software implementation | system selection | vendor negotiation | change management | user adoption | HRIS | ATS | LMS
What You Will Learn:
- Decide whether a process should be automated at all, or fixed first
- Write selection criteria before you look at a single demonstration
- Negotiate with a provider and get the discount that is actually available
- Plan integration between systems before it becomes an emergency
- Recognise the eight mistakes that make most implementations fail
- Use urgency, quick wins and the rider-and-elephant model to shift behaviour
- Document the configuration so it survives whoever set it up leaving
- Measure adoption with a survey people will answer honestly
- Hold people to the new way of working through the performance cycle
- Learn alongside Mike’s 1.6 million students from 185 countries
Overview: Beyond the Shiny Demo
If you’ve spent more than five minutes in the tech world, you’ve seen it: a company drops mid-six figures on a “game-changing” HRIS or ERP, the CEO cuts a ribbon, and six months later, the staff is still using Excel spreadsheets hidden in a shared drive. I’ve been in those trenches, and frankly, most software implementation advice is fluff. Mike’s course, “Software Rollout: Choose a System, Make People Use It,” is a refreshing departure from the usual corporate platitudes. It treats system selection and user adoption not as IT tickets, but as high-stakes psychological warfare.
What I found most compelling isn’t the technical “how-to,” but the “should-we.” In a world obsessed with career growth through automation, Mike forces you to pause. He challenges the “fix it with code” mentality, suggesting that many broken processes should be streamlined manually before you even look at a vendor’s glossy PDF. This isn’t just about job-ready skills; it’s about developing the executive presence to tell a stakeholder that their favorite shiny tool is actually a liability. It’s an honest, sometimes cynical, look at how industry-standard tools actually enter a workflow and—more importantly—how they stay there.
Prerequisites
You don’t need a Computer Science degree to get value here, which makes this accessible from beginner to advanced levels. However, a baseline understanding of corporate hierarchy is essential. If you’ve never felt the frustration of a “mandatory” software update that broke your Tuesday morning, the nuances might be lost on you. It’s ideal for mid-level managers, project leads, or anyone tired of seeing “shelfware” accumulate on the company balance sheet. No coding knowledge is required, but a healthy skepticism of “all-in-one” vendor promises is definitely a plus.
Skills & Tools
While this isn’t a hands-on lab where you’ll be writing Python scripts, it is a masterclass in the “soft” technical skills that actually determine a project’s ROI. You’ll dive deep into:
- Change Management: Moving beyond emails and actually shifting user behavior using the “Rider and Elephant” psychological model.
- Vendor Negotiation: Learning how to peel back the layers of a SaaS contract to find the actual industry-standard tools pricing, not the “sucker price.”
- Strategic Integration: Mapping out how an ATS or LMS talks to your existing tech stack before the API calls start failing.
- Documentation Frameworks: Creating “survival guides” so the system doesn’t collapse when the lead admin quits for a better offer.
Career Benefits & Job Roles
Let’s talk about career growth. Anyone can learn to click buttons in a CRM, but the person who can successfully navigate a $500k software implementation without losing half the workforce to burnout is the person who gets promoted to Director or VP of Ops. This course is stealth certification prep for roles like IT Project Manager, Operations Lead, or Change Management Consultant. By completing the real-world projects suggested in the modules—like building a selection matrix or an adoption survey—you’re building a portfolio of job-ready skills that prove you understand the business side of technology. It bridges the gap between “the person who handles the tech” and “the person who drives the strategy.”
Pros
- Psychology-First Approach: The focus on the “Rider and Elephant” model is brilliant. It acknowledges that users aren’t rational robots; they are emotional beings who hate change. Addressing that is the only way to ensure user adoption.
- No-Nonsense Negotiation: The section on dealing with vendors is worth the price of admission alone. It gives you the “inside baseball” on how to secure discounts and avoid predatory “per-user” traps.
- Survival Documentation: Most courses ignore what happens after the “Go Live” date. Mike’s emphasis on documenting configuration so it survives staff turnover is a lesson learned in the hard school of knocks.
Cons
- Theoretical Intensity: If you are looking for a click-by-click tutorial on how to set up a specific HRIS like Workday or a CRM like Salesforce, you won’t find it here. This is a high-level strategy course, which might feel a bit “abstract” for someone looking for immediate hands-on labs in a specific software environment.