In this instructional video, Sachin Sharma, founder of ProcureDesk, addresses the common resistance employees show when a new purchase order (PO) software is introduced. He outlines three practical strategies to drive adoption: (1) make the new process faster than the legacy method by leveraging mobile apps, punch‑out capabilities, or other friction‑less tools; (2) start the rollout with internal champions—employees eager to improve processes—so they can pilot the system, generate case studies, and demonstrate success to peers; and (3) actively identify and eliminate friction points, such as excessive approval steps or misaligned compliance controls, by balancing organizational requirements with end‑user expectations. Sharma then proposes a mindset shift from viewing the software as a surveillance tool to seeing it as a support mechanism that helps users perform their jobs more easily. The video concludes with a recap of the three tactics and a call to subscribe for future content.
Chapters
If you recently launched a purchase order software and you're seeing resistance from your employees or like, you know, I don't need a new software, the old process was much faster. If you're hearing all this, you're not alone. These are the common things you will hear when you're rolling out any new technology. But if you are struggling with this video is for you. Because here I'll break down three simple things that should be considered while rolling out a system and making sure that it gets adapted and stick till the end where I'll share a little bit of mindset shift that you should consider when you're rolling out any new technology, whether it's purchasing or any other software for that matter. If you're joining me for the first time, welcome. My name is Sachin Sharma. I'm the founder of Procuredesk where we help growing companies control spending through automation of procurement and AP processes. So let's talk about number one. You want to make the process faster than their previous process, right? So the current process might be call the vendor, get what you need and then AP need to worry about invoicing and how to pay. Now that's easy. What could be easier than that? You could have a mobile app that allows them to create the purchase request from anywhere. If they are calling a central office, for example, very common in construction projects, they rather give them an app. What could be easier than that? Everybody has a phone. Or you could just implement punch out so so that they can just go to their favorite vendor, pick what they want to buy. There's no friction in the process, so obviously make it faster. Number two is start with champions. You always have people in the company who are willing to improve the process, test any new software and so on. They're the one who are complaining about hey, is there a better way to do this? Those are the people you want to work with in the beginning to make sure that the process is tested, but also kind of build a case study, right? So when others see them, they know that the process already works. It reduces the friction, reduces their, I would say, resistance to change. Number three is remove any sort of friction from the process. So for example, what we see very common in purchase orders is you're kind of rolling the software with your process in mind in terms of what you want to achieve. But your end users have a very different, I would say, expectation from it. For them it is, it should be easier for you it is, I want to implement controls and control our compliance. The right thing to do here is to Find the balance between the two. So what I mean by that, think about like, for example, do you really need four approvals? Do you have a process for emergency purchase? Do you want to make sure that emergency purchase can be approved under two hours, for example? That is how the friction shows up. Because the new process is slower, generally because of approvals. So look for friction points. Reduce it. Right? So those are the three simple strategies you can implement. Now we talked about the, I would say mindset shift. And the mindset shift is you need to start thinking about surveillance versus support. So what do I mean by that? When you implement a solution like this, it's all about policing the system, right? You're setting up a process people can follow and if they're not following, you're going to go back and just either, you know, call them out or, you know, not say nice words to them. Right? So the easiest way is think about this as how can I support their process? It's their process they have been following for some time. We are implementing a new purchasing software. What can I do now to make it easier for them? And the more you think about that, the easier it'll become for adoption. Right? So just to recap, three simple strategies you can use today to ensure PO software adoption. Number one, make it faster. Number two, start with champions. And number three, remove friction. If you like this video, go hit the subscribe button so you get notified when we release videos like this next time. Thank you for joining me today and I'll see you in the next video.
