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GlynnisR's avatar
GlynnisR
Copper Contributor
Aug 17, 2022

Driving adoption at a University

Hi,

I would love to hear about your strategies for driving adoption at a university.

Specifically, in relation to academic /research staff.

I have found that academic staff / research staff have developed strategies for collaborating with those outside of the organisation via Slack or similar.

Further, many of them use Dropbox or Google Docs and are reluctant to move to Microsoft 365 and OneDrive.

Any move will be a cost in time and interruption to their collaboration.

What have you done to help them see the benefits of using OneDrive and Microsoft Teams for their collaboration?

Thank you

Glynnis

  • GlynnisR 

    As others suggested, build up a Champions Community. Find use cases, promote them, and then go advertise those use cases. Make sure you communicate the added value to the users, the WIIFM "What's in it for me". Once they see value, they will be more open about using it.

    For long-term success it will be necessary as well to look into the tools strategy of the University. From an IT standpoint, rolling out M365 usually means the sunsetting of other tools. Reasons can be reduction of cost, IT security, keeping control of content, and many more. If Dropbox and GoogleDocs are used for external collaboration, why not enable external collab through M365? Are those that make M365 decisions aware of what the user's needs are? If not, start that conversation.

    If you have a clear understanding of what the IT strategy is around collaboration tools, it will be easier for you to find arguments for M365 and against the other tools.

    • GlynnisR's avatar
      GlynnisR
      Copper Contributor
      Dear Antje Lamartine
      Thank you for this great feedback. We are starting a conversation about collaboration.
      We certainly have people who use Dropbox and GoogleDocs which is frowned up.
      Cheers
      Glynnis
  • HelloBenTeoh's avatar
    HelloBenTeoh
    Bronze Contributor
    Hy Glynnis, what's the driver for them to use M365 vs the other channels? If they're used to a certain way of doing things, the change will need a pretty compelling 'why'.

    It may be worth finding out why certain channels are working for them (e.g. their external partners require it) so you can connect the 'why' of the change to how it's going to benefit them.

    From there, you can create your pilot/champion group and start testing how it's going to work from them and roll out from there.

    All the best!
    • GlynnisR's avatar
      GlynnisR
      Copper Contributor
      Thanks HelloBenTeoh great suggestions. You are right that I need to connect the why of what they are currently using. I want to look at the benefits that they get.
      I know they use Google Docs and Slack. It does have the user boundaries that we get with organisational M365 setups.
      They have developed their skills with those collaboration tools which works well with exteranl audiences. However there is internal collaboration that we would like to promote. Using multiple collaboration tools can become confusing thus their is greater resistance to adopt the internal collaboration tools which restricts internal collaboration.
  • YSGCJD1290's avatar
    YSGCJD1290
    Copper Contributor

    Hi,

    first, I will suggest that you spot at least 10 users that you will use as your champions.

    Then you try to evangelize those 10 with the benefit of Microsoft 365. 

    If this school is eligible for the Microsoft A program, try to give them licenses and train them to use it. After they get familiarized with it, it will be easy for those 10 to start convincing their colleagues to adopt it as well.

    But it is really key to train well your 10 users for them to fully adopt the platform, if no the strategy won't work.

     

    hope it will help

    thank you

    • GlynnisR's avatar
      GlynnisR
      Copper Contributor

      YSGCJD1290thank you for your suggestions. Yes, I definitely need to focus on the champions to lead the way.

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