Change Management Plan for Alphapharm: Digitalization and Stakeholders

This report presents a change management plan for Alphapharm, an Australian pharmaceutical company, addressing issues caused by a manual system. The plan focuses on transitioning to a paperless, digitalized environment to improve efficiency and customer service. It applies Kotter's eight-step change model, emphasizing creating a sense of urgency, building a powerful coalition, forming a strategic vision, enlisting a volunteer army, enabling action by removing barriers, generating short-term wins, sustaining acceleration, and institutionalizing changes. The report includes a stakeholder analysis, detailing the interests, expectations, and contributions of shareholders, executive management, middle managers, IT teams, employees, and clients. It concludes with recommendations for improving the change management process, including resistance management, teamwork, and training development, to ensure a successful digital transformation. The report uses references to support the analysis.

change management plan in pharmecy

Background:-
Alphapharm is a drug making company of the Australia. Manufacturers of the Alphapharm produces
various generic pharmaceutical medicines and exports more than countries. The organization is
performing very well and earning a higher profit than their existing customers. However, the
organization performance has been facing different issues due to the manual system of the organization
which delayed the whole work. Therefore, the quality of the work directly depended on the manual
system of the organization. Thus, the checking all data came out as an expensive and time-consuming
process of the organization. The associated costs of the paper-based document management system
further added up to the cost of stationery, printers, and office supplies, etc., adding to the significant
expense in the organization. (Small, 2016) Due to establishing the operating system in each department
and absence of an integrated communication system in the organization added to the chaos. All these
prevent all the issues causing problems in delivering the customer service.
Therefore, the organization decided to go paperless by adopting document management system and
shifting all its work to the electronic filing. The main motive behind paperless organization was to get
closer because of the rising popularity of integrated digitalization culture. Digitalization system helps the
organization in storing the digital version of the data which can be used in future and further helps in
reducing the manual work.
Introduction
Kotter’s model:-
1. Create The Sense Of Urgency
As per the views of the Kotter, the organization should prepare to accept the change taking
place in the organization for keeping the level of complacency as low as possible. The
management team of the Alphapharma planned that the employees of the organization should
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be made aware regarding the changes. Management of the organization can do all this by
organizing various awareness activities regarding the negative consequences taking place in the
case. The transformation is not considered the facts seriously that will trigger the sense of
urgency, including the serious implications for not accepting the transformation.
2. Building A Powerful Coalition
The management of the Alphapharma will first assemble the IT team for leading all the change
efforts. The IT team helps the management in creating a solid foundation towards the
requirements of hardware, software and grid technologies which help the management in
creating a digitalized environment. The management of the organization timely ensures that the
change is being implemented by a strong coalition of other departments. The changes are
valued when led by a powerful organization coalition.
3. Form Strategic Vision And Initiatives
For guide the direction of change in the organization, the management will create a compelling
vision for the future. The top management of the organization prepares a plan related to the
software and hardware requirements (Harmon,2014). A Strong vision of the organization will
avoid all the confusions among the values and staffs to determine the change easily. In case the
management of the organization fails to convey a strong vision, it might lead to the
incompatible project as well as its activities.
4. Enlist Volunteer Army
The senior management of the Alphapharma organization, as well as the IT team, will utilize
every possible medium and way for communicating the initiatives and vision of the organization
to their employees. The organization believes in a strong, simpler, clear and understandable
vision. The management will try to harness the possible methods for sharing and promoting the
vision. A detailed vision with a clear communication would be adopted in this step. It is
necessary for the organization that the concerns and anxiety of the employees must address
honestly and openly.
5. Enable action by removing barriers
During the implementation of the integrated system, the organization would require intense
actions from the employees. For performing, all these changes the organization will identify
such candidates who can deal with such changes in a significant manner. All employees of the
organization, guided by the management as per the necessity of change. This helps the
organization in addressing all the barriers and take corrective action for avoiding these barriers.
6. Generate Short-Term Wins
The organization is aware of the fact that the transformation process of change is serious
therefore it take longer time for proper accomplishment. Therefore the organization will set
short-term goals like digitalization of individual departments and then create an integrated
computerized environment followed by a Wi-Fi enabled environment in the organization. All this
helps the management in avoiding resistance from the employees for such change over a longer
period of time, during which all the involved employees in the change process rewarded by the
organization for their contribution to the successful implementation of change.
7. Sustain Acceleration
The acceleration of the progress in the organization must be sustained by consolidating all the
gains and improvements for producing more changes. For this, the organization will use
