Change Management Software: 7 Different Options For Your Organization

Finding the right change management software can be a painful journey.

You might be familiar with some of the challenges that arise when managing change using the wrong tools:

• Endless meetings to align teams on shared goals
• Messy and outdated spreadsheets
• Lack of real-time visibility into performance
• Wasted time on data gathering and reporting
• Lack of buy-in, employee engagement, and motivation
• No effective way to track progress across change management initiatives toward desired outcomes

The list goes on...

Whether you're in the midst of a digital transformation, undergoing organizational change, or revamping your business processes, your success hinges on having the right change management software.

Especially for changes spanning organization-wide, you need a tool that can align your teams, enhance cross-functional collaboration, and supercharge execution for effective change management.  

What Is Change Management Software?

Change management software is a specialized tool that helps organizations navigate and implement changes more effectively. It simplifies the planning, execution, and monitoring of organizational changes, making the process smoother.

Key features and functionalities of change management software include:

1. Planning: It helps create clear plans for changes, defining goals, allocating resources, and setting timelines.
2. Automation: The software automates routine tasks, improving business processes, reducing errors, and saving time.
3. Communication: It provides tools to inform and engage everyone in the organization, optimizing approval processes, managing expectations, and addressing concerns.
4. Monitoring: It tracks the progress of changes, allowing data-driven decision-making.
5. Risk Assessment: Identifies potential issues and helps reduce risks and bottlenecks to streamline the company's journey toward its goals.
6. Feedback: Collects input from employees and fosters cross-functional collaboration and alignment.
7. Integrations: Often, it can work with other software systems in use, ensuring smooth data flow.

Just as there are different types of organizational change and change management processes, there are also many kinds of change management tools to help you execute your change management strategy.

How To Choose The Best Change Management Tool For Your Organization

Selecting the best change management tool for your organization is a critical decision, as it can significantly impact the success of your change management initiatives.

Here are some of the elements to consider to make the right choice:

1. ‍Define your needs: Clearly outline your organization's specific needs and goals in the change management process. What are you looking to achieve? What are the challenges you need to address?‍
2. Identify key features: List the essential features and functionalities you need in a change management tool. This could include project planning, communication, automation, reporting, and integration capabilities.‍
3. Assess user-friendliness: The tool should be intuitive and easy for your team to adopt. Complex tools may hinder effective change management.‍
4. Scalability: Consider its scalability to ensure it can grow with your organization and adapt to future changes.‍
5. Customization: Look for a tool that allows customization to align with your unique business processes and needs.‍
6. Integrations: Check if it can seamlessly integrate with your existing software systems, ensuring data flow and consistency.‍
7. User support: Assess the level of customer support and training provided by the tool's provider.‍
8. Cost and ROI: Understand the total cost—not only the initial investment but also ongoing costs. Evaluate the potential return on investment (ROI) for the tool.‍
9. Vendor reputation: Research the reputation and track record of the tool's vendor. Consider end-user reviews and case studies.‍
10. Trial period: Whenever possible, take advantage of trial periods to test the tool in a real-world setting.

👉🏻 Important! Even if the software you choose ticks every box in your checklist, you won’t succeed unless you promote a culture that embraces change within your teams. Remember, people are often resistant to change. You need a tool that will guide them through all stages of a change management strategy—planning, executing, measuring, and adapting.

So, before you commit to a tool, involve key stakeholders and end-users in the decision-making process. That way, you’ll ensure you have their buy-in from the very start.

Now that we’ve covered the basics, we’ll discuss the different types of change management software, each of which excels in different areas when it comes to navigating successful change. First, we’ll start with Cascade, our very own strategy execution software.

📚 Recommended read: Why Business Transformation Fails: Learn From An Expert

Cascade: The #1 Strategy Execution Platform

Cascade is the #1 strategy execution platform in the world. As an all-in-one platform, it covers all aspects of change management strategy, from change planning to execution, reporting and measuring performance, and adapting to succeed.

