Company Size: 100-200 Employees
Industry: Real Estate Services
The Approach
This company brought in two external services to provide on-site training. One training company came on-site to provide training for SharePoint and Exchange, specifically aimed at IT employees. Additionally, the company brought in on-site training (day-long, eight-hour immersive sessions) for non-IT employees. Employees were strongly encouraged to attend one of the scheduled sessions and were also given the option to attend off-site trainings through the same training service. The company supplemented the on-site training through a second training-service, aimed at non-IT employees that focused on how to use Windows 10 and other Microsoft Office products.
In addition to providing trainings for the new systems, the company approached the deployment cautiously. The entire company did not migrate over at once, but rather department by department. Initially, the IT department sought out people that were confident enough to be power users. These individuals functioned, not as test users, but rather early adopters who would be enthusiastic about using new software and capable of giving feedback on the configuration of the systems.
The email system migrated first because it was a business system that impacted everyone. For employees that had joined the company in the last five years or so, many had come from somewhere else that had been using Outlook so the product was familiar and the transition was well-received. However, for a lot of long-time employees, many had not used other mail system besides Lotus Notes. For those brand-new to Outlook, there was a learning curve, but the company clearly laid out expectations, prepared employees through immersive training, and provided scenario-based training for the most important tasks. In the case of Outlook, there was limited user-impact because employees could open their new mail system and see all their mail migrated over.
The Outcome
Overall, the approach proved to be successful. As one of the company’s IT employees shared, they took the deployment carefully, both in preparing employees for the change, providing substantial and ample opportunities to receive training, and for rolling it out slowly. While the IT department was relatively small, the supporting external training provided employees with all of the critical tools necessary to successfully transition. The company outsourced adoption as a means to extend the capabilities of the IT department to reach all end-users.
Have you used any third-party service providers to help train or drive adoption? What was the reason for outsourcing? How was the service received?
