No matter the industry an organisation is operating in, all businesses will face challenges from time to time. Whether due to evolving market conditions, business growth, digital transformation or changes in ownership, business processes will need to be adjusted and refined to support organisational success.
The ideation, planning and implementation of change in the business world typically occurs as part of a change initiative; a systematic plan to optimise key aspects of an organisation's culture, mission, goals and technologies. Change initiatives are central to the sustainable growth and success of most modern organisations, with 75% expected to increase the number of initiatives they take on in the coming years.
However, research suggests as many as 70% of change initiatives fail, with factors like poor managerial support and a lack of employee engagement cited as major contributors to unsuccessful adoptions. For organisations to improve adoption rates, and help ensure employees are provided the support required to pursue successful implementation, initiatives must be deployed as part of a well-structured approach.
Specialised IT change management software and smart change management tools can be leveraged by leaders to support this objective, but choosing the right tools for any given use case isn't always simple.
When implemented and adjusted appropriately, change management tools can help ensure a change management process runs as smoothly as possible. Deploying tools to map out change projects, enable the sharing of feedback, provide training and offer onboarding assistance can help to improve employee engagement and ensure all stakeholders feel heard and involved in adjustments made to key processes.
More specifically, management tools can support organisational change initiatives in the following ways.
Driving successful transformations requires continuous feedback from all involved in the implementation and management of new processes. Unforeseen issues can occur at any time, but if all employees have a quick and simple way to communicate real-time insights, significant risks can be effectively mitigated.
Change management tools can also offer teams across key departments a centralised platform in which to adjust newly-implemented technologies and processes during adoption. Streamlining roll outs in this way can improve collaboration between teams by ensuring access to key systems is equally distributed.
Change management tools designed to compile and analyse data can be deployed to enhance decision-making processes. Employees involved in the management of transformations can view adoption rates, sales information, fault reports and client feedback to make informed and beneficial changes to systems.
Leveraging dedicated change management software to standardise workflows within wider transitional processes can help business leaders to improve the efficiency of core operations. Workers across key departments can be given clear, consistent guidance to help ensure changes are implemented uniformly.
Change management tools can provide centralised dashboards, accessible to stakeholders across core departments, customised to aid employees in monitoring and managing change initiatives in real-time. Such tools promote transparency and enable staff to share insights into processes freely and effectively.
Various types of software can be leveraged to support change management initiatives, acting to ensure effective communication and to facilitate collaboration among change managers and employees. These tools will not always be marketed explicitly as change management tools, so it's important to define the types of software leaders should be searching for to help ensure all stakeholders are on the same page.
No matter the complexity, importance or type of change initiative at hand, deploying and optimising key change management tools can help business owners and change managers guide employees through transformations successfully. To aid employers in leveraging tools that match their company culture and vision, below is a selection of thoughtful change management software reviews for leaders to consider.
Drawing on industry insights and current trends, here are the top 10 change management tools for 2025.
Comprehensive Employee Idea Management Solutions
Sideways 6 is an advanced idea management solution for organisations looking to drive transformative change and achieve strategic goals by harnessing the power of innovative employee ideas. The solution enables businesses to share, manage and prioritise ideas in chosen collaboration tools to help leaders identify high-value contributions and ensure all employees feel heard and involved in managing change.
Unlike other similar tools, Ideas by Sideways 6 is entirely customisable, allowing leaders to adjust the software to fit specific business needs and integrate it into existing collaboration tools. This advanced approach to employee idea management allows for maximum adoption across organisational structures, with staff able to share live insights and constructive ideas with leaders in applications they already use.
Sideways 6 | Employee ideas, engagement and innovation
Change Visualisation and Project Management Platform
Monday Service is a highly-customisable strategic change management program designed to aid teams in creating and monitoring change initiatives efficiently. The service runs off a no-code interface, which enables management teams to develop custom, automated workflows enhanced with AI-powered tools to help ensure data associated with goals and milestones is accurately communicated to stakeholders.
Leaders can assign roles to specific employees, set deadlines for the completion of key tasks and track the completion of assignments from within the same centralised dashboard, enabling business owners to visualise the progress of changes quickly and effectively at all times. With integrations between tools like Microsoft Teams, Outlook, Slack and GMail natively enabled, Monday Service is also easily-adopted.
Client and Employee Onboarding Support Software
WalkMe is a cloud-based change management tool designed to help stakeholders embrace change by providing tailored and customisable onboarding, training and change adoption support. Leaders can set up custom walkthroughs and training materials to help employees develop necessary skills conducive to the successful adoption of new processes, as well as create personalised materials for key stakeholders.
As a cloud-based change management system, WalkMe offers live notifications and alerts that can be sent to relevant leaders across multiple secure devices, helping to ensure updates regarding processes are communicated promptly at all times. WalkMe also provides insight into digital behaviours associated with individual users, enabling managers to analyse adoption metrics and adjust processes accordingly.
Software Adoption and Change Management Tool
Whatfix organisation software is specially designed to support onboarding initiatives for newly-adopted business software tools. This software change management platform enables leaders to create detailed interactive guides, even with little-to-no coding experience, helping to improve staff engagement and ensure stakeholder buy-in via in-app training programs that can be delivered across multiple formats.
The platform also supports pop-up announcements and reminders that can be leveraged to keep staff engaged in change initiatives long-term, with options to develop unique training content and surveys to support continuous optimisation during rollouts. To further support successful change processes, staff can also access self-service help features where video guides and helpful links can be made accessible.
