Change is a constant in business, and the pace is only accelerating. To keep up, larger enterprises often put in place a change management function. But even smaller businesses regularly embark on change initiatives.
In fact, the typical organization has undertaken five major company wide changes in the past three years, according to Gartner. In the next three years, three-quarters plan to multiply the types of changes they’ll pursue.
Yet only one-third of change initiatives are a clear success, the Gartner research concludes. One-half of projects actually fail. What’s going on?
A key issue is that virtually any change initiative will have an impact on business processes. That fact has major implications for your organization’s business process management (BPM).
BPM combines process discovery, measurement, analysis, and digitization to automate and improve the workflows that power your business. Organizational, technological, and other changes can disrupt the end-to-end workflows your business depends on – everything from employee reviews to customer invoicing to your year-end financial close.
But one solution can optimize both change management and BPM, and that’s no-code application development. An effective no-code tool can empower your organization to map existing workflows, create new process-enabling applications, digitize processes end-to-end, and measure the results.
No-code for Better BPM
A no-code application development solution enables nontechnical employees to create their own applications and workflows quickly and easily. Virtually any team member can build fully functional and secure applications by simply dragging and dropping reusable software elements on a digital canvas.
Users select from templates to map workflows, design user interfaces, enable data inputs, and generate outputs. Security is automatically built into the resulting application, and API integration automatically connects with popular IT platforms.
With no-code, you’re not burdened by the costly and time-consuming coding, testing, reviewing, and implementing associated with traditional application development. Indeed, there’s no need for help from the IT department at all.
In fact, no-code can turbocharge your BPM. An effective no-code tool enables you to:
- Model workflows and processes before creating new applications.
- Tailor interfaces, data inputs, and workflow steps to optimize user experiences.
- Confirm business rules, cybersecurity, and integrations to make new applications successful.
- Analyze the effectiveness of no-code apps after deployment to verify positive outcomes and achieve continual improvement.
No-code for Better Change Management
Change management, for its part, has spawned numerous approaches and methodologies. Among the most familiar is the Seven R’s of Change Management popularized by the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) set of IT best practices. These simple questions can help your organization make a business case for change:
- Who raised the change? Change typically needs to be authorized.
- What’s the reason? You should never pursue change just for the sake of doing things differently.
- What’s the return? The greater the potential payoff, the more you should prioritize the change.
- What’s the risk? Change can introduce risk, but not changing can involve risk, too. Think through the consequences of both.
- What are the necessary resources? Change can require an investment in people, technology, time, and budget.
- Who’s responsible? Who will design, implement, and measure the change?
- Are there any associated relationships? Think about whether the change will affect other activities or require other changes.
No-code can help in all these areas. For starters, it puts power to improve workflows in the hands of the employees who understand them best. All team members can contribute to ensuring the success of change. And because change is more bottom-up, workers are less likely to need training or resist the new way of working.
What’s more, by making change faster, simpler, and less costly, no-code minimizes risk and maximizes reward. You can easily and quickly digitize a workflow and iterate refinements, and continually improve to stay aligned with needs. Does the workflow dovetail with other processes? No-code lets you rapidly adapt those processes, as well.
Harnessing the Power of Process Improvement
Many organizations underestimate the power of change. A single change initiative can streamline a process. It can also spawn additional improvements that raise the performance of an entire business function. Those results can inspire other departments to pursue their own changes and improvements.
Likewise, linking change management to BPM can result in workflows that adapt to support the new way of working. With this foundation in place, you can engage in ongoing process improvements to optimize operations and respond to market demands.
With no-code software as the enabler, you can both support existing change initiatives and drive new change efforts. You can also better map, create, measure, and continually improve processes – just as BPM is intended to do.
Used to its full extent, no-code can actually transform your culture, encouraging all team members to innovate new workflows and improve the business. Your operations begin to function more efficiently. Your customer-facing activities respond better to customer needs. And your business becomes more agile in the face of constant change.
