Forum Discussion
AnnaChu
Microsoft
MicrosoftWhere Does End-User Adoption Start?
This April, we're putting the focus on conversations in the Driving Adoption community. We kick off the discussion with insights from Microsoft research we conducted on IT Pros.
Where Does End...
Great topic!
Too many organisations fail to fully understand where they and their employees are at when they decide to move to Office 365 in terms of how they work. The first point in pre deployment is so important. But from experience it is often overlooked. Too often it is seen as a project with a start and end date. That's why the post deployment elements usually end too quickly. The training sessions are over, the training materials produced and gathering dust and so on. But adoption doesn't stop. It's ongoing. So organisations need to plan and cost for that over an extended period of time.
Migration is also not treated as a major change management exercise. It changes significantly how people work. What tools they currently use and have to learn to use. They are expected to change their habits just because you have given them a new set of tools. That's hard to do.
As all organisations are different and depending on size it gets more and more difficult, it's important to understand how people work and what tools they use and indeed what their work day habits are. You could do this by surveys, focus groups/meetings. Then this will give you a picture of what Office 365 can bring or problems it can solve. Focus on the problems it can solve first. Show people how the tools and ways of working can solve those problems. Office 365 can't be all things to everyone. You have to focus on the little battles, the quick wins, the simpler problems. Get those right and you will be on your way.
After deployment you can assess whether those problems have been 'fixed' for people. If not you have to go back and see what went wrong. If they have then move to the next set of problems.
As Office 365 continues to change and offer new features you have to aware of any problems that can be fixed but also problems that may arise from a change or new feature (bug!!). That is where the ongoing adoption process comes in. It's why Office 365 adoption and migration is not a project, it's a journey with bumpy roads....
Looking at the pre-deployment and post-deployment activities, I'm wondering why high-maturity cloud companies would be more likely to do those activities? Or in other words, companies with best-practice change management would probably be doing very similar activities across all their projects, not just IT cloud deployments.
AnnaChuMicrosoft
MicrosoftThat's a great question Benjamin - we found that it has a lot to do with ownership. Those companies can thank their IT Decision Makers (ITDMs) and IT Implementers (ITIs) - they are more likely to take ownership of Office 365. At low cloud maturity companies there is no primary owner.
ITDMs at high cloud maturity companites are twice as likely to have been involved in deployment, likely an indicator of what enabled early cloud success. ITIs assume ownership as the company matures. ITIs are more likely to be primarily responsible as ITDMs pass off ownership and move on to new initiatives.