Change Management

Projects such as Business Process Reengineering, Organization- and Process management, ERP-implementations and so on always lead to more or less small to large changes. These changes can occur in different areas and on different levels. Thus, among your business processes, other areas can be affected by the change: your operational and organizational structure, your leadership structure and instruments, your IT-systems, single employees as well as their roles and job specifications, the responsibilities and involvement in the execution of business processes and the corresponding information and documents.

From experience, employees often have a hard time understanding and accepting change and thus actively participating in the realization of it. Therefore, planned changes have to be well thought-out and communicated comprehensibly. A clear understanding of the benefits resulting from the change as well as a fixed timetable and clearly defined responsibilities helps to obtain the necessary mindset.

The consideration of soft factors and adequate flanking measures such as road shows, informative meetings, communication with directly involved employees and other involved, are core elements of Change Management.

Any aspects of the soft- and hardfacts have to be considered and transformed into measures within the action plan. The catalogue of measures contains all changes within the organization, the responsibilities and the infrastructural requirements. Obstacles, such as a knowledge deficiency that obstructs or even puts the successful realization at risk, have to be identified in time (e.g. by means of assessments). In order to fill in these gaps, effective measures have to be developed subsequently.

After the formulation and release of the action plan, a continuous monitoring has to be established in order to show the management an all involved staff the current status (success as well as backlogs). A constant cause analysis sheds light on the causes and necessary corrective measures for plan variances.

The Change Process takes place in different phases and can be visualized by an S-shaped curve.