TL;DR,
You’re rolling out a new tool, a CRM, an ERP, Odoo. You’ve chosen the right solution, paid the licences, trained the teams. Six months later, half your staff are still working from a parallel Excel spreadsheet. The problem is almost never technical: it’s human. Change management is the discipline that secures adoption of a tool by the people who need to use it. A framework like ADKAR developed by Prosci, describes the 5 stages every team member must go through, in order: Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, Reinforcement. Skip a stage, and adoption stalls. This article explains why, and how to apply it concretely to an Odoo / CRM rollout.
Why do so many tool projects fail on the human side?
Let’s be straightforward. A tool deployment project has two faces: the technical face (configuration, data, integrations) and the human face (are people actually using it?).
The technical face, we can manage. The human face, that’s where things fall apart.
The most widely cited figure in the industry comes from McKinsey: around 70% of transformation projects fail to meet their objectives often due to low team engagement and insufficient management support. Let’s be honest: that figure is contested, and shouldn’t be taken as gospel. But the intuition behind it is sound, and we see it in the field. A perfectly configured tool that nobody uses generates zero return on investment. Zero.
The root cause is almost always the same: adoption is treated as a final-stage detail rather than the core of the project. Teams are trained in the last week. The change is announced by e-mail. The assumption is that “because it’s better, people will follow.” They don’t. They go back to what they know.
What exactly is change management?
Change management is the set of actions that bring each individual concerned to adopt a new way of working. Not the organisation as a bloc: each person.
That’s a decisive distinction. A company doesn’t change. It’s the individuals within it who change, or don’t. If the sales rep continues logging opportunities in a notebook, your CRM doesn’t reflect reality, your dashboards lie, and your decisions rest on false data.
Change management therefore answers a single question: how do you get people to genuinely move to the new tool, and stay there?
What are the Prosci method and the ADKAR model?
Prosci is a leading authority on change management, founded in the 1990s by Jeff Hiatt. He popularised a framework that has since become an industry standard: the ADKAR model.
ADKAR is an acronym. It describes the 5 outcomes an individual must achieve, in order, for a change to succeed at their level: Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, Reinforcement.
Its strength: it shifts the focus from the process to the person. Most project plans list technical tasks. ADKAR lists the mental stages every team member must go through. And because those stages are sequential, you can diagnose precisely where a project is stalling.
An honest clarification, consistent with how we work: at Nexuro, we apply an approach inspired by Prosci / ADKAR. We don’t present ourselves as a Prosci-certified consultancy. We use this framework, proven and publicly available, because it structures our Odoo deployments effectively, and because it works.
What are the 5 stages of the ADKAR model, in practice?
Here are the 5 stages, and, more importantly, what they mean on a real CRM / Odoo rollout.
| ADKAR Stage | What it means | In practice, on an Odoo / CRM deployment |
|---|---|---|
| A, Awareness | The person understands why the change is happening | Explain the “why” before the “how”: 50% of opportunities are lost between the website and first contact, the notebook no longer scales. Not an e-mail, a genuine message from leadership. |
| D, Desire | The person wants to participate and support the change | Answer the “what’s in it for me?” for each role. The sales rep saves time on data entry and sees their follow-ups automated. Address fears (surveillance, overload) rather than ignoring them. |
| K, Knowledge | The person knows how to work in the new tool | Role-based training, not generic. Short, accessible written procedures. Train people on their actual use cases not a theoretical manual. |
| A, Ability | The person is able to do it day to day | Support the first real opportunities in Odoo, not in a training room. Internal champions, responsive support, and the right to make mistakes in the early weeks. |
| R, Reinforcement | The person maintains the change, without reverting | Track adoption with data (entry rate, up-to-date opportunities). Celebrate good usage, correct backsliding. Close the old Excel spreadsheet. |
The key point: these stages are a sequence, not a menu. There’s no point training (Knowledge) someone who doesn’t have the desire (Desire). There’s no point asking for desire from someone who doesn’t understand why the change is happening (Awareness). If adoption is stalling, it’s because a prior stage was skipped. That’s the whole value of the diagnostic: trace back to the first missing rung.
How do you apply ADKAR to an Odoo / CRM deployment?
Here are actionable recommendations, in the spirit of our method: understand the business, build a system, implement with rigour and transparency.
1. Start with the “why”, and have leadership carry it. Awareness cannot be delegated to a tool e-mail. When a director personally explains why the CRM is becoming the system of record, the message carries a weight nothing else can match.
2. Cartographiez les « qu'est-ce que j'y gagne » par rôle. Le bénéfice d'un commercial n'est pas celui d'un comptable. Adressez l'envie (Desire) métier par métier. C'est l'étape la plus négligée, et la plus déterminante.
3. Train on real use cases, not a manual. A sales rep needs to know how to create their opportunity, follow up on their leads. Generic training produces theoretical knowledge that evaporates within a week.
4. Support the first real usages. Ability is built by doing, on real data, with a safety net. Plan for internal champions and responsive support.
5. Manage adoption by data. This is our core conviction: you don’t manage by instinct. Measure the entry rate, the number of up-to-date opportunities, actual feature usage. A CRM you don’t measure is a CRM you abandon.
6. Close the exit door. As long as the old Excel spreadsheet remains open, reinforcement (Reinforcement) is impossible. At some point, you make the switch for good.
What if you skip change management?
We know how the story ends. The tool is technically impeccable and commercially dead. The Odoo CRM becomes the licence you pay for that nobody opens. The data is incomplete, so reporting is wrong, so decisions are poor. And in the board meeting, the conclusion, wrongly, is that “the tool wasn’t right.”
The tool was right. It was adoption that was missing.
Shall we talk?
At Nexuro, we implement Odoo (CRM, Sales, Marketing, Project, Invoicing) with one obsession: that the tool is genuinely used not abandoned. That’s why we treat adoption, via an approach inspired by Prosci / ADKAR, as an integral part of the deployment, and why we manage it by data.
If you’re rolling out a new tool and want to secure its adoption, we can have a straightforward conversation about it. Our audit of your digital ecosystem is free and without obligation, Timothy or Bryan replies within 24h.
Frequently asked questions
What is the ADKAR method?
ADKAR is a change management model popularised by Prosci. It describes the 5 stages every team member must go through, in order, to adopt a new way of working: Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, Reinforcement. Its strength is that it focuses on the person, not just the process.
Why do CRM projects fail?
Rarely because of the tool. Almost always because of adoption. The CRM is configured technically, but the human side is neglected: no clear 'why', last-minute training, no monitoring of actual usage. The result: teams revert to Excel, data is incomplete, reporting is wrong. A CRM nobody uses delivers a ROI of zero.
How do you get a new tool adopted?
By treating adoption as the heart of the project, not a detail at the end of the deployment. In practice: explain the 'why' through leadership, answer the 'what's in it for me?' for each role, train on real use cases, support the first real usages, then manage adoption by data. At Nexuro, we structure this with an approach inspired by Prosci / ADKAR.
What is change management?
Change management is the discipline that brings each individual concerned to adopt a new way of working. A company doesn't change: it's the individuals within it who change, or don't. It answers a single question: how do you get people to genuinely move to the new tool, and stay there?
Why do 70% of transformation projects fail?
The figure, attributed to McKinsey, is contested and shouldn't be taken as fact. But the intuition behind it is sound: most transformation projects stall on the human side, due to low team engagement and insufficient management support. The recurring cause: adoption is treated as a detail rather than the core of the project.
