Hitting a pitched baseball is the most difficult job in professional sports, or so I’m told. According to my back-of-the-envelope calculations, only about 1% of the strike zone yields a solidly struck ball, and the batter has less than a half second to get his bat there, swung hard enough so the ball at least clears the infield.

It isn’t easy, which is why anyone who can do so a third of the time receives a lot of money to play a game.

A recent column likened this task to customer relationship management (CRM) or supply chain management (SCM) projects, suggesting that the 30% success rates reported for them aren’t all that bad. Quite a few readers objected to the comparison. They’re right, too: CRM and SCM make hitting a baseball seem easy.

CRM and SCM require strategic change. As I use the terms, tactical change results in business improvement — your measures get better — while strategic change redefines your goals, and as a result changes what you measure.

Strategic change is much, much harder. Why?

Tactical change involves three organizational dimensions: Process, technology, and employee skills. Typically, you begin with process redesign, then design the technology the new process will need, and finish with a training program for all affected employees.

That’s hard enough. But it’s far simpler than strategic change, which may involve as many as seven other dimensions of change as well — all interconnected and interdependent.

Strategic change looks outside the company as well as inside. Looking out, you may need to redefine relationships with customers and vendors, along with your products, and pricing. You need to anticipate how the marketplace you operate in will evolve, and you need to pay careful attention to your “messages” — communication through all media, from advertising to conversations between customers and your call centers.

Internal change gains complexity, too, because you can’t stop with process, technology and skills. Usually, strategic change leads to structural change as well — how you’re organized, your compensation system, and the criteria and paths by which you advance employees. Nor can you ignore the corporate culture.

Some companies say they’re implementing CRM when what they’re really doing is installing a contact management system. That’s a tactical change, and isn’t really all that difficult. True CRM, or SCM, or any other strategic change is a whole lot harder.

In fact, it’s a whole new ball game.