CAS
Driving Change at CAS: Building a Culture of Adaptability for Scientific Breakthrough
The Challenge
Several challenges stood in their way:
- Leadership lacked alignment on priorities, with conflicting agendas on what should and should not be a focus.
- As a nonprofit, the culture of service often led to saying “yes” before assessing alignment with the strategic plan.
- The project management office (PMO) needed to incorporate change management practices into its methodology.
- Employee feedback revealed poor change management on past projects, increasing resistance to new ideas.
Key Highlights
To help the organization understand its project portfolio and how to progress adoption of strategic initiatives, the Avaap team helped the organization establish a change management center of excellence.
- Implemented an end-to-end project portfolio management process enabling leaders to view the level of project impact and complexity via a project heat map and stakeholder impact heat map
- Established eight change agent networks with 60 members to develop change advocacy across the organization.
- Developed a change cycle process and a suite of tools to help change leads better manage their projects.
Accelerated ERP Adoption: Avaap’s integrated change management approach ensured employees were prepared and confident in using the new enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, reducing resistance and accelerating adoption across all 11 workstreams.
Risk Mitigation and Governance: Weekly reporting, ADKAR assessments, and project health checks allowed proactive risk identification and resolution, keeping the initiative on track and within scope.
Improved Communication and Engagement: The change leadership council and change advocate network created strong two-way communication channels, fostering alignment between leadership and employees and driving engagement throughout the transformation.
Enhanced Training and Knowledge Transfer: Customized training programs, combined with vendor-provided resources and internal subject matter expertise, equipped employees with the skills needed to operate effectively in the new ERP environment.
Through a strategic partnership with Avaap, CAS built sustainable change capability, aligned leadership priorities, and fostered a culture of adaptability. These efforts ensure CAS can confidently navigate future transformations while continuing to accelerate scientific breakthroughs worldwide.
Client Overview
Chemical Abstracts Service (CAS), a division of the American Chemical Society, is a global leader in scientific information solutions, curating and analyzing published science to accelerate breakthroughs. After more than 100 years of service, CAS recognized the need to position itself for continued growth by aligning investments with strategic initiatives. To achieve this, the organization needed to embed change capability into its culture.
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