Driven by efficiency programs, rapidly changing market circumstances or IT trends, companies invested enormous amounts of time and money in the improvement of their business processes and the renewal of their supporting IT infrastructure.
Over and over again, the disappointing results of such projects have shown that they can and may not be viewed merely as IT projects. Project approaches that were too much technology driven have lead to serious business failures and poor returns on IT investments. There are numerous examples of companies having to accept a significant downturn in business performance as a consequence of wrong - or better - incomplete management of their IT projects.
In the current market conditions, IT investment projects require a fast Return on Investment. Though in reality this is very difficult to obtain.
The horror stories are probably well known. IT projects have more than once directly damaged the business results of companies. Reduced business performance, decreasing customer satisfaction and motivational problems amongst employees are some of the disastrous effects that a failing IT implementation can have. The objective of Mieloo & Alexander's change management approach is to minimize the downturn in performance and increase the Return on Investment (ROI), as a result of a technology implementation project.
Decreased process control
An IT project has got a significant impact on the control of business processes. Controls that were adequate in the past will become useless, as information flows between people or departments are different. Certain information flows will become less visible than they were in the past. Therefore, it can easily happen that process bottlenecks or concentration of work in progress are not noticed in time or even not at all. Identifying these effects and incorporating them in a clear communication plan to the organization is part of our change management approach.
Motivation dip of employees
An IT implementation is often a change of such magnitude, that it can only be done successfully with the commitment and input of the entire organization. If the process knowledge of employees is not included in the project approach, the quality of the new processes and of the changes will be insufficient. Moreover, a change that is predominantly initiated from outside, is less likely to be accepted. When employee involvement in the project is too low, changes will be understood poorly and therefore not be accepted.
Although both risks seem to be internal by nature, it's essential to understand that these risks could potentially lead to a negative impact on key performance indicators, such as for example delivery performance, customer satisfaction and market position. The awareness that IT projects can have a negative impact on the overall business results is crucial.
The downturn in performance after an IT implementation can occur in three ways:
'Performance dip': Shortly after the go-live business volumes decrease temporarily because the organization has to shift to the new way of working;
'Performance delay': It takes some time after the go-live for business volumes to return to their normal levels and the recovery of the 'steady state';
'Performance gap': Business results can be lagging behind for a longer time than anticipated. The picture below shows the three ways in which business performance issues can occur.
The objective of Mieloo & Alexander's change management approach is to minimize the downturn in performance and increase the Return on Investment (ROI), as a result of an IT implementation.
Change management approach Mieloo & Alexander
The consultants of Mieloo & Alexander have dealt on many occasions with the risks that are implicitly related to IT enabled improvement projects. In order to properly manage the risks that have been introduced in the previous paragraph, the Mieloo & Alexander change methodology is an integral part of its project methodology. In that way, it's ensured that IT enabled improvement projects are not being managed as pure IT projects, but as business change projects.
Mieloo & Alexander distinguishes the change management approach in two main categories:
A. Project implementation change management: Business risk minimization, very much related to project implementation deliverables. We also like to name it the "hard" side of Mieloo & Alexander's change management approach.
B. Basic change requirements for organizational change: get buy in, sponsorship for IT enabled improvement projects, this is the "soft" change management approach of Mieloo & Alexander.
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