Thursday, September 26, 2019

Take a Logical Scenario to Drive IT Change Management

Leading evolutionary changes and driving business growth is the never-ending journey which takes planning, methodologies, and practices.

Digital transformation isn’t just an extension of continuous improvement of the current business, but a quantum leap with radical change. It requires a unique vision and the tremendous courage to pursue it. Due to the exponential growth of information and “disruptive power” of digital technologies, IT needs to become a “Change Department” because it is in a unique position to manage business information and capture the oversight of the entire company. Organizations reach the turning point when their top business leaders can think outside the current constraints and comfort zones, empower IT to break down silos, and take the bold move to drive changes in a structural way.

Accomplish change by identifying the pain points and fixing problems through well-developed processes and company-based collaboration: The business journey of moving forward will not always be smooth. There are growth pains, chronicle business downturn pains, as well as unnecessary pains caused by silo mentality or bureaucratic culture. IT needs to engage with the business units to find out what the pain points really are, identify opportunities for developing new products/services or improving/optimizing current ones. More specifically, there should have strong interactions between operations leaders and IT leaders and their teams with feedback mechanisms and willingness to find solutions that can support both the business need and build any ROI required to justify the business case.

To overcome growth pains, people are encouraged to break down outdated rule or silos, brainstorm fresh ideas, and co-solve existing or emerging business problems cohesively and constantly. To deal with chronic business/economic downturn, it’s also important to manage the business balance cycle well by consolidating, integrating, modernizing, and optimizing, To avoid unnecessary pain caused by bureaucratic management style , remove cultural, organizational or systemic obstacles. Few communication activities don’t create that awareness, change management has to become the day to day activities, make continuous communication and deliveries. Sustaining long-term collaboration allows participants to develop subject knowledge over time, focus on fixing existing or emerging problems, and drive digitally enabled innovation and transformation.

IT implementation with change management best practices should aim at improving customer experience: Highly adaptive IT will focus on IT-customer alignment to improve both internal users' and end customers’ overall satisfaction. IT implementation with change management needs to not only empower and engage internal users with powerful digital platforms and efficient tools to enforce productivity and collaboration; but also make a seamless alignment with end customers by understanding their pains and needs; as well as digitizing touch point of customer experience.

The focus always remains on technicalities of preparedness and implementation of business/user community, deploy a range of technologies that focus purely on improving the customer's experience, showing customers that you are making significant investments in delivering the products or services meeting their needs. There are no IT projects, only business initiatives, gain a clear understanding of the monetary benefits the customer is going to realize the intended change. Also, take a serious awareness of the adverse impact (monetary or brand value) due to the failed change. You are doing so to a greater extent than your competitors, you are gaining market share and improve the long-term business advantage.

Outline the implementation process to change with assignments, timelines, and deliverable: The digital ready roadmap of IT Change Management with the step-wise processes from here to there should include the goal clarification, the resources and talent needed, rough timeline and measurable deliverable. Each interim state provides the current state of processes, artifacts, staffing, etc. IT capacity planning needs to be part of the corporate initiatives around continuous business improvement.

 IT resource is limited, resource allocation is critical to IT management prioritization. The resource allocation scenario needs to be transparent, helps IT management take advantage of resources effectively. Keep in mind, due to high business velocity, it’s critical to meet the business’s needs timely, eliminate delayed or missed business opportunities and solutions. Making on-time delivery and continuous improvement are much more critical than discovering elegant solutions.

Organizations large or small are living in the digital sea today, they have to change with the "tide." IT is impacting every business unit and is becoming the driver of business change and digital transformation. They have to lead boldly but manage the change scenario in a structural and cautious way. Leading evolutionary changes and driving business growth is the never-ending journey which takes planning, methodologies, and practices.

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