Should we introduce Yammer first when starting Office 365 adoption?

[Marlon Hartskeerl]

Hi All,

I recently read this article by McKinsey in which the firm states that organizational culture is the most significant self-reported barrier to digital effectiveness. 

The article also mentions that "The executives we surveyed appeared to agree, ranking siloed thinking and behavior number one among obstacles to a healthy digital culture." 

This article made me think, well more in a philosophical way, whether office 365 adoption drives organizational cultural change or the other way around. And more practical, if office 365 adoption drives organizational cultural change and siloed thinking is the number one obstacle to a healthy digital culture, shouldn't we prioritize 'breaking the silos' by introducing Yammer in an organization first. 

In my experience, introducing Yammer first helps end users to collaborate over silos. Also I noticed that it helps (at an non digital oriented health care organization) against their daily amount of e-mails they receive/have to process. I showed end users this video during 'why Yammer' presentations to get their understanding and support. 

So to summarize, I'm wondering whether we should prioritize introducing Yammer first when starting adoption, because it helps breaking the silos (according to executives number one barrier to a digital culture) and helps end users to reduce their amount of email and helps them find and share information to get work done. 

[#2]

Well, Yammer is for sure one option you have for adoption, but you also have Office 365 Groups that are tightly integrated with Yammer and for very dynamic teams you also have Teams...which one use really depends on the nature of your teams

[#3]

Thanks Juan Carlos, Groups and teams can also reduce email and give end users a better collaboration experience for sure. 

Maybe I've to put it this way, if we have all control about which Office 365 app to introduce to the organization first, which want would you go for? In my opinion and according to McKinseys article, breaking organizational silos might be a good start, because siloes state to be a barrier for digital culture. Therefore I think Yammer can be a good option to introduce first. 

[#4]

Hello @Marlon Hartskeerl,

In our organization, we chose to first introduce OneDrive and then Office 365 Groups (+ Sharepoint Online communication sites as a self-service tool for Product / Service portal) for 2 main reasons:

• The use cases driven by those tools (document storage and sharing) are already well-established and their need is already perceived by the end-users, whereas Yammer use cases (find / share expertise, create communities of interests) have first to be advocated to them before we introduce the underlying tool.
• These tools make a gentle push towards a more digital culture (introducing users with the Office online portal, storing files in the cloud, accessing their environment through the browser) without challenging the organizational status-quo, whereas Yammer can impact the management (by shortening the barrier to speak with hierarchy, by giving everyone a voice) and human resources (by giving the ability to everyone to market their skills internally).

Having introduced social networks in multiple companies, the onboarding of management and HR is a must-have, but it can take significant amount of efforts and time. Whereas introducing a more simple collaboration solution such as Groups can act as a quick win and simplify further discussion with the management on next initiatives (such as Teams or Yammer).

Hope that helps !

[#5]

Thanks for your reply Pierrick,

Interesting and completely true when you mention that document storage and filesharing are often well established use-cases. 

The company I now work for, and I saw it in other companies as well, wanted more focus on easier sharing of knowledge, connection across silos and often wanted a new intranet as their first priority.

We introduced a new intranet and Yammer and, although management hasn't completely embraced the social network yet, most of the organization activated Yammer in the first three months and it is now a active social network. Some of them are now asking for step 2, digital collaboration in teams and projects with OneDrive and SharePoint/Teams etc. We are now engaging with management to show them how it fits in their organizational goals and how it can help them to communicate / discuss with middle management. 

At another customer they first introduced OneDrive / OneNote and wanted to introduce SharePoint as a next step. Unfortunately the fileshare migration to SharePoint project was delayed and had the side effect that end-users started using OneDrive as their project management tool, by sharing team / projectdocuments. 

I guess the best app to introduce an Office 365 adoption project depends on the wishes of the customer(organization) and quick wins you can implement easily with certain personas. 

[#6]

Im not convinced that using the new social tools necessarily means a "better" collaborative experience. I know thats the marketing hype, but users will use what makes sense for them. All this talk about "reducing email" and yet that is the preferred method for so many even if they have access to all the other tools. Having said that, options are good and users, like water, will find a level.

[#7]

Thanks for your reply Andy,

I agree that new social tools don't necessarily mean better collaborative experience. At the same time adoption consultants have the responsibility to improve this experience by making sure that new digital tools make sense to users. So while reducing email indeed can be described as a marketing hype, I also noticed many users to make sense to them. In my opinion that then doesn't mean they shouldn't use e-mail anymore, but they gain an extra tool to collaborate on a organizational level.

So while email is perfect for private and mostly 1-on-1 discussions, a tool like Yammer can be to collaborate on a organizational level and Groups/Teams to collaborate on a team level. Email not only is a tool, I think it has also become a (work) culture since it has been there for so long and adoption consultants can and should encourage users to also try other collaborative tools to increase their productivity. Just like how they use different tools in their private lifes 

[#8]

Hi Marlon,

At my current customer we started with:

- Yammer
Social on daily business topics and introducing first steps in Office 365
- OneDrive / Delve
Working with personal files on Office 365. Learning the basics of Office 365
- SharePoint 'soft launch'

SharePoint sites on demand (early adopters)

- SharePoint 'full launch'
SharePoin for everyone

During this staged roll-out Yammer was our most important communication channel. Users where sharing daily business topics on this platform, but also started with topics about the use of OneDrive, SharePoint etc.

We at this customer Yammer was started at first, and still available. Great experiences with this approach.

Regards,

Marcel

www.35forall.com

[#9]

Interesting Marcel, thanks. 

We now kind of have the same approach and same experiences. The thing I like about this approach is that, once users are accustomed to using Yammer, they (mostly innovators and early adopters) are starting to ask for other functionalities as well. We for example get questions in Yammer about 'how to easily share project documents with each other?' and by responding (via Yammer) that they can use a SharePoint site, the word starts to spread more easily.

[#10]

What will provide the most amount of value to your users?

[#11]

The most amount of value for my users is to not do a 'big bang'. With this phased approach still learn new things in phases - thats important (most users dont like 4 new products at once). With the returing use of Yammer, the Yammer platform is growing every day

[#12 · Accepted solution]

Thanks Daniel, I think that that is one of the important questions. And I would like to add 'with the least amount of resources.' Because some values will take a lot of time / costs to implement while others are easily implemented. In my post above I argue that Yammer, for me, has been a relatively smooth implementation and might enhance other O365 implementations. However, I agree that this does depend on the goals of the organization and perceived added value of users. 

[#13]

I agree - the costs associated with deploying even OneDrive for Business are often larger than what an organisation may estimate.