IT Service Management and Change Visualisation Solution
The ServiceDesk IT service management suite combines IT asset and configuration management tools to aid organisations in conducting risk assessments and planning custom transformation initiatives. The solution's visual workflow designer enables management teams to implement changes with minimal risk, allowing leaders to visualise and test deployment strategies to identify potential issues prior to adoption.
ServiceDesk Plus can also help to ensure effective communication between employers, managers and staff, with options to configure automated workflows and set custom notifications to keep all relevant employees informed of emerging trends and adjustments. The platform also offers the ability to record and track changes implemented in response to live issues, supporting agile change management efforts.
Multi-Platform Automated Change Management Software
Rocket Aldon is a multi-platform change management solution configured to assist development teams in successfully navigating process changes. The service's application lifecycle management tools allow for automated and streamlined CI/CD infrastructure delivery processes, with real-time processing and analytics systems positioned to grant multiple stakeholders access to the same live files simultaneously.
The app also offers operations control and audit trail features intended to help teams manage software version control, integration and production tasks, as well as run build verification tests to help assess the expected performance of proposed transformations. The multi-platform nature of this management software enables professionals to focus on key tasks while maintaining compliance with best practices.
Workflow Creation and Change Management Solutions
Process Street's workflow and change management tools support employees in developing, monitoring and automating custom business processes. Built upon a no-code platform, the service's native AI tools help teams to design effective and adaptable projects, applications and workflows that can be easily-accessed by stakeholders across key departments during the formation and adoption of new practices.
The software's flagship change management features include task assignment tools that can be utilised to assign roles and responsibilities to key stakeholders, as well as workflow editors that use conditional logic to dynamically adapt processes in response to real-time changes, with simple integration between popular platforms like Microsoft Teams, Monday.com, Trello, HubSpot, Asana, WordPress and Airtable.
Accessible IT Service and Change Management Platform
BMC's change management tools are specially designed to provide smart support to IT departments undergoing large-scale transformations. The software enables leaders to clearly document and plan individual stages of complex change processes to promote coordination across relevant teams, with options to monitor progress in real-time across specific groups and wider operations on a macro-scale.
Remedy Change Management 9 also supports the submission and review of employee requests and feedback, enabling leaders to adjust operations in response to new developments. The software can be easily-accessed across a wide variety of professional devices, including secure smartphones, tablets and computers, to help ensure quick and effective communication between teams across organisations.
Automated IT Service Management and Delivery Software
Freshservice is a user-friendly IT service management and delivery tool with smart automation features designed to streamline IT operations across complex organisations. The platform's comprehensive suite of management tools can be accessed from within a well-structured centralised application, configured to assist end-users in planning, implementing and adjusting change processes effectively and efficiently.
The platform leverages advanced analytics, reporting and automation tools to provide key stakeholders access to data-driven insights and real-time information associated with active transformations, helping teams pursue agile operations and enact adjustments in line with employee requests swiftly as required to support the adoption of continuous improvements throughout the delivery of new change processes.
Smart Change Management and Readiness Assessment Tools
The Change Shop is a smart change management software that can be leveraged to both help teams manage change and assess an organisation's readiness to successfully adopt new processes. The tool's flagship feature is a specialised change simulator that enables teams to test proposed transformations in a virtual environment, allowing for adjustments to be made in response to multiple possible outcomes.
The platform also contains features that can be used to assess change readiness metrics across various aspects of an organisation, providing leaders with data-backed insights that can be used to inform staff training programs. With additional features positioned to help measure engagement and analyse staff feedback, The Change Shop can be a helpful tool for employers intending to improve change readiness.
With so many different versions and types of change management tools to choose from, it can be hard for modern businesses to identify truly beneficial and cost-effective solutions. When considering which types and versions of the above-mentioned solutions to prioritise, consider the following best practices.
All organisations will need to undergo some degree of change to pursue sustainable growth, though for some teams, successfully implementing transformations can be difficult. Ensuring all stakeholders feel heard, all employees feel supported and all potential issues can be appropriately addressed isn't always straightforward, but risks can be responsibly mitigated provided leaders make reasonable preparations.
To help smoothen transformations and support organisational success, businesses should consider the benefits of dedicated change management software. By reviewing current practices, identifying feature gaps and investigating technologies positioned to address them, effective, reliable and cost-effective change management tools can be identified and implemented to support teams during transformations.
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Change management, in its simplest form, concerns the approach a business takes to implement new technologies or practices into existing organisational structures. Effective change management efforts approach transformations step-by-step, with the intention being to implement new systems, processes and technologies as efficiently as possible while mitigating the impacts of potential challenges and risks.
While the intricacies of change management strategies may vary depending on the unique quirks of different organisations, most initiatives will stick to a similar fundamental change process framework:
In the modern business world, effectively addressing these objectives requires the use of at least some enterprise-level technologies, including communication systems, idea management tools, data analytics software and training programs. If a business leverages one or more of these solutions while managing change, each technology can be viewed as a different type of enterprise change management software.
Change management tools are dedicated software solutions designed to help organisations implement and manage changes made to core processes, structures and systems. Change management software can address different needs depending on the types of technologies adopted, typically covering things like risk assessments, progress tracking, project planning and human elements like training and support.
Change management IT software can take the form of communication systems deployed to ensure key stakeholders remain informed of novel developments, idea management tools used to keep employees involved in ongoing change initiatives and data analytics tools leveraged to provide data driven insights into adoption rates. In short, these tools help employees understand, accept and adopt transformations.
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