Businesses will inevitably need to evolve with changing market conditions. To reduce the tensions and loss of revenue that often come with organizational changes, it’s important to properly manage the changes proactively. While business owners can attempt to do this manually, can save time, money, and effort by using the best change management software. To help you out, my team and I compiled this list:
FreshService
Includes a full range of tools to isolate and resolve change-related issues
ServiceDesk Plus
Handle IT service management (ITSM) challenges effectively
ChangeGear
Powerful AI and heavy automaton integration ensure effective DevOps changes
Whatfix
Great for effective adoption of new software across all or pat of an organization
Remedy Change
Identify potential risks to mitigate unexpected challenges proactively
With uncertainty on the rise, change management software is becoming increasingly vital in digital transformation. It will help your company transition smoothly and thrive the next time changes must be made.
Making company-wide changes isn’t easy. But, with the right tools, it can be a smooth transition if you focus on the main phases of successful change management: planning, implementing, and reinforcing the desired change.
If your company is looking to implement organizational changes, then you need to choose a reliable change management platform that will help you do so in the most efficient way. With the right digital facilitation platform, you’ll be able to plan and implement your strategy effectively.
In this article, we look at some of the best change management software you can use to plan and implement successful changes in your organization, including new technology, strategy, processes, culture, and organizational structure.
Read on to discover the best change management tools you need to make company-wide change easier.
What is the Best Change Management Software?
1. FreshService
Best Software Change Management Tool for Small-Medium Sized Businesses ($19/agent/month).
This is yet another cloud-based change management tool designed to help organizations streamline every step of planning their change process, from launch to approvals and everything in between.
FreshService helps companies manage all daily activities to minimize redundancy and maintain greater control over approvals. Some of the key features of the platform include problem management, manage daily tasks, gather ideas, incident management, release management, and reporting.
With these tools, you’ll be able to isolate issues linked to current or past incidents and identify the root cause of any problems. Furthermore, the incident management feature allows you to handle support tickets and automate repetitive workflows.
With release management tools, you’ll improve planning by documenting the build and test plans. In addition, the reporting feature will help you flag bottlenecks, monitor software performance, and improve delivery through canned and custom reporting tools.
You’ll also find additional features, including workflow approvals, change calendaring, audit trails, and compliance management.
Bottom line, this is a feature-rich tool of change management software that helps companies of all sizes, including advertisers, eCommerce businesses, educational institutions, human resource firms, medical service providers, and more.
You can integrate FreshService with a ton of team meeting and collaboration apps, including:
- Google Hangouts
- G-Suite
- Dropbox
- Zoom
- Skype
- MS Teams
- Fresh Books
- Slack
- Team Viewer
Key Features:
- Unified Service Management Solution: This platform will help you deliver delight and increase efficiency to realize greater ROI during and after the change.
- Robust Automations: Get rid of repetitive tasks and manual processes so you can drive service efficiency with powerful automations and no-code workflows.
- Integrated platform: You can easily integrate different service management tools on one platform to bridge silos, reduce costs, improve visibility, and change management software helps to shorten the time to resolution with the platforms’ integrated solution.
- Rapid Development: With the tools on this no-code platform, you’ll be able to customize the service desk rapidly, get expert onboarding services, change advisory board, migration services, 24/7 support, and more.
- Boost Employee Productivity: Connect with employees on their preferred channels, such as Slack, MS teams, FreshService Chatbot, etc., and empower them with an enriched knowledge base, as well as an enhanced self-service experience for accessing IT services via a unified service catalog.
Pricing:
Pricing for FreshService starts at $19/agent/month, billed annually. You can sign up for a free trial on the website, giving you access to all the platform’s core features.
2. ManageEngine – ServiceDesk Plus
A complete ITSM Suite with Built-in ITAM & CMBD Capabilities (Request pricing on website).
This company understands that in the era of digital transformation, disruption processes encompass a sequence of steps that lead to the successful implementation of localized or company-wide transformations, which, in turn, lead to the execution of a customer-centric digital strategy.
