Changes in the business process and changes in the information system that supports the process usually complement one another. In many situations it is not even possible to detect which changes are causes and which are effects. However, our research has shown that it is possible to identify sets of changes that usually happen when one of the business process or information system elements changes its state and thus destabilizes the relationship between business and information systems. These sets of changes may be used as patterns for a situation analysis in change cases to anticipate full range of activities needed to be performed to get the business process and information system relationship back to its stable state after it is lost because of changes in one of the elements of the business process or information system. The paper presents theoretically derived main change elements, change options, and change patterns where changes of states of several elements are amalgamated. Those patterns were analysed according to different information system and change management theories and tested in 48 real information systems change cases in SMEs. Both theoretical and empirical research results have pointed to three basic change patterns. Based on these three patterns a tool for supporting information systems change management in SMEs is under development. The approach presented in the paper allows to improve information systems change management by checking whether all potentially needed changes are planned and introduced into information system and business processes. The approach considers internal organisational changes and changes caused by external environment. The approach is especially useful for SMEs as it does not require the use of sophisticated business process modeling and configuration management tools. The tool that supports all three basic change patterns does not require deep knowledge in information technologies and therefore can relatively easily be used by business and information systems managers of SMEs.