Context
Change management is a word thrown around a lot in business, but what does it really mean? In its simplest terms, change management is applied by helping individuals impacted by a transformation make a successful move that enables them to engage, learn, and use a change within their organisation.
This may sound obvious, but people are the most important part of change management. When implementing new technologies like CDP and Personalize, you may never see their full potential if the organisation doesn’t bring its people on the journey.
Execution
Implementing Sitecore CDP & Personalize requires more than just deploying a new platform- it needs a considered strategy that aligns people, processes, and technology.
The first step is establishing a clear vision and defining the business objectives behind the personalization initiative. Teams need to understand why this change is happening - whether it's to improve user experience, drive conversion rates, or enhance marketing agility - and what success looks like in measurable terms. Clear KPIs, such as engagement lift or conversion improvements through A/B testing, help keep everyone focused and aligned.
Roles & responsibilities
Roles and responsibilities will likely shift with the introduction of Sitecore Personalize. New skill sets may be required, including experience design, data analysis, and personalization strategy. Organizations should plan for adequate training and onboarding, helping existing team members become confident in the new platform. In parallel, it’s important to foster strong collaboration between marketing and technical teams. Success in personalization often hinges on fast iteration and the ability to experiment, which requires a smooth, cross-functional working model.
An example of roles/responsibilities list would like the following:
| Role | Pre-CDP/Personalize Focus | Post-CDP/Personalize Focus |
|---|---|---|
| Digital Marketer | Campaign planning, email marketing, content calendar | Audience segmentation, experience targeting, A/B test coordination |
| Content Strategist | Editorial planning, content production | Experience mapping, message variation across audiences, copy for personalized experiences |
| Marketing Analyst | Reporting on campaign performance | Behavioral data analysis, insights on journeys, personalization impact tracking |
| UX Designer / Experience Lead | Page layouts, interaction design | Experience orchestration, component-level personalization, user journey testing |
| Web Developer / Frontend Dev | Static template implementation, content rendering | Personalization tag implementation, decision model integration, dynamic content blocks |
| Marketing Technologist | CMS admin, martech stack integration | CDP integration, decision model configuration, tag manager oversight |
| Product Owner / Strategist | Roadmap and feature prioritization | Personalization use case ownership, value delivery tracking, cross-functional coordination |
| CRM / Data Owner | Contact records, lead management | Identity stitching, consent and data compliance, customer profile enrichment |
| Testing / Optimization Lead | QA and performance testing | Experiment design, control vs. variant analysis, rollout strategies |
Processes
Processes may also need to be redesigned. For instance, the traditional content lifecycle might need to evolve to support dynamic and contextual experiences. Personalization should be considered from the earliest stages of experience design and campaign planning. This means creating space for experimentation and adapting campaign workflows to include A/B testing, segmentation, and real-time decisioning.
Technical
On the technical front, readiness of your data architecture is critical. Effective personalization relies on accurate, accessible data, so systems need to be well integrated. Sitecore Personalize should work seamlessly with your CMS, CRM, analytics, and other marketing technologies. Equally important is establishing governance—setting up frameworks for how personalization is implemented, how success is measured, and how customer privacy is protected.
Managing Change
Managing the people side of a change is often the most challenging and critical component of organisation transformation. Implementing change within any organisation takes effort, time, and resources which often means, it never happens. But change management is important and here are some of the ways to make it happen:
Establish clear leadership and full management support
Having full buy-in from all levels of management to achieve top-down conversion & transformation is key in coordinating the roll out of new procedures/systems such as the usage of CDP and Personalize to achieve real results.
Build a change management vision and share the message
Not only do you need to have full support from the leaders within your organization, you also need to have a vision for how you will drive the change and then have a plan for how to will get the message out once it’s fully implemented. Your vision for change within your organisation should answer two important questions:
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What is the overall change journey? By communicating the overall vision and benefits of why you are making the change, organisations are able to get wide cooperation and even excitement about the adjustments. When teams understand the how the change will happen and how their lives and jobs will be impacted, they can be better prepared for what is to come.
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What is the purpose of the change? Change management is almost always for the better. But it is change after all, which is hard for some. So, when creating your change management vision and begin to spread the word to the teams adopting CDP and Personalize, be sure you are tackling the important purpose questions like: how is the use of CDP and Personalize going to benefit me and my team? How will it be rolled out to the right teams in the most productive way?
Celebrate wins along the way
Large scale organisation transformation takes a long time, and the value recognised takes even longer. However, change management includes short term goals and wins which should be widely communicated and celebrated, such as low hanging fruit use case deployments and results shared. These celebrations and people recognition will help with social proof throughout the organisation ultimately inspiring others to get on board.
Regular communication of the transformation and celebrating people’s active engagement is a great way to move through the process. Highlighting small successes highlights the organisations transitional heroes. Every step of the overall change is important to reach the end goal.
Use change management as a tool to manage resistance to change
Organisations don’t change, people do. By investing in change management, the collective impact of successful individual transformation brings about a successful organisational change. Individuals who make changes to their day-today work and processes will deliver results and value for their organisation. Investing in change management highlights the importance of bringing each individual on the overall transformation journey.
Successful change management will recognise employees as separate individuals with different motivations and ways of processing content. Without this, plans can meet resistance such as:
- Lack of awareness of why the change was being made to use Personalization for the first time or changing platform
- Impact on current job role or additional responsibilities being requested
- Lack of visible support from and trust in management or leadership
- Lack of inclusion in the change - has the end user usage of the product been considered
- Uncertainty of when old procedures or systems will be eliminated to make way for new ones