ServiceDesk Plus change management software enables companies to structure and monitor the process to identify opportunities, create a plan for software implementation, manage assets and resources, drive change, manage communications, monitor and evaluate data, and optimize auditing and compliance requirements with compliant workflow process using the top change management software.
The platform also has change management tools for handling IT management challenges connected to the digitization. It will create a customer-centric and omnichannel infrastructure that can quickly address disruptions, improve customer service, and automate training.
With this software, you can solve other challenges connected to the change management process, including compliance, asset and resource management, communication and project management, risk management, auditing and analysis, and governance.
Key Features:
- Incident Management: Gain better control of your help desk and reduce outages while improving agent productivity with the incident management feature on the platform.
- Change Management: This change manager feature will help you manage changes with precision. You’ll be able to streamline planning, approval, implementation, etc., using automated workflows.
- Problem Management: Go way beyond firefighting thanks to the ability to classify, analyze, and move problems to closure.
Pricing:
Pricing is not shown on the ServiceDesk Plus site, but you can tailor fit your plans by requesting a custom quote from the platform’s support team.
3. ChangeGear Change Manager
Best ITIL Change Management Tool for DevOps (Request pricing on the website).
This change management tool software from Sunview Software uses advanced automation and workflows and automations to support teams during significant, complex changes to an organization’s processes.
This change manager also simplifies the process of change and release management to help companies meet compliance, change processes, and auditing requirements.
Some of the key features on the platform include expedited approvals using pre-authorizations, higher approval and routing automation efficiencies, visual reporting, metrics, and KPI dashboards, as well as codeless, built-in change model workflows.
The platform is built for IT (with IT service management solution), Dev ops, and other business teams whose goal is to meet compliance requirements, such as FDA CFR 21, PCI, and NERC/CIP through the implementation of documented change control processes using change management systems and management software tools.
You can integrate the platform to other tools and applications for your change management processes, including:
- Google Cloud
- SAP Crystal Records
- JIRA Software
- Slack
- Microsoft Azure
- Microsoft Teams
Key Features:
- Business-Friendly Interface: Changegear has an intuitive user interface that you’ll find extremely easy to navigate.
- Advanced Automation: This feature will allow you to deliver seamless workflow automation to free your staff from repetitive manual tasks.
- Intelligent Decision-Making: Aid your end-users and staff to make faster decisions using the platform’s powerful AI feature with an intelligent service management solution
- Free Trial: ChangeGear offers a free trial with instant access to several of the platform’s modules so you can test-drive the software.
- Auditing Compliance: This is a growing need, and the platform limits your exposure to compliance risk so you can increase business agility.
Pricing:
ChangeGear doesn’t divulge pricing on the website, but you can schedule a demo to get a custom quote for your business.
4. Whatfix
Best Change Management Tool for Adopting New Software in an Organization (Get quote on the website).
Whatfix change management system guides you through the entire change process to help you increase adoption rate for your software products without risking productivity gaps.
Some of the features you’ll find in the platform include interactive guides designed to help employees through on-the-go support, as well as embedded interactive guidance that will make it easier for them to understand and adopt the new software, and learn about the change management solution for your change and task management.
Additionally, you get contextual support for employees according to their behavioral data and application needs, allowing you to achieve a high degree of accuracy in help response.
Other features include compliance management, approval workflow, and training management.
The service is perfect for small to medium-sized businesses, as well as large enterprises across all sectors and industries. These include retail, healthcare, technology, entertainment, charitable trusts, and finance.
You’ll find the following third-party integrations on the platform:
- Zendesk
- Salesforce
- PeopleSoft
- SCORM-compliant LMS
Key Features:
- Employee-Focused Benefits: This platform has the tools to help prime your organization for seamless adoption of new and existing software. You’ll be able to accelerate employee onboarding, change processes, empower software users, and boost productivity.
- Customer-Focused Benefits: You’ll also find tools to help you expedite your customers’ understanding of your software. Boost user adoption and proficiency, increase engagement and loyalty, and reduce overhead costs.