credibility policies and procedures which help the management in creating a better initial vision.
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8. Institutionalize the changes:-
All the changes that will be performed by the organization should be anchored by the
management to complete the change process. The senior management of the organization, as
well as the concerned executives, would be realized upon the factors that help them during the
changes.
Implementation of the change
Kotter's model was used for incorporating the countermeasures for avoiding resistance after identifying
the potential barriers. It was identified that trust and not urgency was the key step for handling the
changes due to the various conflicts and frustration among the employees. Additionally due to the
history of the organization's management of being highly open for changes helped the organization to
take necessary consequences in case any situation goes wrong. The vision of the organization was
ambitious; the organization adopted very well language for imparting their ideas to everyone present in
the organization. The capability of the IT team was considered the most important criteria for the
implementation of the digital system in the organization. Therefore, the common vision and common
language helped the organization to break their vision in a strategic manner. Furthermore, while
implementation of the fourth step of Kotter's model it was seen that the communication of the vision in
large part of the organization was one of the major concerns (Pollack,2015). The management had a
detailed communication over the pros and cons of the implementation of the change in the
organization. The departments were seen to be cordial with the each other assisting in the
transformation process. This would have turned into a great potential barrier if the employees lacked
cooperation and lack of spirit. It can be concluded that the organization should be very focused towards
identifying as well as removing the obstacles through continuous improvements by motivating and
empowering the employees and respective departments. Consequently, it can be said that the success
was highly visible and very well communicated. Alphapharm Organization further reinforced new norm
and values along with the incentives and rewards.
Stakeholder Analysis
Stakeholder Interest Expectations Contributions
Shareholders They have value-based
interest, and their
decision-making
process is always
dependent on the
probability of the
business goals and the
economic outcomes.
1. Equipped with
well-prepared
figures and
facts.
2. Presented with
the justification
as to why the
change plan is
important for
their interest.
Furnish the primary
bulk of financial
support
Executive
Management
Change should be
financially rewarding.
As the failure in a
change of plan can lead
to loss of reputation
1. Updates
regarding the
changes
2. Status reports
for staying
1. Convince the
shareholders
(through the
Board of
Directors).
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and lifestyle. abreast of the
changes
3. Acknowledge
the problems
and issues of
the plan.
4. Highly
impacted by
the
development
and impacts of
the project.
2. Handle the
various facets
of the
operations.
.
Middle- Managers, IT
team and Employees
They are motivated by
their desire of
employability and for
attaining long-term
stability.
Expect to be
compensation or
rewarded for their
efforts which usually
involves the
increments or the
remunerations.
1. Perform the
actual
execution of
the project
plan.
2. Their efficient
and hard work
impact the
project plan
directly.
3. Their
cooperation is
required for
carrying out all
the major
plans.
Clients Their interest holds the
prime value in the
change plan so as to
receive best products
and services.
The basic aim of the
change is their
requirement and
satisfaction.
The contribution of the
clients is determined
by the outcome of the
project.
Recommendations for improving the change management process
The following are the recommendations for improving the change management process in Alphapharm
organization:-
1. Resistance management: - The resistance from the employees is expected and should be
addressed proactively. However, persistent resistance can prove out to be an issue. Therefore
the change management should identify and understand the managers and employees to help
them throughout the organization. There is a need to adopt a resistance management in the
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organization for supporting the change management team and identify the change resistance
amongst employees.( Nanji,2014)
2. Team Work: The employees must be asked to be cordial and cooperative towards the change
management team so as to make the change management plan successful for the organization.
Effective teams and teamwork is a synonym for the successful changes being done in the
organization.
3. Training Development and Delivery: The employees must be asked to undergo intensive
training so as to deliver productive efforts and to gain the right amount of skills and capabilities.
The change management team will be responsible for developing the training requirement on
the basis of the knowledge, skills, and behavior of the employees.
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References:-
Small, A., Gist, D., Souza, D., Dalton, J., Magny-Normilus, C., & David, D. (2016). Using Kotter's Change
Model for Implementing Bedside Handoff: A Quality Im
Hayes, J. (2014). The theory and practice of change management. Palgrave Macmillan.
Grol, R., Wensing, M., Eccles, M., & Davis, D. (Eds.). (2013). Improving patient care: the implementation
of change in health care. John Wiley & Sons.
Pollack, J., & Pollack, R. (2015). Using Kotter’s eight stage process to manage an organisational change
program: Presentation and practice.Systemic Practice and Action Research, 28(1), 51-66.
Harmon, P. (2014). Business process change. Morgan Kaufmann.
Nanji, K. C., Rothschild, J. M., Boehne, J. J., Keohane, C. A., Ash, J. S., & Poon, E. G. (2014). Unrealized
potential and residual consequences of electronic prescribing on pharmacy workflow in the outpatient
pharmacy.Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, 21(3), 481-486.
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