Creating a Change Management Model for Business Process Implementation

Implementation of business processes, or any form of new working methods, is crucial for a company to adapt to its environment or follow its vision by realising the company strategy. Cargotec set out to unify its business processes in 2007. Unifying offering development processes was one crucial part of this. In order to succeed in the large scale global change the company wanted to study possible change management models to be used during the changes. The research goes through process theories in order to clarify the nature of the change. Various change management models are presented and change as a phenomenon is studied from various perspectives to create a change management model that would be most suitable for Cargotec and its business process implementation. Furthermore, issues such as factors increasing the feeling of control in change, whether change can be planned and led as a process and what is the proper amount of stakeholder participation in planning and executing the changes are studied. As a conclusion a change management model reaching vertically through the organisation and incorporating flexibility is presented. The changes are studied as a case study from the perspective of a participant observer. The findings are presented and analysed in order to see if the change management model would be applicable in similar changes in the future. The process implementation was not done according to the model in the studied organisation. That is, by managing the change systematically on every level of the organisation and establishing a sponsorship spine for efficient communication. The problems in the chosen approach were discussed with the process owner and the conclusion was that most of the problems would have been avoided by working according to the change management model. It remains to be seen how the model yields results in the upcoming change projects. The study achieved what it was meant to. A model for managing change was created for Cargotec and through the study a powerful insight to problems emerging during process changes is gained