- Powerful Flows: Use this feature to tailor experiences to specific segments of users and improve your flows as you learn more about your users needs.
- Self-Help: The platform has knowledge bases built directly into the in-app experience, which puts each user in charge of their own development.
- Task Lists: You’ll be able to create effective roadmaps to progress by app experts in your own company and monitor the efficiency in real-time.
Pricing:
Whatfix has a custom pricing model. You can request a free trial on the platform to test out the different features before committing to a paid plan.
5. Remedy Change Management 9
Best Database Change Management Software with Advanced Features (Request pricing on website).
This platform from BMC Software is designed to help IT service management organizations address a multitude of potential risks and uncertainty when undergoing change.
The change management solution successfully covers a broad spectrum, including the planning phase, tracking, and delivering changes.
Some of the Remedy change management platform’s main features include collision detection for helping organizations automatically identify any changes that might be in conflict. You’ll also get an impact analysis for increased visibility into the assets, services, and people affected by the change.
Moreover, you’ll get multi-level approvals to ensure appropriate individuals approve all changes before key processes are implemented, including service level management.
The platform also features policy enforcement features to ensure that best practices are kept, and compliance is enforced in alignment with industry-specific regulations.
Remedy Change Management 9 also has a robust KPI dashboard and process-specific reports that offer insights for quicker and more accurate decision-making. You also get a range of other features, including planning, compliance management, task management, and much more.
This Remedy change management tool is ideal for companies with 5 to 1,000 or more employees across all industries. You can find out more about the software’s integrations by contacting support on the website.
Key Features:
- Incident and Problem Management: Resolve incidents much faster thanks to AI-driven, intelligent, and context-aware incident matching.
- Knowledge Management: Bring core information to support personnel and customers when needed, using the channels of their choice (including service desk and customer support).
- Smart Reporting: Transform powerful custom reports into stunning dashboards easily and share with partners using handy collaboration features.
Pricing:
Fill out the form on the website’s pricing page to get a custom quote for your business. Simply enter a few details about your area of interest, and one of the platform’s customer service agents will reach out to you to discuss pricing options according to your requirements.
6. Web Help Desk
Best for Budget-Conscious Users who Want a Simple Way to Get the Job Done (Request pricing on the website).
SolarWinds Web Help Desk is an affordable and easy-to-use IT service desk that’s available as either an on-premise web server or cloud-hosted deployment.
This platform puts ticket assignment, management, routing, and escalation on the front page. Still, it’s also an excellent IT asset management tool that keeps your hardware and software assets tracked and up to date.
This powerful tool not only provides your employees with the required resources to take their tasks to completion but also helps you to offer our appreciable and exceptional experiences. Hence, they always stay fresh and happier.
Key Features:
- Ticket Management: The platform’s ticketing system software will help you automate and streamline your ticketing process. Automatically turn service requests and alerts into tickets and simplify resolution.
- Incident Tracking: Automate incident management and simplify incident lifecycles thanks to powerful incident tracking software.
- Asset Management: Manage and track the life cycles of your software and hardware assets using the asset management feature.
Pricing:
SolarWinds Web Help Desk pricing can be obtained by requesting a quote on the website.
7. StarTeam
Best Change Management Software for Customizable Workflow Processes (Request pricing on the website).
MicroFocus StarTeam, formerly Borland StarTeam, is an enterprise change management software suite that enables process-driven development and allows organizations to monitor and manage assets throughout the entire life cycle.
This change management system is a centralized repository of assets, tools, and resources for development teams in different locations.
Its many advantages include:
- Easy way to track changes to source code, defects, features, and tasks
- Customizable Workflow Processes
- Cross-project data and data warehouse for analytics
- Increased project visibility for project management
- Centralized source of truth for change management
- Scalable
Pricing:
Request a free trial on the website and try out the platform’s many features to see if this software is the right fit for your business.
8. Gensuite
Best for Managing Compliance Requirements for Teams (Request pricing on the website).
