Recently, Knoa (News - Alert) Software conducted a survey to gauge the current market view of the utility and problems related to current change management practices. More than 156 registrants, from a worldwide audience of information technology professionals, had the possibility of accessing the survey and all questions.
According to the survey, more than 25 percent of respondents had huge problems with new releases and the process of change management. When it came to the current state of the change management process, more than 35 percent of respondents were not happy or extremely unsatisfied.
Slightly more than 40 percent of respondents still felt that the results of user acceptance testing were inconsistent compared to the actual performance during rollout. This was in spite of the current practices with UAT, the survey stated. It also stated that successful completion of UAT did not necessarily result in successful performance in a production environment.
“The change management process today is almost completely reactive. Almost nothing is known about the effectiveness of a new release until users call the IT service desk," said Michael Zuckerman, chief marketing officer for Knoa Software. “Knoa can provide visibility to business process errors and user errors before they are reported and enable early and pro-active response. Knoa uniquely enables an objective and comprehensive view to the change management process for major enterprise applications.”
In 2010, the company issued a list of best practices for retailers and hospitality and travel enterprises. By following these guidelines, the company said they can maximize sales, customer profitability and customer experience in a holiday season. The National Retail Federation recently predicted that that holiday retail sales are expected to improve by 2.3 percent in 2010, to $447.1 billion. This was a considerable turnaround from a disastrous 2008 and a ho-hum 2009.
Edited by Braden Becker