I am not a big fan of going negative. I remember a story about a boy who came home and told his dad that he failed a test. His dad said, “quit being so negative… be positive!” The boy said, “ok, dad I am positive I failed that test.”

There are 5

Here are the five with a little of an explanation.

1. Focus – When you change your process there is a natural lack of focus on the old and new process. It is almost like “focus” has been spread too thin. The best example I can give is around the idea of renovating a house you still live in. I know that seem strange, but stay with me. If you are renovating a part of your house and living in another part of it, the disruption of the renovation dramatically take focus off of the living part. Changing AP can have the same type of effect.

2. Security – Change will open your organization up to security risk because there is so much attention on the new process or the new aspects of the process that it can lead to less attention on the process overall. You have to be aware of that fact to make sure you don’t open yourself up to fraud.

3. Personnel – Changing AP can hurt your personnel’s productivity, not to mention their morale. All change and good change management keeps an eye on people to make sure they are adjusting in a positive way.

4. Start – Stop – This is the type of change where people have no idea what is going on. Similar to point number 3, you have to make sure that people are accommodated for when changing, but the notion of “start – stop” change is a direct reflection of poor planning.

5. Software – This is a broad topic, but I want to hone in on one particular aspect of software change that really hurts in AP… That is when you purchase a piece of software that has limitations. Limitation to the point that it makes you needlessly change your process… that hurts.

There is no magic advice I can give you to make all of these “hurts” go way. I will write that you are able to mitigate all of these hurts by doing your up front homework.

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