When approaching change management, you need a holistic approach. This is why an external partner can prove so helpful. Having someone unaffiliated with your organization examining your processes with an unbiased perspective can be invaluable. When my team works with an organization, we first do an analysis of the project scope, timeline and budget to identify that we have the appropriate resources to effectively support every department and all of the key figures throughout the organization. And rather than a one-size-fits-all approach, we look at customizing that support for the particular needs of the organization.

We do this because the impacts of not having a change management program in place can be devastating. Say you’ve spent a ton of money on technology and services to perform a specific activity. Without a change management program, that piece of technology oftentimes sits around gathering cobwebs, as workers stick to what’s familiar and comfortable. Even when the technology is used, it’s very unlikely you’ll ever get the value out of it that you initially put in. I’ve even observed companies that spent millions on technology, but rather than customizing the technology solution to address the needs of their workforce and automate the processes that had been done manually, they simply hired more people to continue doing the manual processes. This dramatically — and needlessly — increased overhead.

Organizations without a strong change management program too often see resources wasted, productivity stifled, revenue lost and inefficiencies permeating the entire organization — and as change continues to happen, these problems only get worse.