Change management is vital for the success of your cloud transformation or cloud migration project. Here are some strategies to employ in your organization.
Companies operating in today's business landscape are managing the introduction of the latest technologies, the unexpected occurrences of new market opportunities, and changes in how consumers select, interact with and apply standards to their businesses. The ability to deal with and accept changes within an organization is becoming vital for survival for many modern companies in this digital transformation landscape.
To cut a long story short, modern businesses must manage transformation if they want to succeed. For this, they need effective change management to ensure a successful transition.
Is your organization ready to adapt to changes or finding it difficult to manage changes? Continue reading this post to learn what change management is in detail and what are some of its best strategies.
What is Change Management?
Change management is a structured approach and application of knowledge, resources, and tools to deal with the transition. It includes describing and taking on strategies, structures, procedures, and technologies to handle external and business environment changes. The primary objective of change management is to successfully implement new technologies, processes, and strategies while reducing adverse outcomes. Effective change management exceeds project management and technical tasks that have taken on to put organizational changes into practice and includes leading the people in significant transformation within a company.
Importance of Change Management
Managing change affects your organization's essential factors, including your workforce, customers, and profitability. Provided that companies face faster and more complex changes than ever before, the reasons for change management are only increasing. However, in addition to other things, change management prepares, equips, and supports employees to help them engage, adapt, and use the change successfully.
Companies undertaking change management are more likely to meet project goals and stay on budget and timeline. With effective change management, employees adopt changes quickly, more proficiently. During this time of disruption, they stay involved in the organization, understand the transition, and have the tools and time to get on board and feel recognized and supported. Lack of change management can result in failed project results, additional project costs, increased project timelines, and low usage and adoption.
Change Management Objectives
Companies can quickly point to schedules, tangible goals, and particular results in project management. But when it comes to change management, we follow a more reactive and general approach. Change management may differ from one company to another, but the strategies will share the following primary objectives:
Support employees – According to some research, most change initiatives remain unsuccessful due to no support from the workforce. The transition may have a threatening effect, especially when employees have been doing things in a particular manner for a long time. With change management, companies ensure that employees feel noticed and supported, encouraging them to support transformation initiatives.
Improve workforce productivity – Companies should install all changes, especially those involving digital transformation, to boost the efficiency of their employees. No matter what the change is, it should help your workforce perform their work better and faster.
Gain competitive advantage – Every organization evolves to improve what they do. Change management shapes the transition process to enable companies to spot opportunities and create a competitive advantage through controlled costs, innovation, or better quality of service.
Key Change Management Strategies to Prepare for Cloud Transformation
Whether it is a targeted shift within a department or a significant digital transformation across the company, change management strategies are of the utmost importance to any change initiative in the organization. Following are key change management strategies for cloud transformation:
Establish the need for change
Make sure you have a clear case that explains your project and goes into detail about why, how, and when the change will occur. There are undoubtedly many benefits of migrating to the cloud, including reduced costs, improved reporting, and decision-making, and better customer experiences, to name a few. However, these benefits need to be communicated across the board to gain internal stakeholders' commitment and support.
Identify champion users
Your champion user is someone within the organization who will help support the change effort. Essentially an advocate for your cloud transformation project, these champion users can help by sharing your messaging among peers and help you identify potential blockers. As they are typically early adopters, they can also give you valuable feedback and share insights into how to improve the user experience for the rest of the team.
Encourage communication
Proper communication during organizational transformation is essential as it is one of the fundamental factors deciding a project's success or failure. Ensure that there are proper methods of communication in place, where users can ask questions and get support when using the new software. Use your champion users to get feedback on what would help other users understand the new system better, whether it's additional fact sheets or guides. Throughout the process, you can use tools like assessments and surveys to understand how prepared your end users are and how they're feeling at different project stages.
Create a training plan
Training your employees and providing them with resources essential to adapt to your cloud transformation is critical. To do so, develop a robust training plan and ensure it is not just a one-time occurrence but an on-going exercise. Training should include a variety of mediums, so you can teach your employees how they learn best. This might mean creating videos, tip cards, FAQs, and holding in-person training sessions.
Assess adoption
Your cloud project's ROI depends heavily on whether your employees are using the new solution as intended. Assess your new platform's level of adoption, identify gaps in adoption, and determine why they are happening. Is it because some end users can't do a certain process in your new solution? Are they struggling with understanding the training material? Figure out why the change isn't sticking and place incentives to encourage users to adopt the new system.
Takeaway
For successful cloud transformation, an effective change management plan is vital. If you do not put in the effort to manage the change, your organization may suffer from low adoption levels, unrealized benefits, or low employee engagement. Strategically planning for and managing change will benefit your organization in the long term as you increase user adoption, minimize resistance, and get the most out of your digital transformation.