While planned, authorized changes have obvious benefits to systems and users; it’s the unknown, poorly executed, or even imperceptible changes that can result in serious negative impact to IT systems and processes.

The only way to truly prevent these kinds of changes is to create a culture of change management that has zero tolerance for unauthorized change. Companies that successfully embrace such a culture of change management spend less than five percent of IT time on unplanned work (also known as firefighting), experience a low number of "emergency" changes, and successfully implement desired changes more than 99 percent of the time.