making-sense-of-change-management

The applicationsSo what goes wrong in the process of realizing the benefits? Why doorganizations have trouble with IT-based change? This chapter looks atthe particular difficulties of achieving successful IT-based change andoffers advice on how to overcome particular obstacles associated with thistype of endeavour. The topics addressed are:• strategy and IT;• the role of IT management;• the need for IT change managers;• achieving process change;• changing the information culture;• new rules for a new age.The potential gains of successfully implementing IT-based change aremany and varied. Organizations are attracted by the idea that they willgain the capability to do a range of highly desirable things. Some of thepotential gains concern innovation and development:• to achieve flexible responsive production of customized goods;• to segment the marketplace in new ways through analysing information,and then create new products for those segments;• to serve customers in new ways by creating access via the internet;• to create new forms of partnership and new types of organization.But many of the potential gains concern achieving efficiencies to:• reduce the need for agents and intermediaries by providing employeeor customer self-service facilities over the internet or intranet;• achieve sophisticated functionality at reasonable cost (for instance byintroducing standard packages such as ERP);• allow globalization of operations;282