Change Management Challenges for IT (and Solutions)
What is change management?
Change management is a systematic approach to dealing with the transition or transformation of an organization’s goals, processes or technologies. The purpose of change management is to implement strategies for effecting change, controlling change and helping people to adapt to change. Such strategies include having a structured procedure for requesting a change, as well as mechanisms for responding to requests and following them up.(Source: techtarget)
Role of CIOs in change management
Change is one of the major factors for any business and poor change management can be a disaster to your digital transformation program. This is where the role of IT becomes critical and the inputs of a CIO comes in handy.
With most companies focusing on modernizing their legacy systems with advanced solutions to improve productivity and growth, it is a must for CIOs to understand the change management challenges and steps to negotiate them.
Common change management challenges CIOs face
- Employee resistance – making the workforce using legacy systems for years to move to new technology or tools.
- Limited resources – handling long-term program like DX will be challenging for existing resources as they are already stretched to their limits.
- Unclear benefits – implementation of advanced software programs impact the work environment differently and performing one without future outlook will impact productivity.
- Undefined roadmap – rolling out a DX program without any vision or plan will be catastrophic for the company’s growth.
SEE ALSO: "3 things to keep in mind when choosing a DX partner"
Change management process
Cited below are some of the ways CIOs can plan their change management process for a successful digital transformation program.
Adapting to a modern change management landscape
Most users won’t be receptive to hourly technology advancements and updates as this takes time for them to transition from the legacy system to the latest one. The best way to negotiate this is by running both the new and old systems parallelly for some time. This helps the users to adopt the new solution rolled out.
Ensure transparent communication
As most often the new software implementations are performed with little notice, adapting to the new solution becomes difficult for the users. This not only impacts your employee engagement but also hurts the customer experience. So, ensure the implementations are informed to the workforce in advance to avoid their resistance.
Negotiating employee resistance
Most often unclear roadmap and not so specific approach leads to employee pushback. Create a well-defined roadmap with directions to help the employees understand what is going to happen and how will it impact their day to day work process. This will help your employees prepare for using the new solutions.
Selecting a right DX partner
Partnering with digital transformation services doesn’t have the desired skill sets and experience would result in dismal digital transformation. Check the experience and expertise in the latest technologies like IoT, RPA, Mobile App Development, Cloud with a proven track record, before getting started with your digital transformation program.
CIOs have to lead the digital transformation program from the front to avoid a heart-wrenching failure. Enterprise CIOs are stepping up the ante to address the cause and today’s enterprises are looking for the same to drive amazing results.
Is your digital transformation successful? If you’re looking for a partner who will help your business with the right consulting services for making it fruitful, we can help.
