Despite its importance as a skill for business leaders and as a philosophy for greater organizations, change management efforts are more times than not unsuccessful—with some studies reporting upwards of 70% failure rates. Although a lack of direction from leadership, departmental information siloing and poor change communication all contribute to failure, modern change management has everything to do with your organization’s relationship with technology.
Businesses today operate in an era of continual digital advancement, where successfully adapting to change is a necessary skill in order to continue outpacing competitors. Companies with the most digitally proficient employees, the newest tools and the best tech policies are simultaneously the ones who will succeed in their change initiatives. Most notably, without implementing the right technology, any large-scale change communication across your company is likely to become quickly outdated, requiring you to make these same changes yet again.
Before you can begin enacting any type of large-scale change across your company, it’s important to make sure you have the proper technology infrastructures in place to make these shifts a success. Here are a few tech resources to learn how specific tools and innovations lay the foundation for proper change management.
Big Data AI
Big data marks a significant shift in how businesses make decisions on the future of their organizations. Although you may always have had access to certain data points or analytics to inform your strategies, the quantity and quality of this information dwarf in comparison to more modern data mining practices.
What is big data? Best described as a large reservoir of information that is too large or complex to review manually, big data grew in popularity as tech innovations became capable of collecting and processing results at this scale. The advent of artificial intelligence, in particular, has enabled even smaller enterprises to process massive amounts of customer analytics.
Let’s look at some recent statistics around big data to understand the magnitude of its size and its potential use cases in the workplace. Each day, over 2.5 quintillion bytes of data are originated, resulting in data generation 5.2 zettabytes by 2025. In 2020, organizations that have used change management to adapt to the big data trend are 23 times more likely to acquire customers when compared to others in the same space.
Big data helps businesses strengthen their change management strategies in two significant ways. First, it transforms the decision-making process with an approach that is always driven by hard information and historical results. This helps ensure that whatever changes you enact are aligned with both current and future objectives. Second, by mapping big data to your KPIs or desired outcomes for your business, you can easily pinpoint both whether and where your organization requires change. Do this by using the conclusions you gather with big data to identify weak points and inefficiencies in your current operations.
Voice over Internet Protocol
Voice over Internet Protocol, or VoIP, is a technology that has changed and will continue to change the way that businesses communicate, both internally with coworkers and externally with customers. Technologies such as VoIP have only become a reality for many businesses as broadband internet and Wi-Fi connections have improved over the years.
What is Voice over IP technology? Often used to power a larger unified communications suite, VoIP systems are capable of transmitting voice messages over the internet, as opposed to more traditional methods like a hard-wired landline.
Proper dialogue and communication technology are at the crux of any successful change initiative. Especially if you are tasked with change management efforts or oversee others in your organization, communication is the best way—and perhaps the only way—to gauge how you have affected your team’s day-to-day work. Understanding how the people that work for you react to changes is necessary because they will bear the brunt of the changes you make to how they do their work. And the effects of improper communication during change management are well apparent, as 73% of change affected employees experience higher levels of stress during and after periods of change.
Voice over IP technology allows for real-time communication in times of organizational change, regardless of the time-zone your team works from or how geographically disparate your team is. Make sure you’re explaining your plan before it occurs, highlighting its anticipated results and keeping tabs on all those affected to ensure that your people adjust smoothly to your new method of running your business.
Multi-Cloud
Multi-cloud arrives as the next iteration of off-site networking technology. As a way to optimize all of your cloud-based solutions under a single umbrella, multi-cloud systems establish a solid framework to give you the support you need to successfully enact digital change management.
But what exactly is the multi-cloud, and what are its benefits? If you’re already familiar with cloud technology, the concept behind a multi-cloud infrastructure is a simple one to grasp. Multi-cloud uses two or more cloud computing systems from a variety of technology providers, which means you can pick and choose which cloud services you want to use based on how well they work for your business. Because you rely on multiple cloud systems instead of one, multi-cloud infrastructures help ensure that your digital resources are distributed evenly, operate at a higher computing power and prevent the permanent loss of data from accidental erasures or server crashes.
Already, 74% of enterprise users rely on a hybrid- or multi-cloud to house their digital strategy, demonstrating just how instrumental this type of cloud usage will become.
When it comes to digital change management, multi-cloud boasts a number of benefits that will keep your change management on track. Relying on more than one cloud platform means that your data is backed up in multiple places, indicating that any disruptions caused by your change initiatives will not jeopardize your existing data, documentation or customer information. And because multi-clouds prevent you from becoming locked into a single vendor, it’s much easier to change your technology stack to a different provider.
By mapping your business process and learning more about these innovations, you can prepare your teams for a successful change in your operations.