Change occurs when a business looks to make technological, regulatory or operational improvements.
Whether motivated by optimising internal processes, complying with vendor-driven updates, or staying ahead of market competition, without change, business progress and growth would stagnate.
Companies are often intimidated out of making changes to critical elements of business infrastructure. Systems like ERP sit at the very core of business operations, so incorrectly implementing a change could bring major disruption. However, this hesitation is holding them back from innovation. Take SAP for example; the industry giant is frequently releasing new and exciting updates for its software, yet businesses are currently missing out due to their fear of change failure.
The trouble is, the aftermath of a change gone wrong can be brutal, a lesson hard learned by enterprises the world over.
A case in point: Crowdstrike
In July of this year, Crowdstrike released an update to its Falcon sensor, an AI-enabled cyber threat identification and remediation solution. The change was stress-tested under “standard software development processes” and had expected 20 input fields to the sensor. When the change was implemented, 21 inputs were present, causing widespread breakdown of services that impacted 8.5 million Microsoft devices, causing CrowdStrike’s share price to drop 16.63% by mid-morning on the day the outage went public. The outage is predicted to cost Fortune 500 Companies $5.4bn in damages.
While, in this case, it wasn’t an error within a vital internal system such as an ERP system, what should enterprises take away from incidents like this?
It’s this: change itself is essential, so comprehensive change management is of absolute importance.
The need for change: From SAP ECC to S/4HANA
Myriad sectors are facing challenges directly related to large-scale system changes. Perhaps no example is more relevant than the vendor-mandated transformation for SAP ECC customers, who will find maintenance for ECC system packages expiring in 2027 and replaced with S/4HANA. Customers undertaking this migration will gain improvements such as real-time analytics capabilities and lower ownership costs.
The 2027 deadline for migration to S/4HANA has been – and continues to be – a huge project for many businesses, with changes being made to critical systems that have powered their operations for over two decades. While the transformation promises to deliver significant value to businesses, fear of the change going wrong is sometimes enough to halt progress.
The risk of change
Failure in change management is often defined as identifying issues or inaccuracies well into the latter stages of the change’s lifecycle or, in the very worst-case scenarios, after going live.
Companies usually fall into one of two categories when it comes to change management, neither of which is desirable.
They either experience failure and therefore spend a lot of time reworking changes, or they’re paralysed by fear of something breaking, so hold off on making changes altogether. Either way, organisations are not in full control of their changes, risking the operational flow of the enterprise, impacting users’ ability to access services, and damaging stakeholder trust and, in worst cases, company revenue and valuations.
The path to successful change
The key to effective change management is understanding the entire process, inside and out.
Firstly, assess the depth of change. Operational infrastructure, such as SAP, work co-dependently with various systems – it’s what makes it so integral to day-today functions – increasingly the likelihood of widespread issues, should change failure occur. Having a comprehensive map of dependencies is vital.
Second, businesses need visibility of what changes are required in vendor upgrades. It’s essential they understand the complexities within new upgrades or support packs in order to gain a full picture of change.
At the same time, organisations are fighting internal battles for resources, with each department fixed on its own individual goals and priorities. Change management resources are no different, and often even more stretched, particularly if some of the available resource is directed toward correcting change failures. The most experienced staff members are also typically forced into the role of firefighting while those with less experience become responsible for scoping, planning, developing and deploying the next changes.
Take advantage of tools for change
In order to implement truly effective change management, organisations must equip their workforce with the right technology. It cannot be a solely manual task, not when a whole host of tools and services can be deployed that can help manage change and mitigate the risks of failure.
Automation is one such technology that represents a clear solution, and should be recognised as a key investment going forward. By automating as many of the standard tasks as possible to free up expertise, the team can focus more on planning in the early phases, where they can have a greater impact, reduce risk, and move forward with more confidence.
The right platforms and tools are capable of reducing the resource burden of time-poor IT teams and enabling the running of change tests, gaining crucial foresight into potential impacts. Through this, businesses can accurately assess whether the change carries intended consequences as well as any potential risks. From here, enterprises can pursue change for increased growth without juggling the constant risk vs reward conundrum that has plagued them for so long.
Change can get your business to the right destination, but it can also make the wheels fall off before you get there. It’s a conscious choice between resource, investment, planning, and technology-enhanced execution. Organisations that put these processes in place now will leave change-fearing competitors in the dust.
About the Author
David Lees is CTO at Basis Technologies. Basis Technologies provides software that empowers the world’s most dynamic SAP customers to predict change failures and automate change management. Making changes to complex, interconnected SAP systems can cause issues that lead to operational disruption, loss of revenue, and brand damage. Many of the world’s largest enterprises, including P&G, Honda, Britvic, 3M, and Diageo trust Basis Technologies to help them achieve their business goals by eliminating change design and execution errors.
