Choosing a new change management software solution is never simple. It’s easy to get bogged down in details such as functions and features. But are you asking yourself the most important question - will this solution fit my organisation?
The implementation of a new technology often fails because it imposes a rigid way of working that doesn't suit how the organisation wants or needs to do things. Users have to take or leave a piece of software as it is. If it doesn’t meet their needs, they’re likely to go back to old methods of change management - spreadsheets, emails, phone calls etc. This is because they view the “old way” of doing things as the lesser of two evils, despite it being high-risk and manually intensive.
What you need is a change management platform that fits the way you and your teams work, not the other way around.
An enterprise-centric change management platform will:
1. Support multiple methodologies.
Whether you’re using Lean, Agile, Waterfall or other methodologies to deliver change, the software you choose should provide the functionality you need. If you’re planning on moving from Waterfall to Agile, for example, you’ll need a solution that can cope with both ways of working.
2. Provide intelligent dashboards with relevant information to different levels of the organisation.
Different people need different data to do their jobs in the best way possible. Project and implementation managers want to know what tasks are upcoming for them and the status of the projects they’re currently involved in. Stakeholders want to see high-level status updates of all the change going on across the organisation.
3. Integrate with technical tools.
You probably have various tools already in place that deal with the automated side of change management, but need to be part of the end-to-end orchestration process of your project or programme. Integrations are an important aspect of enterprise-centric change management solutions to link up human planning and orchestration activities with automated processes.
4. Allow for both long- and short-term planning.
Most project management tools are built for fairly short-term projects that are updated weekly, but this doesn’t fit all scenarios. For a weekend cutover, for example, plans and updates need to be made by the hour, minute or even second. At the other end of the scale, tracking long-term enterprise changes from goal to completion can be difficult with solutions like this too. Ideally, you want a platform that works just as well for tracking long-term changes as for short-term projects and links all change activities from across the enterprise together in one central place.
5. In-built communications.
Even with real-time status updates, you’ll want to keep everyone informed via texts, emails or conference calls from time to time. Having these integrated within your change management platform reduces wasted time and makes the whole process seamless.
Change management solutions should be designed to fit enterprises, not the other way around. Finding the right solution for you is essential to achieving high adoption rates and reaping the benefits of greater control and reduced risks and costs. Being able to align change management projects to enterprise strategy with an enterprise-centric change management platform will bring even greater benefits in the long run by helping to ensure you’re driving your strategy in the right direction.
Cutover is the enterprise change management platform that allows you to orchestrate and manage change, provides visibility into every process and is an automatic source of record for change and resilience events.
Cutover is a change management platform that enables you to orchestrate humans & technology @ pace.