There can be many reasons that a company will choose to stop using one software package and move to another. Depending on how this is communicated to the users the transition can be smooth or painful. As a trainer I look at how the new software is going help the people using it, and why they should support the move.
All companies have rumour mills, if a rumour goes around no matter how far fetched, it can change the perception of the migration, for the better, but usually the worse. I was on a project that had new scanning software. The users could scan in a document and it would be saved to a specific location on the network that they had specified on a cover sheet. One course I trained someone said that they heard from a department that had already migrated that you could put several of these cover sheets one after another and scan the whole thing and it picks up each document and saves them. Sounds great and everyone was really happy. I however was a little bit reluctant, only because I had not heard this before. So I told them to wait and I would test it.
I tested it and it did not work, everything was scanned into the location specified on the first cover sheet only. If the users had heard this and thought “what a great feature” then tried it and found it failed, they would loose confidence. This rumour was not started in the IT department or on the project team, who knows where it came from. Sometimes it is someone hearing part of a conversation and misinterpreting it.
Training and lectures can help with the focus of information, if you train your staff and prepare them through lectures or seminars about a change, you can find out what other people have heard and stop rumours and replace them with accurate information. As well as training and lectures having online or information that is available on demand by staff is needed, a page for the project on the company intranet.
A project with a good flow of information to the end users has a better chance of success then one ruled by rumour.