This change management solution is aimed at helping teams through the process of discovering risks and managing compliance requirements during operational, equipment, or people-related business changes.
Some of the platform’s key features include a flexible and self-configurable dashboard that allows you to identify, track, and document risks that could surface during business changes.
You also get standardized process stages to engage stakeholders in a range of processes, including configuration management, from assessing change to recommending controls and even process validation.
The Documents “Replacement in Kind” feature allows you to determine the formal MOC (management of change) evaluations that are not required. Furthermore, you get automatic communication of all changes and status updates.
This barely scratches the surface of everything you can achieve with this platform. Additional features include creation of MOC checklist content online, compliance status data mining and reporting to identify issues, audit trail, change calendar, change planning, release management, compliance management, and much more.
Businesses in a wide range of industries can benefit from this platform, including those in defense, distribution, energy and renewables, electronics, communication, entertainment, and the food and beverage industries. In addition, the platform works well for anyone with 10 to 10,000 or more employees.
GenSuite integrations include the following software applications:
- MOC Manager
- Action Tracking System
- LockOut TagOut (LOTO)
- Equipment Tracker
Through its API, Gensuite, one of the best change management tools, integrates with other applications for scope-specific data extraction, QRC coding, customer formatting, and data security for your release management processes.
Pricing:
9. SysAid
Best for Control and Management of Change Requests (Get pricing on the website).
SysAid uses service automation to make IT work smarter, not harder. With a help desk that practically manages itself, millions of users around the world enjoy faster service, lighter workloads, and a smoother service experience.
It makes every aspect of ITSM so breezy and frees up IT from the grind to do the things your business needs to keep going strong. So try IT for free today.
SysAid not only serves on the cloud but also has an on-premise delivery mode, as well as various IT services management processes and capabilities so that you can do much more on this single platform.
This works best for ITSM and allows your enterprise to make service delivery qualitative and deliver our exceptional experience for your customers.
Pricing:
10. Alloy Navigator
Best Change Management Platform for Automating IT Service Management (19/tech/site).
Any unexpected changes in your IT environment can create major challenges that lead to a degradation of services. Due to the critical nature of IT changes, it’s important to ensure you create awareness, track changes, and follow protective processes at the device level to ensure success.
Alloy Navigator will help you do that. The platform provides multistage approvals and support for a self-service portal, knowledge management, task manegement, asset intelligence, and flexible workflows to provide you with a complete and comprehensive IT solution.
Pricing:
11. Rocket Aldon
Best Change Management Software for Production and Monitoring Phase (Request pricing on the website).
Rocket Aldon is a complete enterprise application lifecycle management suite that allows you to automate IT and DevOps processes.
This change management software covers different stages, from the moment a change request is received to its implementation in the production and monitoring phase.
With Rocket Aldon you can follow changes throughout production while automating compliance reporting and audit tracking.
Rocket aldon change management software process advantages include:
- Quickly respond to changes without problems connected to compliance requirements
- Manage change while keeping in line with industry norms and best practices
- Simplify software audits, reduce errors, and eliminate potential outages with automated software release management tools
- Manage the entire change management process from business request to audit and reporting
- Automate IT workflow and software release management with built-in compliance and change requests.
Pricing:
12. Giva eChangeManager
Best IT Change Control Software for Large Companies ($49/agent/month).
Giva is a cloud-based standalone change management tool. It’s an ITIL (information technology infrastructure Library) platform with an excellent interface that will simplify the process of going through an IT change.
The company takes pride in its ability to solve problems with IT infrastructure library and more such as the inability to plan or money to change using a single view or to have no visibility of the changes.
When you use Giva to facilitate IT changes in your organization, you’ll also get a robust way to track successful and unsuccessful problems, an interactive RFC monthly calendar, change request and approval workflows, and painless compliance reporting.
Pricing:
Giva management solution starts at $29/user/month and has a free 30-day trial.
13. The Change Compass
Best Change Management Tool for Large Companies and Enterprises ($495/month).
