You have an HR system. The team still works in Excel.

The system is bought and configured, yet the real data still travels as files sent by email. The same information is entered twice: once where it is convenient, once where it is officially required. Approvals happen in messages, and the record of them stays in conversations rather than in the system.

The familiar file can take fewer steps than the workflow configured in the system, or can cover an exception the workflow does not allow for. As long as both routes are accepted, the shorter one wins.

Pick a single pilot workflow — usually the most frequent one — and set a date from which it exists in one place only. One workflow, not the whole system at once.

For that workflow, name an owner for each step: who enters, who approves, who answers when something will not go through. Without names the decision stays an announcement, and people go back to what they know.

We follow the workflow from the first contact with the information to its final use and note where double entry appears. We cut the steps that serve no purpose and cover the real exceptions, because otherwise banning the old route simply produces hidden files.

Then we configure the single route and test it with the people who will use it daily, on their own cases, including the awkward ones. Training uses the same cases rather than a demo, and we stay with the team through the first two full cycles.

If it turns out the system genuinely does not cover a frequent need, we say so. Changing the platform is a conversation for after the diagnosis, not before it. See how we work on digitalisation

How many records still come through the old route after the agreed date, and which ones — they usually point straight at the exception nobody covered. How long a full cycle takes compared with the measurement made before the change, using the company's own data. And adoption per person rather than on average: whether the whole team uses it or only half.

Does this sound familiar?

Tell us what is not working. That is where we start.

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