Even a semi-serious attempt at instituting change management is going to take the valuable time of several of your organization’s most valuable employees. Inevitably someone will ask whether all this process stuff is worth the trouble. It more than likely is when you consider the various payoffs.

For starters, change management helps to lower risks associated with change, eliminate resource conflicts and redundancies, and learn from successes and mistakes of the past—all of which help CIOs and other senior managers to save money.

Change management comes with a smattering of strategic benefits as well. Done correctly, these processes will provide a comprehensive picture of the organization-wide impact of change and enable managers to make contingency plans based on real-time project status.

Finally, change management can offer a backdoor means to achieving the near-universal goals of increased internal teamwork and external end-user satisfaction. This is somewhat counterintuitive, as anything related to the word “process” often connotes a soul-sucking onrush of flowcharts, checklists and, worst of all, endless meetings. But the fact is, when everyone is in the loop and projects become more orderly affairs, teams are happier and often produce better, more customer-friendly results.