Change Management

Agency transformation is all about change—but for change to be effective, it must be managed. Learn how GL Solutions builds change management into the digital transformation process, taking your regulatory agency safely and sustainably from its current state to a more capable and efficient future.

Change Management

Regulatory agencies haven’t historically been oriented toward change. But change is necessary in today’s landscape. GL Suite enables healthy change that adds capabilities and increases capacity in sustainable ways.

Manage Change

Modernization efforts are challenging in any environment. Regulatory agencies have it especially difficult: highly detailed bureaucratic and legislative requirements lead to inefficient, duplicative processes that are often paired with dated technology.

Managing change effectively happens across all five phases of change:

 

  • Capacity Building—Lay down the foundation for change (in IT and throughout broader processes).
  • Process Standardization—Understand the processes in use and unify on a set of standard processes.
  • Customer Service—Identify how changes will affect customers (for good and bad).
  • Integrated Services—Streamline your regulatory agency processes and remove any manual work.
  • Continuous Improvement—Review data provided by the GL Suite system to analyze the changes and put you on path for continuous improvement.

Build Capacity

In phase 1 of transforming your regulatory agency, you build a foundation for change, creating a solid base on which to build and manage that change.

Start by defining—or reevaluating—your government agency’s mission and vision. These help clarify the end goal you’re working toward and assist with buy-in. Then engage in these three steps:

  • Stakeholder analysis—Understand who’s involved (decision makers, subject matter experts, other leaders) and identify their disposition toward the change.
  • Culture mapping—Identify how your agency typically handles change and the negative behaviors that need to be addressed.
  • Goal identification—Establish your high-level goals for change, like saving money, improving service/capacity, etc.

Standardize Processes

Now the real change begins in Phase 2. As you start the task of standardizing processes, you also focus on internal stakeholders, creating buy-in and support for the change.

Here you:

  • Build out process maps/flows so you understand how the work flows (and identify variations and breaks in processes).
  • Establish guiding principles that define the boundaries of change and keep your agency legally compliant.
  • Set up communication protocols and channels for those who are included.
  • Create your change plan, mapping existing processes to new workflows.
  • Set goals and scope to define the modernization project’s parameters.

Serve Customers

Phase 3 focuses on your external stakeholders—the customers, constituencies, businesses and organizations that your regulatory agency serves.

Managing change effectively happens only with a solid understanding of the customer storyline:

  • Who are your average customers (businesses vs. individuals; professionals vs. public; educational level; etc.)?
  • What are your customers’ primary needs?
  • What do the customer journeys at your agency look like step by step?
  • How long is the typical customer timeline (and is this length acceptable)?

From here, identify what your end users need in terms of accessibility along with any efficiency or process hurdles holding you back.

Integrate Service

In Phase 4 you integrate those internal and external needs into a single unified solution. This likely sounds impossible: often, internal and external stakeholders’ priorities appear to be in conflict. But with GL Suite powering your digital transformation, effective change is not just possible; it’s virtually guaranteed.

GL Suite transforms your business processes, adding digital capabilities that legacy systems can’t support. It also automates many newly-digital processes and workflows, providing unique opportunities for integrating customer and internal needs (for example, a digital application portal that automatically routes customer data to all necessary fields and documents).

Improve Continuously

Effective change doesn’t end at rollout. It continues in an ongoing fifth phase of continuous improvement. Remember, change is messy; even a well-constructed plan hits roadblocks and undergoes changes along the way. New technologies may come along mid-change or constituent needs may be different at the end of your transformation than they were at the start.

Use these strategies for continuous improvement:

  • Celebrate wins—Progress is progress, even if imperfect.
  • Reevaluate mission, vision, and goals—Do these need adjusting based on new capabilities/capacity?
  • Analyze and evaluate—Use the analytics in GL Suite to evaluate performance and ensure adoption of the new system.