Every mature organisation will look at their systems from time to time and figure out what fits / what does not fit with the future needs of the business.
Post-review, when the priority statement emerges, then the real work begins.
Making it happen
As we all know, but it is worth pausing to remind ourselves, despite all the loud Pollyannas out there, many Change initiatives fall short of their objectives. Having checked our urge to “get on with it”, we can calmly consider how we can ensure that the mission does not just “happen” but succeeds!
During the strategic – or routine – review process, the question which hardly ever gets addressed is: “are we fit for Change”? Meaning, do we have the capacity, competencies, cash (for sure) but also – as important – the culture. Pause again. Culture? I would say not just the willingness on behalf of key people but the supporting infrastructure beyond them. Let me flesh out that last point.
Supporting Infrastructure
At a Systems level, I am looking for tools which support collaboration and break down functional silos. At a Change Management level, I am looking for hybrid competencies – systems and business – and tools to register/administer Change. At a Governance level, I am looking for authoritative sponsorship from the business at all appropriate levels: decision-takers.
Effective organisations have Supporting Infrastructure (SI) in place and have honed its operation in more than one significant Change initiative. Putting SI in place is a piece of work, for sure but without it, the odds on your “happen” being short of the mark trends towards odds-on favourite.
ServiceNow – the Collaboration & Change control layer
The Now platform is a rich environment to support operational services and Change programmes. How can it help you?
Here’s a few reasons why we are Now platform partners:
- Collaboration routes: channelled and monitored communication through local portals, internal messaging or Teams
- Full-function Change Management services at the core of the platform
- Workflow design and deployment
- Out-of-the-Box configured functions to meet many business needs – plus our own templates for Private Markets operations
- Strong integration features to allow data transfers throughout the enterprise dataset
With Now, you can look again at legacy applications. Perhaps they are still useful as data repositories or end-point applications. With a Now workflow front-end, their limitations may be overcome. Similarly, bringing new applications into existing (or new) operations need not mean a complete change of user experience. The Now platform could intermediate between old and new.
In short, Now offers Support Infrastructure to:
- Facilitate and de-risk Change
- Extend the life of current applications – so extending the value of your investment in systems, mitigating “technical debt” issues
- Manage your systems/application estate to meet growing demands of digital operations compliance
A bolder enterprise might put Now in front of all applications, so that the enterprise (and its trusted external stakeholders) has a common look and feel and, at the same time, taking away many of the issues arising when an element of the application software inventory needs to be changed – just swap it out, for many, the interface is unchanged.
