When a new system arrives

Installation changes the system. Training, communication and daily experience change the way people work.

In The night the system went down I wrote about my first night of training at the hotel, when an update left the system unavailable for hours. I had come to learn the processes and spent most of the night waiting. This essay starts where that one ended: not with the system that stops, but with the system that arrives, and with the people who have to learn it.

What I have and what I do not

What I have: in last mile, the move to a new system for calculating routes and travel times, planned for 19 August 2025. According to the information from that period, the aim was better planning accuracy and fewer unrealistic itineraries. Calibrations were planned so that the change would affect the drivers as little as possible, and so was the collection of information from the field in the first days. At the hotel, the first weeks of training in September 2026: colleagues' explanations, the SOPs, the visual materials and the videos, and information that was not always in one place. And Front Desk Control, which grew out of that period.

What I do not have: how I myself was informed about the August change, by training, email or demonstration. What was explained to the drivers and dispatchers. Whether there was resistance or a return to old habits. A verified before-and-after comparison. How many days it took me to learn the hotel system fully.

And one thing that needs saying: in those weeks in last mile we had problems with loading, missing bags, disorganised trolleys and delays. I have them documented. But I have no evidence that the new system caused them, and I will not pin on it problems that may have had other causes. It is the easiest temptation when a new system arrives: everything that goes wrong in the first weeks is billed to it.

Two sides of the same door

These two experiences come from two different places. In the first I was part of an operation in which the planning technology was changing. In the second I was the new one who had to learn the system that was already there.

But when I put them side by side, I see the same thing. A system can be technically better than the one it replaces. That does not mean people are ready to work with it. Readiness is not installed. It is built, or not built, in the weeks after installation.

A new system does not become part of the work because it has been installed. It does when people understand it, know how to use it, and know what to do when it does not help them.

“How it is used” and “why it is changing”

The stated reasons for the August change were clear on paper: better planning, more accurate times, fewer operational exceptions. Whether those reasons were explained to the team in a meeting, I do not know.

But I hold a conviction about the difference between two things that are often confused. Showing someone how a system is used is training. Explaining why the organisation is changing the way it works is something else. The first gives a person the ability to click. The second gives them the reason to report when something is not right, because they know what the system was supposed to improve and they see when it does not.

The August change provided for collecting information from the field. That information comes only from people who know why they are being asked. In The tour the driver does not understand I wrote that an experienced driver should not be the permanent correction of a system that does not learn. A new system is the best moment to stop that, and the easiest to miss.

Information in five places

At the hotel, the difficulty I can confirm was not only using the program. It was finding the right information at the moment a process had to be carried out. Learning relied on colleagues' explanations, on the SOPs, on the visual materials and on the videos, and none of them had everything.

That is why I started Front Desk Control: to organise the instructions, the screenshots and the processes in a clearer, searchable place. It did not replace the hotel system, and I have no measurement that says it shortened the training. It was my answer to a problem I had myself as the new one.

The difficulty of a new system is not only knowing where to click. It is finding the right information at the moment you need it.

The document beside the system

At the hotel I have worked with SOPs, checklists, Excel reports and instructions spread across different materials. They served as support for the processes. I do not have a case in which an old list contradicted the system's data, nor one in which Excel was used to get around the system.

And I do not think every document outside the system is a bad habit. A checklist beside the screen may be exactly what makes a process safe. The problem arises when the employee does not know which information is up to date and which is the official source. A new system makes this problem bigger, because every document that was correct the day before may be wrong without anyone knowing. As I wrote in A good SOP is not a document, the value of an instruction is that it is found and applied at the right moment. An outdated instruction is found just as easily.

Six things before it arrives

Today, when a new system arrives, I would give priority to preparing the people, not only to installing the program. I have not led a change programme like that. But these are the things I would recommend:

1. Explain why the change is being made. Not only what the new system does.
2. Show what concretely changes in the daily work. For each role, not one presentation for everyone.
3. Training with real situations, not only a presentation of the functions. The ordinary case and the difficult case.
4. Make it clear where to get help when something does not work. At night too, and in the first days too.
5. Collect the problems of the first days and give the employees an answer. A reported problem with no answer is the last lesson people learn about reporting.
6. Update the instructions together with the system. Otherwise the document and the screen say two different things, and the new one does not know which to believe.

The fifth point is the one I would stress. The August change provided for collecting information from the field. Collecting is half of it. The other half is that whoever gave the information learns what was done with it.

Before the new system arrives

The card below is for whoever leads the change, but also for whoever receives it: why it is changing, what changes in your work, where you learn it with real situations, whom you turn to, where the problems of the first days go and who answers, and which is the official source. If, as an employee, you do not know the answers, ask before the first day. Six Sigma DMAIC has the Control phase for exactly this: how a change holds once the person who brought it has gone.

Installation changes the system. Training, communication and daily experience change the way people work.