This is a cloud-based data visualization and planning software designed to work as a guiding compass in your organization’s change process. Essentially, the platform allows you to get a clear picture of your overall change process in a single place, using one view.
According to the company, a single view can help you achieve 40% more value across your organization’s portfolio of changes.
This one-view tool’s top features include customer impact management, project management, strategy execution tracking, inventory management, change calendar, change heat map generation, configuration management, central repository, and business-as-usual capacity management during change. The platform also offers change governance improvement features.
Pricing:
14. The Change Shop
Best Change Management Toolkit for Survey-Based Insights (Starts from Free).
This is among the most usable workplace change management platforms you’ll find out there. Well, that’s the website’s tagline.
But, from the looks of things, they are probably not wrong. This software solution makes use of six different tools for managing organizational change, including tools like:
- Personal 180
- Team 180
- Organization 180
- Change leader 180
- Change simulator 180
- Improve
You can choose the bundle that caters to your needs. You’ll find change action tracking, change commitment forecasting and modeling, top performer change commitment, resistance benchmarking, and change leadership alignment reporting features among the platform’s top features. Suffice it to say that this platform has all the features you’ll need for your business regardless of the type of change you want to implement.
Pricing:
The Change Shop starts at $29/month for up to 2500 users and has a free demo.
15. Howspace
Best Change Management Software with AI Capabilities ($220/month/20 users).
Howspace is change management and digital facilitation tool for large change management initiatives. The AI-powered tool will help you boost engagement and collaboration in different types of settings, including asynchronous, virtual, and live settings.
On the platform, you’ll find features that’ll help you involve team members and various other stakeholders and allow you to deliver a stronger impact via active dialogue in sessions (including before, during, and after).
Team members can use the platform’s simple drag-and-drop editor to create, build, and edit their workspaces and include elements such as chats, surveys, pawls, videos, and various other features.
You can also edit the layout of your workspace, manage the access levels of all participants, add new pages, and move content around as needed.
Project managers and team leaders can also facilitate dialogue and discussions, set up automated participation reminders, and keep the entire team engaged and motivated through a continuous feedback loop created by the platform’s discussion features and increased social collaboration.
Third-party integrations are not listed on the website, but you can contact support to find out more.
Pricing:
Additional Options and Change Management Tools:
- ServiceNow: A powerful Change and Release Management Application.
- Intelligent Service Management: This tool helps you plan rollouts, executive changes, etc., Using best practices for accuracy and speed for business processes.
- OrgMapper Influence: An organizational diagnostic SaaS tool for accurately identifying hidden influencers.
- jTask Pulse: Social collaboration for accelerating and managing change management activity.
- Nakisa: A platform to help you reduce the risk of making critical talent and enterprise decisions.
- ChangeScout: A comprehensive cloud-based organizational change management tool.
- TPTribe: A cloud-based application for managing all organizational activities for change teams.
- Wrike: A professional services software with robust tools for change management.
- JIRA Service Management: Atlassian’s ITSM software focused on high-velocity collaboration during change.
- UserGuiding: A user onboarding tool for hand-holding customers, employees, and other users through your product or website.
What is Change Management Software?
Change management software is any tool, app, or platform an organization can use to reduce or eliminate tension during the change process.
Companies can use a change management tool (or multiple tools) to track the process, log obstacles and achievements, and collect feedback to inform other changes in the future.
Different change management tools come with different sets of features. Therefore, you must know exactly what your business needs are before making a choice of the best change management tool to suit your needs.
Why Do You Need Change Management Software?
Change is inevitable, but so is resistance. Often, every change initiative receives some level of employee resistance and software solutions, and there can be multiple reasons for the same. Poor change communication, mistrust, fear of failure, and unrealistic timelines are a few of the reasons why employees resist change.
However, an effective change management solution can provide the reassurance the employees are looking for. A successful change management strategy encompasses a way around all the causes of resistance. It works proactively to gather support for your change through change leaders, training tools, and employee engagement.
