Geoff Coltman, senior vice president of Catena Solutions, discusses how companies can ensure that all of the technology tools they’re acquiring will function together in harmony.

The food and beverage industry is currently experiencing a need to upskill people, to cope with an influx of automation and new technology tools, Coltman says. Despite the acquisition of those systems, companies “have never really brought their people along with them.” That oversight has led to an all-time high in turnover rates, turning “the spotlight and heatmap” on leaders in supply chain and manufacturing.

All of that change is triggering a “fight-or-flight” response among employees, and too often their response is the former. The resulting churn in staffing is disrupting technology-adoption initiatives.

The other big problem caused by the wave of new technology is the failure of companies to consider up front how to integrate all the tools. “You have different heads of organizations making different decisions within their verticals,” Coltman says. What’s needed is the formation of company-wide steering committees that can oversee tech implementation from a high-level perspective.

Employees must be kept in the loop on all technology initiatives, both hardware and software, that are underway across the organization. “If your own staff doesn’t come along on decisions,” Coltman says, “no one will be willing to work on the problems that come up.”

People often resist the arrival of new technology, but the other side of the coin is an overly enthusiastic attitude that results in acquisition of systems without giving thought to how they’ll actual operate, and whether they’ll benefit the business. Coltman calls it the “What about me?” syndrome: “’They added this,’” someone will complain. “’How come we can’t?’”

Coltman’s best practices for achieving seamless tech integration includes starting with the problem to be solved, bringing people into the project from the beginning, and “creating a change program over the course of implementation to help individuals come along as champions of your change.”