Why does change management matter in ensuring an enterprises’ digital transformation journey?

According to McKinsey, 70% of change programs fail to achieve their goals, mainly due to employee resistance and lack of management support. The IA Global Market Report 2019 states that digital transformation will largely succeed or fail based on effective planning and execution of change management. As new solutions present themselves and the nature and mode of work shifts, effective change management plays a critical role in successful implementations.

In this blog, we will shed light on why change management, in particular, organizational and people change management is a key enabler of digital transformation. Read on.

What is Change Management?

Change management is an interdisciplinary approach that calls for process change and a change in company strategy and policies. The IA Global Market Report 2019 outlines three disciplines of change management — IT change management, business process change management, and organizational and people change management.

Prosci defines change management as “the process, tools and techniques to manage the people side of change to achieve a required business outcome”.¹

In other words, technology, people and processes are the foundational blocks on which change management framework is built and deployed. In this era of digitalization, enterprises are looking to streamline processes and achieve end-to-end automation across business functions. Using an appropriate change management model contributes to making digital transformation a reality.

Change Management focuses on people and helps them transition and adopt new technologies and processes, whereas Project Management focuses on managing the project scope, budget, and timeline.²

How are enterprises traversing the automation journey? How can enterprises address the enormous automation challenges head on?

We are all aware that change does not happen in siloes. It requires syncing of organization structure, roles, processes, and leaders that form an integral part of change management, empowering enterprises to embark on a successful automation journey.

Here are a few questions that enterprises should address to succeed in the age of automation.

Undoubtedly change management plays a crucial role in driving digital transformation process, enabling enterprises to understand the problem, respond and adapt to change faster, and create a customized plan that requires your existing workforce or people to adapt to change management methodologies. Factors such as sponsorship and buy-in to communication and readiness, empower enterprises to implement a successful change management framework, thereby dramatically improving productivity, innovation, and efficiency.

Here are a few points that organizations need to focus on to implement organizational and people change management.

Change leader

Not only is having the right mindset and behavior important but also having the right leaders to lead change and own the enterprise automation program. The IA Global Market Report 2019 emphasizes on two key change leaders — The VP/ SVP executive charged with owning the enterprise automation program, and the executive responsible for the part of the operation experiencing an automation transformation. These leaders are tasked with inspiring the entire organization, the IT and audit teams to support the overall strategy, budget, and skills.

Training

Are your employees worried about losing their job to automation? Training and educating your existing workforce to experience change with regular feedback supports change practices and readiness that was unthinkable in the past. Automation is indeed gaining a lot of traction across industry verticals; educating your employees about the benefits of automation, encouraging adoption and training the team on embracing change is the way ahead for enterprises. Devising an effective change management strategy depends on people — aligning the organization’s values, culture, and people will go a long way in successful RPA implementation.

Training your staff to perform higher-value work that requires decision-making ability helps you to look into the future and co-create the future workforce — the human-digital twin.

Involve all stakeholders

Establishing an RPA Center of Excellence helps take RPA capabilities to the next level – from gathering people and leaders to ensuring the goals are aligned with the needs of the organization, RPA CoE brings about a paradigm shift in the way your business works, thus fostering collaboration with all the stakeholders, and enabling automation program see the light of the day.

Download the IA Global Market Report 2019 report to learn what change management means.

References:

[1] “Definition of Change Management,” Prosci.com,

https://www.prosci.com/resources/articles/change-management-definition

[2] “The Importance of Change Management in AP Automation Transitions,” Mediusflow,

https://www.mediusflow.com/en/untapped/articles/process/change-management-accounts-payable-automation