parallel, people will drift back to the familiar one.
7. Show quick wins
Announce first-month results to the whole team: a warehouse with no stock discrepancies, say, or a month closed faster.
What changes after automation: in numbers
- Meeting objectives: 88% of projects with excellent change management met or exceeded objectives, versus 13% with poor change management, roughly a 7x difference (Prosci).
- Schedule: well-managed projects are nearly 5 times more likely to be on or ahead of schedule (Prosci).
- Budget: they are nearly 1.5 times more likely to stay on or under budget (Prosci).
- Ownership: in an analysis of 60 organizations two years into their transformations, those where at least 7% of employees owned part of the change were twice as likely to beat their indexes on total shareholder return (McKinsey).
- Fatigue and retention: involving employees cuts the risk of change fatigue by 29 percentage points and raises intent to stay by up to 19 points (Gartner, 2022).
- Scale of the problem: 45% of HR leaders say their employees are fatigued from continuous change (Gartner, 2022).
How do you measure whether the system has been adopted?
Adoption metrics are measures that show whether employees are really working in the system.
The ERP itself provides this data:
- Share of active users: how many licenses are used every day.
- Share of documents created in the system: how many orders, receipts and payments go through the ERP.
- Timeliness: whether a sale is entered the same day or at the end of the week.
- Manual corrections: how many records get changed afterwards.
- Support requests: these should fall over time.
- Requests for old files: whether people still ask for spreadsheet reports.
Reviewing these weekly by department shows where extra training is needed.
How does Deep Vision approach this?
Deep Vision is an official Odoo Gold Partner based in Tashkent. Its Odoo partner page lists 7 certified experts, 24 client references and an 89% customer retention rate (Odoo partner page).
In change management, our main strengths are language and education:
- The Deep Vision team produced Odoo's Uzbek translation: our team is credited in 360 of the 376 Uzbek translation files in the Odoo 19 source, with about 97% of roughly 60,600 strings translated.
- Among the global ERPs we checked, Odoo is the only one with an Uzbek-language interface.
- Deep Vision has run 4 hackathons, 3 seminars and an online course on Odoo.
- Odoo is taught with Deep Vision at 3 universities to more than 300 students a year, so the pool of people who already know the system keeps growing.
In the experience of the team led by Deep Vision founder Amon Olimov, a project starts with choosing key users, training runs by role, and adoption metrics are tracked after go-live. Standard Sales and Inventory are often live in 6–8 weeks; a full rollout takes 2–6 months. On the stages: Odoo ERP implementation guide; on the service: Odoo implementation. To discuss preparing your team for a new system, fill in the brief.
Frequently asked questions
What should we do if employees resist the ERP?
Find the cause first: confusion, fear or poor training. Then work through leadership example, key users and role-based training.
Who is a key user?
An employee from a department who learns the system first and helps colleagues. They take part in configuration.
How do ADKAR and Kotter differ?
Kotter gives 8 steps for leaders at the organization level. ADKAR describes each employee's path from awareness to reinforcement.
How much time does training take?
It depends on the role and the scope of the system. What matters is that training continues before and after go-live, with help close at hand in the first weeks.
Does an Uzbek-language interface really matter?
For staff in the regions, yes. Native-language menus speed up learning and reduce the risk of pressing the wrong button out of confusion.
Sources
- Prosci: The Correlation Between Change Management and Project Success
- Prosci: ADKAR Model
- Kotter: The 8 Steps for Leading Change
- McKinsey: transformation success and employee ownership
- Gartner: HR leaders' priorities for 2023 and change fatigue, 2022
- Deep Vision on the Odoo partner directory
Let's prepare your team for the new system together: fill in the brief or call +998 77 093 00 07.