BLOG | Mar 6, 2025

Mastering Change Management in Large Global Enterprises

Without a structured approach to change management, even routine updates can spiral into costly outages, endless troubleshooting calls, and operational disruptions.

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Dawn Slusher Senior Manager, Content Marketing and Analyst Relations

Who should read this post?

CIOs and IT Decision-Makers – Leaders responsible for network reliability, security, and operational efficiency for global organizations who want to ensure network reliability during modernization efforts.
Network and Security Engineers – Teams managing change implementation, validation, and troubleshooting.
IT Operations and Compliance Teams – Professionals ensuring change processes align with governance and security policies.

What is covered in this content?

What are common challenges of change management in large enterprises and why traditional approaches fail.
What is the cost of inefficient change processes, including wasted resources, outages, and security risks.
How a network digital twin enables verified workflows, automates validation, and prevents post-change failures.

Change is an inevitable part of managing a large-scale enterprise network, but executing it efficiently and securely remains a major challenge. Global organizations must navigate complex IT environments, multiple teams, and a high volume of daily changes—each carrying the risk of misconfiguration, downtime, or security vulnerabilities. Without a structured approach to change management, even routine updates can spiral into costly outages, endless troubleshooting calls, and operational disruptions.

The Challenges of Change Management in Large Enterprises

1. Inconsistent Change Processes Across Teams

In large organizations, change control processes often vary between teams, locations, and even individual engineers. Without standardized workflows, change execution becomes unpredictable, leading to misconfigurations, incomplete validations, and increased risk of outages. The lack of a unified approach makes troubleshooting more complex, with teams spending days resolving network issues caused by inconsistencies.

2. Manual Validation Wastes Time and Increases Errors

Many enterprises still rely on manual validation methods—engineers logging into devices, collecting pre- and post-change data, and updating ticketing systems by hand. These processes are time-consuming, prone to human error, and inefficient at scale. Relying on manual verification increases the risk of overlooking issues, forcing teams into emergency troubleshooting sessions after a change is deployed.

3. Post-Change Issues and Unplanned Outages

Without an effective way to verify network behavior before implementing a change, organizations frequently experience unexpected post-change network failures. Configuration mismatches, security policy conflicts, and undetected errors only surface in production, leading to outages and emergency responses that disrupt business operations.

A Smarter Approach: Using a Network Digital Twin for Change Management

To eliminate inefficiencies and reduce risk, enterprises need a network digital twin—a mathematically accurate model of their network. By leveraging a digital twin and verified workflows, organizations can standardize change control, automate validation, and proactively prevent outages.

How a Digital Twin Transforms Change Management

Automated Change Validation – A digital twin regularly collects and analyzes network data, eliminating the need for manual validation. Engineers can ensure that connectivity remains unchanged pre- and post-change window.

Standardized Workflows for Consistency – Predefined, repeatable workflows ensure that every team follows best practices. By enforcing consistent steps and verification processes, enterprises can reduce variability and execute changes with confidence. Automated verification checks within Forward Networks ensure changes follow procedure and misconfigurations are not accidentally introduced.

Always Current Visibility for Proactive Outage Prevention – The digital twin provides a current view of the network, allowing teams to detect and resolve issues before they impact production. Misconfigurations, security gaps, and policy violations are identified early, preventing costly downtime.

Eliminate Change-Related Outages with Verified Workflows

A global enterprise transformed its change management process using Forward Networks' network digital twin, achieving fewer outages, faster validation, and improved operational efficiency.Download the case study now to see how your organization can modernize change control, prevent costly disruptions, and streamline IT operations.

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