Teams leading organization-wide change can forget about digital exhaustion and the hassle of switching between multiple tools, like Excel and PowerPoint. Cascade acts as the organization’s brain, spanning the entirety of your business ecosystem and providing centralized observability for faster and better decision-making. Companies can bring everyone and everything together on Cascade to improve organization-wide alignment and accelerate toward their vision.

How does Cascade help with change management?

Define a clear strategic structure

With Cascade’s Planner you can create a strategic change management plan that connects organizational change objectives, initiatives, projects, and key performance indicators (KPIs).

Some key features include:

• Templates to get started on strategic planning for specific use cases
• Drag-and-drop interface to quickly customize plans
• Create multiple change management plans and link them back to the overall business strategy
• Visual representations of your strategic plan that break down the complexity from high-level initiatives to executable outcomes

Align your teams, goals, and vision

Cascade provides a single source of truth that everyone can rely on, draw from, and be inspired by as they work together to execute change initiatives. As you map out the journey to success, you can unite every employee, team, and department under a shared vision.

With the Alignment Maps feature, you can clearly see how your different plans work together and collaborate towards achieving your change management goals.

If you want to take it a step further, the Relationships feature allows you to track how activities interact by logging and exploring the dependencies, blockers, and risks that may lie along your change management journey.

Empower your team

Every team member knows what to do, how, and why. Cascade makes it easy to assign ownership, which improves accountability. You can offer people more context about how their roles impact the company's goals. This clarity improves employee engagement so they can prioritize activities that drive toward the company's success.

Measure and drive your progress

Cascade makes it easy to transform your change management strategy into results you can see with real-time performance insights. The customizable dashboards help you track and measure success, as you can add KPIs that suit your strategic objectives.

This data-driven approach makes it easy to identify underperforming areas and potential risks, take action when needed, and stay focused on what matters.

Foster a culture of collaboration

A critical tenet of any change management strategy is the ability to nurture a strong culture that embraces change and effective collaboration. Cascade has a range of great features that save time, smooth communications, and ultimately bring your people together so that they can close the planning-to-execution gap:

• Integrations. Cascade integrates with over 1,000 applications, including Excel, Teams, Outlook, SAP. This helps you to reinforce focus across your teams by pulling all important information from other platforms into one place.
• In-app updates so everyone can be notified immediately if there are any changes to the plan.
• Automated reports. Easily build reports in minutes and share the information with team members, and internal or external stakeholders.
• Notifications. Keep everyone up to speed with email and in-app messages related to activities happening around key goals.

What users are saying about Cascade:

Over 45,000 teams use Cascade as their strategy execution software.

G2—the popular review site—gives Cascade 4.8 out of 5 stars based on 197 reviews. We pulled a few of those below:

“Cascade has given my company a single source of truth when it comes to our goals and what specific actions the business is taking to get there.”—G2

“Prior to using Cascade, it was cumbersome to update progress against targets and having the visibility and accountability across the team has given the team confidence that as a business we will be able to make meaningful progress to achieve our 2025 Vision. Cascade means that we can focus on delivering against the strategy rather than spending too much time setting goals and targets in tools not designed for this purpose.”—G2

Every year, we've struggled to implement our plans. There's been a disconnect between what we set out to achieve and what our teams are working on. Cascade has brought visibility and alignment. Our team members are all talking about strategy now!—G2

Pricing

• Cascade has a free forever plan that supports smaller teams with up to 4 users.
• Enterprise plan: You get a customized proposal based on your company’s needs (perfect for larger organizations with multiple teams and distributed projects).

Check Cascade's pricing page for more details.

Is Cascade the right fit for your organization?

Just like any other tool, Cascade is not for everyone.

Where Cascade truly shines is in the realm of driving substantial and impactful change within your organization.

While Cascade offers project management features, it may not be the best choice if you're solely focused on managing change requests and working through task checklists. In those cases, you might find traditional project management or task management software a better fit.

✅ The good news is that Cascade easily integrates with these tools, providing a holistic view of how your projects and tasks align with your overarching business objectives.

Cascade isn't a Configuration Management Database (CMDB). If your primary need is detailed tracking of IT assets and their configurations, a CMDB is the way to go. It excels at providing in-depth knowledge of your IT infrastructure.

But, if your objective is to navigate complex organizational transformations, optimize your business processes, and foster cross-functional collaboration, then Cascade is the tool you're looking for. It serves as a catalyst for bringing teams together, aligning their efforts with strategic objectives, and ultimately, delivering business results more efficiently and effectively.

Cascade is a great choice if you want an intuitive, user-friendly, and straightforward way to manage change management initiatives and deliver results, faster.

If you’re ready to see how Cascade works in action, book your 1:1 demo with a Cascade expert.

Project Management Tools

Most companies execute their change management strategies by working with project management tools. However, as we mentioned, most of these tools aren’t the right fit to manage change across the organization.

They do, of course, have some great uses, which is why Cascade has a bunch of advanced project management features (for instance, tracking the status of multiple projects or change initiatives simultaneously, and managing your programs and project porfolios).

But, we digress.

Let’s take a look at some other project management tools:

Jira

Jira is a project management tool that is part of the Atlassian suite of products designed to help teams manage their work. Originally, Jira was purely for software developers to monitor and identify coding issues. Now, the platform helps different non-IT teams with work management.

Jira pros

• Track progress. Like any decent project management dashboard, Jira allows different teams—like sales, marketing, HR, and finance—to stay connected and on track with their key metrics.
• Collaboration. As an IT service management tool, you can use Jira to bring business teams together with software development teams. This collaboration helps improve the customer experience and employee engagement.
• Test case management. With its roots in software development, Jira is great for any team that wants to use iterative approaches. As change management involves some trial and error, the custom fields and workflows are excellent features for any testing activities.

Jira cons

Although Jira has evolved in the past 20 years, it’s still a software developer’s tool at heart. And so, there are some issues:

• Learning curve. Jira is tricky to set up and complicated for most people to use. If you want to hit the ground running, this platform could hold people back.
• Limited change management. You can’t link projects and tasks with your change management and business strategy.
• No real-time insight into progress because you can’t link projects and tasks with KPIs.

• Strategic planning is not covered.

Pricing

• Free forever plan for 1-10 users
• Standard: $8.15/user per month
• Premium: $16/user per month
• Enterprise: get a tailored quote

Reviews

4.3 in G2 (+5,000 reviews)

Does Jira integrate with Cascade?

You can use Cascade's integration with Jira to link your task-tracker progress with your goals, which makes it easy to share Jira stats in Cascade’s dashboard.

After you hook Jira and Cascade up once, Cascade automatically syncs the data for you.

IT Change Management Tools

These tools focus on change management from the perspective of information technology teams. While these platforms are excellent for IT projects, many of them are not suitable for companies that wish to effectively manage organization-wide changes.

BMC Helix ITSM (previously Remedy)

BMC Helix Platform is a cloud-based tracking tool for service and operations management that helps companies increase workplace efficiency and drive game-changing innovation. 

BMC Helix Platform is a cloud-based tracking tool for service and IT operations management that helps companies increase workplace efficiency and drive game-changing innovation.

How does BMC help with change management?

Traditionally, BMC Helix is best for medium-sized businesses in the software industry, such as DevOps organizations. But companies from other industries can use it, too. Here are a few nifty features that might help your IT teams manage change:

• Reporting features. Users can create and share custom reports. You can also convert them into dashboards to make it easy to learn more from your data.
• Incident management. Every campaign for change will have some bumps in the road. This platform has a big focus on problem management, with automated features to detect incidents, prioritize tickets, and help teams resolve issues.
• Self-service application. In addition to a deep knowledge base, users have easy access to virtual assistants and live chat features.

Pricing

There is a free trial version available. You need to contact them to request pricing.

Reviews

3.7 on G2 (282 reviews)

Freshservice

Freshservice is a cloud-based IT service management (ITSM) and asset management service desk/help desk software offered by Freshworks. The platform helps organizations simplify their IT operations by offering time-saving features like a ticketing system, knowledge base, and self-service portal.

How does Freshservice help with change management?

• End-to-end change management. Teams can visually track changes from planning to rollout and make sure they fulfill all requirements at every stage.
• Automated notifications. When you’ve got limited resources, you need to minimize redundancy and make sure all manual efforts count. The automated features of Freshworks keep everyone aligned, so there is no wasted effort.
• Change calendar. If you want your change advisory board (CAB) to know what's happening on the ground, you must keep them up to speed. The calendar makes it easy to view tasks, changes, and schedules of other teams.

Pricing

• Starter: $19 per user/month
• Growth: $49 per user/month
• Pro: $95 per user/month
• Enterprise: $119 per user/month

Reviews

4.8 on G2 (+1,000 reviews)

Serviceaide ChangeGear

ChangeGear is a versatile IT Service Management (ITSM) platform by SunView Software. It's designed to help organizations efficiently manage their IT services, handle service requests, resolve incidents, and manage changes effectively. It's a handy tool for IT departments to provide top-notch services to their stakeholders.

How does Changegear help with change management?

• Service Request Management: Streamlining service requests, such as provisioning and software installations.

• Incident Management: Swiftly resolving IT incidents to minimize disruptions.
• Asset Management: Keeping a clear inventory of IT assets, including hardware and software.
• Self-Service Portal: Allowing users to find solutions and make service requests on their own.
• Knowledge Base: A repository for IT information, solutions, and best practices.

Pricing

Doesn’t provide pricing details on the website.

Reviews

3.8 on G2 (86 reviews)

Adoption Tools

One of the biggest challenges of company transformation is getting your people to embrace the change. Before you can get people on board, you must help people overcome their fears.

Here are some supporting tools that help drive the adoption of new processes and systems in your company

Haiilo

Haiilo claims to be “the single most intuitive and advanced platform for driving, understanding, and leveraging employee engagement.”

Their words, not ours. While we all think Cascade is pretty darn awesome in this area, we’ll graciously tip our hat to Haiilo, as this is the one (and only) area they specialize in—and it’s a critical part of change management.

How does Haiilo help with change management?

As a specialist software, Haiilo helps companies increase employee engagement through a range of communication and analytics tools. This focus offers several benefits:

• Team alignment. You can bring all employees together on the platform, united by shared goals, even when they work and live in different places.
• Reduce information overload. With greater team alignment between people, processes, and goals, people get clarity about their roles. As the communication flows, there’s less confusion and less chance of anyone feeling overwhelmed.
• Strengthen your company culture. This platform helps with consistent communication of the benefits and clarity about why the company is undergoing change. As you make people feel involved, you get buy-in, which leads to happier employees and more meaningful work.

Pricing

No free plan is available. You need to reach out to get a tailored quote.

Reviews

4.6 on G2 (261 reviews)

Whatfix

Whatfix is a digital adoption platform that helps companies onboard, train, and support their employees as they use various enterprise software solutions. You can create interactive walkthroughs and in-app guidance that coaches people in real time.

How does Whatfix help with change management?

This onboarding and training platform focuses on one specific problem in change management: user adoption of company tools. This setup is unlike Cascade, which covers everything in change management (no biggie, it’s just how we roll).

So, what makes Whatfix handy for change management?

• Personalized onboarding. You can easily onboard users to enterprise software applications and quickly show them how to perform basic tasks and everyday processes.
• In-App training. Not every company has a friendly admin ready to walk the new guy through his paces. Thankfully, this software has real-time guidance so the rest of the team can get on with their work.
• Monitor user behavior. You can understand how your employees use software and adapt the training to help everyone deliver a bigger impact with every tool in your tech stack.

Pricing

No free plan is available. You need to reach out to get a tailored quote.

Reviews

4.6 on G2 (299 reviews)

Reach your goals faster with the right change management software

Many companies go for project management platforms or specialist tools that help with some aspects of change. But if you want to go beyond standard changes to lead a complete overhaul of your company culture, processes, and practices, you need a more comprehensive change management system.

This is when Cascade is a great fit, giving you a single coherent ecosystem that puts the progress of different projects in the context with greater organizational objectives. With your teams aligned, it’s easier to accelerate your transformation.

Are you ready to accelerate change in your company? Book a 1-1 with a Cascade expert, or sign up for a free plan and take it for a spin!