In today's fast-paced business landscape, staying ahead of the competition requires efficient and effective solutions. According to Microsoft’s Work Trend Index, nearly 70% of employee report that they don’t have sufficient time in the day to focus on “work”, with more time being spent Communicating than Creating.
Microsoft 365 Copilot is designed, with Microsoft’s cloud trust platform at its core, to allow for employees to both be more productive, reduce the time spent searching for information, performing mundane tasks, and other low-value activities.
Change is inevitable but transformation is not.
Change
The disruption, good or bad, that demands a response.
Transformation
The process of understanding change, embracing it where possible, adjusting to it where necessary, and coming out bright and shiny on the other side.
Change Control vs Change Management
When it comes to turning change into transformation with new IT tools, systems, and processes, we generally have two terms that we rally around – “change control” and “change management.” While they sound similar, they are actually different approaches to change that serve different groups of people.
Let’s say, for example, that your car is broken down and you need a new ride.
Change control might help you:
- Diagnose the problem
- Systematically try some fixes
- Keep copious notes about what parts were changed for when another mechanic needs to look later.
Change management may help you:
- Navigate the choice of fixing your old car or upgrading to a new one
- Identify what new models and features to consider
- Pinpoint ownership considerations
- Discover how to get the most return on your investment.
Technology change is people change . . . every time
Change control is about keeping track of what is changing to a system, a server, a software product, or even to a process over time. Part of that change control implementation may be limiting maintenance windows or conducting thorough testing in a dev or UAT environment before deploying to production. It may contain review by a change control board that takes an enterprise-level view of how a change to one system may impact others. There may be logging, comments, notes, and versions… all tracking who changed what and when. While this is incredibly valuable, change control primarily exists to serve IT.
Change management is an arguably broader process that may incorporate change control but is inclusive of awareness initiatives, communications, training, resistance management, and adoption of new tools and processes.
More succinctly put, change management is concerned with how changes impact the people who experience them.
In order to move from change to transformation, we will need to manage the details of how systems, processes, and software change over time. However, without change management, we may end up with a tight ship on which no one sails. Change management is crucial to the success of any IT project. Technology change is people change . . . every time.
M365 Maturity Magnifier
Accelerate your M365 adoption with qualified change management techniques.
KiZAN is a Microsoft National Solutions Provider with numerous gold and silver Microsoft competencies, including gold data analytics. Our primary offices are located in Louisville, KY, and Cincinnati, OH, with additional sales offices located in Tennessee, Indiana, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia.
