Managing Change in an Uncertain Time

No one knows what things will look like in six weeks, six months or six years’ time — in our newly uncertain world, the only constant will be constant change. Given this, it’s easy to look at the news and feel powerless. Our ability to deal with the small things — to make informed, effective decisions about our everyday processes — shapes our resilience to the big historical forces that are beyond our control”

The thing to remember when we talk about “change” is that it can be both big and small, and that the two are intimately connected. Our ability to deal with the small things — to make informed, effective decisions about our everyday processes — shapes our resilience to the big historical forces that are beyond our control.


At Strongpoint, we’ve been in the business of efficiently managing change since 2013. We know from working with our customers that when you’re able to make smarter small decisions, you’re better positioned to respond to things that disrupt the way you work. 

Here’s a look at two ways that small changes to NetSuite and Salesforce can make organizations more adaptable when big change happens.

Implement Smarter Access Controls

One great example is access control. Typically, organizations running NetSuite will have a variety of roles and permissions and, if they’re proactive, compensating controls for preventing unauthorized access. But what happens when half your team is furloughed due to budget cuts, and the remaining team members need to take on multiple roles? How do you prevent conflicts while making sure everyone has the access they need to do their jobs?

In this scenario — which hopefully hasn’t affected you — you can’t plan for the loss of half your team. But you can make sure your compensating controls are tight and effective; that few, if any, employees have multiple roles; and that unused or inactive roles have been safely deprecated. When you’re proactively managing your permissions from the beginning, it’s easier to be responsive when big change affects your business.

Create Accurate Documentation

Of course, not all the changes we’ll experience are negative. We’re seeing a lot of companies prioritizing digital transformation and the web enablement of their businesses — ramping up e-commerce activities to respond to social new opportunities. This is a smart — and necessary — way of capitalizing on change, but it comes with technical challenges, as anything you do to your back end can potentially disrupt your critical e-commerce front end.

As many NetSuite and Salesforce admins know, something as simple as changing the details of a list can take hours of investigation to do safely. But if you’ve created accurate, up-to-date documentation of your metadata, you can see the downstream impact of a change and make it safely, in less time.

Want to Learn More?

These are just two of the scenarios we looked at in a pair of recent webinars. Watch the recordings here: