Nicole Arthur

Overview

TVNZ undertook a major digital transformation to modernise its streaming platform and support the organisation's strategic shift toward a digital-first future. The programme introduced new capabilities across subscription management, customer experience, content delivery, reporting, and operational processes while replacing and integrating multiple legacy systems.

As Senior Change Manager, I was responsible for leading readiness, stakeholder engagement, communications, training, and adoption activities across 11 business areas, supporting approximately 25 SMEs and more than 60 business users through a complex, multi-vendor transformation.

The Challenge

The programme involved the implementation and integration of multiple platforms and vendors, including Quickplay, Evergent, Stripe, AWS and Statsig.

Key challenges included:

• Multiple business areas impacted simultaneously.
• Significant process and role changes across operational teams.
• Tight delivery timelines with fixed go-live expectations.
• Dependencies across technology, business, vendor and operational workstreams.
• The need to maintain business continuity while preparing teams for new ways of working.

As delivery progressed, compressed timelines and late availability of environments and vendor documentation significantly reduced the time available for business readiness activities, training, and user preparation.

My Approach

Outcomes

The Digital Platform programme successfully transitioned to the new platform and established the foundation for TVNZ's future digital growth strategy.

Key outcomes included:

• Supported readiness activities across 11 business areas.
• Coordinated training and readiness for approximately 25 SMEs and 60+ business users.
• Successfully navigated a complex multi-vendor delivery environment.
• Maintained stakeholder engagement and confidence through significant delivery uncertainty.
• Enabled business teams to prepare for and adopt new processes, platforms and ways of working.
• Supported successful go-live communications during both rollback and deployment scenarios.
• Strengthened business ownership and engagement through trusted stakeholder relationships.

Retrospective & Continuous Improvement

Following go-live, I played a key role in facilitating programme retrospectives involving both TVNZ and external delivery partners.

The review identified several themes:

• Readiness activities were compressed by late delivery of environments and functionality.
• Fixed delivery dates reduced flexibility across training and adoption activities.
• Vendor documentation and operational readiness materials arrived later than required.
• Teams consistently demonstrated a strong collaborative "get it done" culture to achieve programme objectives.

The retrospective helped convert delivery experience into actionable lessons for future transformation initiatives and informed readiness planning across subsequent TVNZ programmes.

Key Learning

This programme reinforced that successful change management is not simply about communications or training.

It is about helping people navigate uncertainty.

The most valuable contribution often comes from creating clarity, building trust, and ensuring stakeholders can continue moving forward even when plans change.

The experience strengthened my capability in large-scale digital transformation, readiness leadership, stakeholder influence, and change delivery under pressure.

Overview

AUT undertook a university-wide TechnologyOne upgrade to modernise its finance platform, regain vendor support, and enable access to new capabilities. The programme impacted approximately 2,000 staff across three campuses, with the most significant impacts experienced by Finance and Finance Managers across the organisation. Joining after the project was already underway, I was responsible for leading change activities across stakeholder engagement, impact assessment, communications, training, and organisational readiness as multiple modules were deployed over a four-month period.

The Challenge

While technical delivery and SME engagement were progressing well, the programme had limited change planning in place. There was no communications schedule, no structured training approach, and limited visibility of how the rollout would impact different stakeholder groups. The university environment added further complexity — staff were spread across three campuses, many worked part-time or had varying levels of system knowledge, and traditional communication channels had limited reach. Several modules introduced additional process steps, increasing the risk of resistance, confusion, and support demand.

My Approach

Outcomes

• Supported readiness and adoption across approximately 2,000 staff.
• Enabled Finance teams and Finance Managers to transition to new processes while maintaining business operations.
• Developed more than 20 AI-generated training videos and supporting learning resources that achieved strong engagement and utilisation.
• Helped shape a rollout approach that balanced delivery objectives with organisational capacity and SME availability.
• Contributed to manageable support volumes following go-live.
• Supported a smooth transition with no significant adoption issues or major operational disruption during the implementation period.

Key Learning

This project reinforced that effective change communication is not about sending more messages — it is about helping people access information in ways that work for them. In large, distributed organisations, successful adoption requires more than communication plans. It requires visibility of impacts, thoughtful pacing of change, and learning resources that fit naturally into people's day-to-day work. By combining visual change planning, capacity-aware deployment sequencing, and scalable self-service learning, it is possible to improve readiness while reducing pressure on both project teams and business stakeholders.