Availability Guide for Change Management

Availability Guide for Change Management–125506
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Introduction to Change
Management
Overview
Businesses today are facing an ever-increasing rate of change worldwide. To succeed in
this rapidly changing environment, businesses must develop a risk-driven strategy where
change is assessed, mastered, controlled, and used to improve the competitiveness of the
business. Change should no longer be viewed as something that should be minimized
or avoided—it should be seen as a process that can be used to succeed.
This section:
•
Describes the factors that cause change
•
Defines change management in the Tandem environment
•
Describes the goals of change management
•
Explains how Tandem measures outages
•
Shows how change management relates to the operations-management (OM) model
What Causes Change?
In almost every industry, businesses have to deal with changing market conditions,
increased competition, and new technological opportunities. The following situations
illustrate some common causes of change:
•
Business growth or downsizing causes an increase or decrease in demand over or
under existing capacity.
•
New applications and functions result in increased processing demand.
•
Existing technology becomes obsolete and must be replaced with new technology.
•
Existing systems must be integrated with new systems, workstations, or networks.
•
Existing software or hardware must be replaced to reduce costs.
•
Product fixes or upgrades become available.
Change and the Cost of Downtime
Customer service, while always important to business success, has become a competitive
differentiator in industries where pricing and quality differences are minimal. In
companies where customer service reigns, the customer—not the business—determines
when, where, and how services should be provided. Customers want the freedom to
conduct business when it is convenient, from wherever they happen to be, using
whichever tools are available.