A change management plan is a step-by-step breakdown of how you intend to alleviate the strains of introducing a change initiative into the workplace. It involves anticipating pressure points and strategizing how to navigate them before they become a problem. Change management plans often need robust communication systems, training programs, and some sort of success/failure feedback loop.
What Are The Steps In Change Management? This varies from group to group, but common steps in change management include:
- Finding an area that needs improvement;
- Developing a plan for improvement;
- Researching the proper tools for change development;
- Identifying who will be affected;
- Implementing training processes;
- Trying a beta or soft launch;
- Collecting feedback;
- Initiating a hard launch.
Types of Change Management Software
Different types of change management tools include:
- ITIL Change Management Tools
- Tools For Managing Ideas
- Onboarding Tools
- Tools For Customer Success Management
- Employee Onboarding Software
- Employee Engagement Tools
What Features to Look For in Change Management Software
Your change management software or set of tools will depend on a variety of factors, such as:
- The kind of change you are implementing in your business, e.g., software, strategies, processes, etc.
- The size of the change. For example, is it a comprehensive, company-wide change, or does it only concern a department or team?
- The time of change is also an important consideration. You need to know the targeted time period to begin achieving the change and if there are any other ongoing changes before you start.
- Who is affected by the change? For instance, does your company have other branches? In what ways can you minimize the negative impact of using software solutions?
These are just a few factors that come to mind. There are obviously others depending on the nature of your business, which is why choosing the right change management tool isn’t as straightforward as one might think.
However, regardless of your needs, there are some common factors to consider when choosing the best change management platform for business.
Below, we take a look at all the features you need to look for in this type of tool.
- User Interface (UI): Is it clean and attractive?
- Usability: Is it easy to learn and master? Does the company offer good tech support, user support, tutorials, and training?
- Key Features: Here are some of the key features I look for in change management tools:
- Flowcharts & Process Maps: Some way to visualize the change process and roadmap and flag key milestones.
- ADKAR Analysis: Some way to communicate awareness, desire, knowledge, ability, and reinforcement of the change process.
- Reinforcement of Behavior: Some way to encourage and monitor team behaviors associated with solidifying the oncoming elements of the change.
- Elevation of Change Cheerleaders: Some way to make the voices heard of those advocating and role modeling the change expectations.
- Learning Management & Skill Building: Some way to develop necessary new skills to accommodate changing workflows or environments.
- Integrations: Is it easy to connect with other tools? Any pre-built integrations?
- Value for $: How appropriate is the price for the features, capabilities, and use case? Is pricing clear, transparent, and flexible?
Change Management Software Summary & Top Picks
Change management can be an organizational nightmare. But with the right change management software, your business will adopt change faster and more proficiently.
Adopting new software? New business model? New training program? Change can be daunting, but you don’t have to attack it unprepared. Onboarding, customer success, and employee engagement – are just a few of the areas of change I’ve isolated for coverage here.
If you’ve ever had to lead a change in your organization or even just been part of it, then you know how overwhelming the entire process can be. But, with the right tools, such as the ones outlined in this article, your change can be a smooth and seamless process.
The right change management tool will help you plan the process and assist with the technical and employee side of the change for easy implementation. You’ll be able to manage, monitor easily, and optimize your change process by staying on top of all the different elements, stages, units, and activities involved.
Here are my Top Picks:
Whatfix
Great for effective adoption of new software across all or pat of an organization
I hope this article has helped you determine that organizational change doesn’t have to be difficult with the right change management software. Pick the best tool to meet your needs and create a smooth transition.
The biggest component in the process is a change in mentality and approach, which are linked to the basic strategy dictated by management.
But after identifying areas that can be susceptible to potential change and creating an execution plan, change managers also need to deal with resistance to change. Because the overall strategy needs to be reflected in the main IT architecture, companies must also update the software infrastructure and monitor and push software adoption.
Customers and employees demand high-quality, personalized, digital experiences. The right software stack truly makes the difference in delivering on such a promise.