Most mid-sized employers will take on a major systems change in the next few years: a new ERP, an automated approvals process, a data clean-up ahead of AI work. The budget conversation usually centres on software. The harder question is who will actually do the work while the business keeps running.
This applies whether you run a plant, a distribution business, a finance group or a sales organization. The pattern is the same.
The software is the smaller part of the project
A new platform can speed up work. It cannot decide who owns an approval, fix a process nobody has written down, or clean up data that has been wrong for six years. Those jobs fall to people who know how the business really runs.
When projects stall, the cause is rarely the tool. It is usually one of these:
- Nobody has authority to settle a disagreement between departments
- The people who know the current process are too busy to document it
- Data is inconsistent, so the automation produces bad output faster
- Staff were never shown how the new way of working is supposed to go
Plan for those four problems and you have planned for most of the project.
The roles a change project needs
The mix depends on the work, but most successful teams draw on the same six groups.
Process owners from operations. These are the people who run the current workflow every day: the shift supervisor, the AP lead, the order desk manager. They find the manual steps and recurring errors that a technical team will miss.
Data and analytics people. A data analyst or engineer prepares the information, connects systems and sets rules for who can change what. If AI is part of the plan, this work comes first, not last.
Technical staff. Integration developers, systems administrators and business systems analysts connect the new platform to what you already run.
Finance and controls. A controller or senior analyst should be in the room early to check that reporting, approvals and audit trails still hold up after the change.
Customer-facing leads. Sales operations and customer service managers know what customers will notice. They should shape any change that touches orders, quotes or communication.
A project lead. One person who coordinates delivery, tracks decisions and keeps the work moving. This is the role most often left unfilled, and the one whose absence costs the most.
Organize around the outcome, not the department
A team built around "IT" or "finance" tends to produce improvements that only help that department. Build around a result instead, such as cutting order-to-invoice time or removing manual re-keying between systems.
Then settle four things before work starts:
- A single owner for the outcome
- Who has the final say when departments disagree
- How success will be measured
- A named executive who will clear obstacles
If you cannot answer those four in a short meeting, the project is not ready to staff.
Finding the capacity
Nobody gets to stop daily operations for a project. Orders ship, invoices go out and month-end still closes. So decide which capabilities must stay in-house and where outside help makes sense.
The usual options:
- Contract specialists for a defined stretch, such as a data engineer for an 8-month integration or a project coordinator through go-live
- Backfill hires so your best process people can work on the project without leaving their desks uncovered
- Permanent hires where the capability will be needed long after launch, such as a data owner or systems analyst
- Outside consultants for a one-time design question
A simple test helps. If the skill is needed for the length of the project only, contract it. If the business will depend on it for years, hire it. If your best people are the bottleneck, backfill their day jobs rather than adding to their load.
Do not forget the people who use it
Adoption is where good projects lose their value. Budget time for training, and name a few respected staff on each shift or team as the people colleagues can ask. Skilled operators and experienced clerks often resist a change because nobody asked them how the work actually goes. Ask early, and they become the strongest advocates.
This is true in Canada and the United States alike, and in tight labour markets for technical and data skills it matters more. If you wait until the platform is signed to start looking for a data engineer or project lead, you will wait months while the schedule slips.
What to do next
Before you commit to a platform, write down the outcome you want, the six groups above, and who in your business fills each one today. The gaps are your hiring plan. Decide which are contract and which are permanent, and start those searches while the vendor is still being selected.
A Traverse recruiter can help you scope those roles and find the contract or permanent people to fill them.