Change Is the Only Constant

British statesman and former Prime Minister Harold Wilson once famously said amidst the social and political turbulence in '60s and '70s Great Britain, “He who rejects change is the architect of decay.”

According to our recent pulse survey of professional services providers and their IT clients, providers are keenly aware of the need to anticipate and manage changes in their clients’ needs. In fact, 71% of providers we surveyed said they experienced “significant” or “very significant” barriers to value realization as a result of changes in business needs, technical needs, or the market environment.

For providers, not having change management skills and processes in place can indeed cause decay — in deal value, margins, and the client relationship itself.

In our report Winning Deals and Improving Margins, based on the pulse survey, we identified a number of ways providers can better anticipate and manage changing client needs and maximize deal value.

These improvements range from the tactical elements of the deal-making process to wider-ranging organizational re-structuring and skill-building:

1. Integrating change management into the deal process is crucial.
   • Sales and Contracting need to negotiate the deal as if it represents the start of a change process, not just a moment frozen in time. That means they must engage Delivery teams early to discuss likely changes and their potential impact.
   • Robust change governance mechanisms should be negotiated and implemented, with account and business leaders aligned with key client stakeholders.
   • A formal joint hand-off between Sales, Contracting, and Delivery teams should be in place, especially for transformation deals where business and market needs evolve rapidly. Relying on individual and team heroics is neither sustainable nor profitable.
2. Change management skills must be institutionalized.
   • Change management — for example, anticipating change in a project’s design, adjusting scope while maintaining margins, sunsetting status quo structures, processes, and mindsets, and bringing stakeholders along — is everyone’s responsibility.
   • Having specialized subject matter experts within a change management office is important and necessary, but the skills of front-line teams could make or break ultimate deal value and client relationships.

No professional services provider will outright “reject” the need to adapt to change, but few take it to heart and prepare for it. In the client’s eyes, those who do not respond with agility to their changing needs are not fit and are ultimately replaced by those who can sooner or later.

Competitors will be looking for this opportunity. Don’t be the architect of your own decay; integrate change management into your firm’s DNA.

About the Report
“Winning Deals and Improving Margins” — an IT market report based on a cross-industry study of deals greater than $5M annual contract value with 163 executive leaders, directors, and managers at firms with greater than $250M annual revenue (125 Clients and 38 Providers).

To download your complimentary copy of the full survey report, click here.

To learn more about the Vantage Partners Professional Services practice, click here.

To learn more about the Vantage Partners Technology practice, click here.