When organizations undertake new projects or initiatives to improve business performance, seize opportunities, and address critical issues, they implement changes. These changes affect job roles and responsibilities, various business processes, overall organizational structure, and technologies. Sometimes, organizational change fails due to inadequate support from leadership, lack of resources, over-communicating a poor vision or under-communicating a powerful vision. Change management tools play a significant role in helping teams to adapt and deal with the transition or transformation of organizational core values and goals.
Change management includes:
- Customer success navigation
- Transformational or transitional change
- Idea management
- IT implementation management
- Developmental changes
Importance of Change Management Tools
The purpose of any change management initiative is to successfully schedule change processes and assign transitional tasks, so IT professionals know what to do and when. Change management tools help in software management, IT rollouts and upgrades, collecting feedback regarding new tools and processes, training and onboarding, and running what-if scenarios to calculate the impacts.
Outlined below are the top five change management tools to help organizations adopt the change.
Top 5 Change Management Tools
1. SolarWinds Web Help Desk
A change is an event approved by the organization. It’s implemented with minimal risk to the existing IT infrastructure. SolarWinds® Web Help Desk® is a ticketing management solution designed to help monitor and resolve tickets, requests, and user queries in real time. The solution offers a suite of software to assess the impacts of change management. The suite includes software solutions such as asset management software, incident tracking software, service request management, software asset management, remote support integration, help desk reporting, and change management software. Keeping track of a huge number of tickets is challenging in the change management process. Web Help Desk integrates the IT ticketing system with change management software to perform various operations using a single console. This reduces the chances of errors and tickets from getting lost. The tool distributes tickets to the appropriate teams, sets reminders, and alerts to address a huge number of tickets. The IT team members can also view their changing roles and responsibilities and act accordingly. A free 14-day trial is available.
2. Service Desk
SolarWinds Service Desk is an IT service management (ITSM) solution designed to help organizations manage and prioritize incoming tickets successfully. When an organization implements a change, employees and customers come up with several queries and concerns. Service desk helps to streamline and organize the tickets/requests coming from different mediums such as emails, social media, calls, and service portals. Through the SolarWinds Service Desk employee service portal, employees can comment on tickets and participate in the resolution of different requests/queries. Employees can resolve requests quickly by completing approvals and associated tasks. The tool provides a step-by-step guide and tutorials (including images, videos, and links) to smoothen change management practices. Service Desk comes with a 30-free trial period. This free trial is fully functional and includes all the standard features required for resolving tickets.
3. The Change Shop
The Change Shop is a suite of tools to collect feedback, create change plans, and track and compare progress with other businesses. It’s a cloud-based application consisting of various tools with the ability to handle the shift in a process or workload. The Change Shop helps to navigate through change commitment plans and majorly focuses on gathering collaborative feedback and surveys. It transforms the collated information into useful and easy-to-understand reports. The suite works best for change management involving different teams and requires collaborative feedback. While the suite boasts a wide variety of tools, its compliance management and training management tools are the best. The Change Shop offers a free demo and starts at a price range of $29/month for up to 2500 users.
4. Viima
Viima is an innovative platform to collect, analyze, and prioritize ideas within an organization. Viima is a collaboration change management system offering a single platform to small, medium, and large enterprises. Its unlimited ideation boards, single-sign-on, and custom access controls make it a smart idea management solution. The tool effectively collects ideas and equips users with a visual interface to gain quick insights into working ideas. It encourages employee participation and promotes transparency by treating the idea development process as a social activity. To increase engagement, it includes gamification features designed to reward, recognize, and motivate active contributors. Viima features automatic notifications, easy categorization, and a mobile version of the software. The Android and Apple versions help remote teams and individuals stay connected throughout the change process. It also allows users to share ideas, upload pictures, and reply to comments on the go.
5. Giva
Giva is a cloud-based IT help desk and a change management solution offering asset management, user satisfaction surveys, knowledgebase, ticketing, dashboards, reporting, a self-service portal, and a mobile app at a cost-effective pricing model. With Giva advanced and robust reporting features, teams can quickly make informed and quality decisions. Giva’s dashboards allow organizations to measure employee responsiveness, employee productivity, and user satisfaction by creating a feedback loop. It’s a highly customizable solution with automated workflows designed to help teams to convert emails into tickets without any manual input. Features such as auto-routing and automatic escalations not only save time but also increases user satisfaction. The tool comes with a 30-day free trial, and the premium version starts at $29 for a single user per month.
How to Implement Change Management Effectively
Successful implementation of change requires setting up different change management competencies. It’s the first step to ensure projects deliver the intended results. Use of effective tools such as SolarWinds Web Help Desk and Service Desk aren’t only used to pinpoint resistance areas and reduce stress by handling tickets/requests/queries but also to track employee performance, gather feedback, and analyze the change in progress.