Change Approvals

Making change easier

There are various proven ways to speed up change while minimising risk – for example, the use of preapproved standard changes in ITIL or the use of automation in DevOps. But some changes still need approval – whether by one individual, a dictated number of people, a majority decision, or a unanimous decision. And it’s here that agreed change management practices often break down, with the delays – or presumed delays – in approval causing employees to circumvent the change management process. Or, as a result of delay (whether approval delay or perhaps deliberate submission delay), high-risk changes need to be treated as emergency change approvals rather than following the agreed, and lower risk, day-to-day change process.

The issues with inefficient or difficult change management practices

A leading, global pharmaceutical firm was struggling with the adverse business impact of both slow change processing and the abuse of its emergency change approval process.

It realised that, in order to address both issues, and their adverse impact, it needed to find a more effective way to manage change approvals.

Accelerating change approval with Heed

After considering various potential improvement opportunities, the organisation now uses Heed to ensure that its change approvals are clearly visible to those who need to see them.

Importantly, it realised that changes – and important changes, in particular – can’t afford to wait for change-approval emails to be spotted and actioned within personal email inboxes. Or, even worse, to be lost within these inboxes. Instead, a more effective mechanism for communicating and driving the necessary change approval actions is needed – one that removes the delays caused by email, especially when email is not deemed an important communication channel by some employees.

Heed now helps the organisation’s employees to approve changes more efficiently, with them able to respond to incoming change approval communications, and other important business messages, more quickly and in a more informed way. Plus, Heed automatically removes change approvals that no longer require their attention to avoid unnecessary time-wasting.