Where 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-User Adoption Start? End-user adoption is clearly top of mind. In our research last year, 87% of IT Pros said that driving Office 365 end-user adoption was a priority initiative in the next two years. But “adoption” refers to a wide-range of actions – some of which occur before you even deploy a new product. We asked IT Pros what adoption actions either their organizations or they, as individuals, were involved in. High-maturity cloud companies (companies with 6+ products in the cloud) were more likely to engage in pre-deployment adoption activities. Already deployed? There are still plenty of actions you can take now! In April, we’ll be discussing end-user adoption best practices, success stories, sharing resources, and answering your questions. We’ll elaborate on the actions we listed above and open the conversation to discuss any challenges/questions you have on the community! What adoption actions do you or your organization take? When did the conversation around end-user adoption start? Read these other posts featured during 'End User Adoption' month: Case Study #1: Adoption as a Marketing Campaign Case Study #2: Outsourcing Adoption Case Study #3: Organic Discovery vs Forced Adoption Friday Feature: NunoAriasSilva: 'The biggest challenge in customers adopting new technologies is helping them understand the value of technology by its features compared to its price. Some customers only upgrade their systems by feature by end of support.' Read his interview here. John White: 'If users can't see value immediately, we need to be able to demonstrate the value of a platform in order to overcome this skepticism, or resistance to change.' Read his interview here. DeletedUser2246: 'The main way I work to influence the skeptics to change is to find at least one or two little things that annoy them and make it better.' Read his interview here. Deleted: 'I make complicated things simple, relatable, and sometimes even fun. That’s been my reason for existing as a communications and change manager for more than 20 years.' Read her interview here. The Irony of Change: Think much has changed since 1985? Think again. How Do You Measure Adoption Success? Useful resources on adoption metrics. Expanding the IT Skill Toolbox: Change Management Skills. A post from a previous month's theme of IT Career Skills but relevant to this month's theme. Office 365 Adoption Guide: Matt Wolodarsky shares a useful adoption resource from Microsoft. When Adoption Goes Wrong: The community shares stories to help you learn what not to do when it comes to driving adoption. Getting Creative with Adoption: Some cool and sometimes unconventional ways people have driven adoption in their organization. Consumer vs Enterprise Adoption: Interesting post from Simon Terry highlighting the different approaches. The Growing Interest in End User Adoption: Blog post from Debbie Arbeeny from the Skype for Business team about the expansion in focus on end user adoption. Connecting with People to Drive Adoption: Sharon Liu explores three ways you might engage users in driving adoption. Reimagine the Workplace with Office 365: Cian Allner shares 360 degree videos showcasing collaboration, analytics and security in the modern workplace using Office 365 from the Microsoft Canada Customer Immersion Experience. Save Save Save SaveLooking for Adoption Guidance for Office 365? How about over 100 pages with SAMPLES?
What adoption tips, ideas and approaches have you used? There are great resources available at Success.Office.com (or FastTrack) that I know I would recommend as a great start. Just in case that isn't enough for you though... what else do you use? After many long hours we have tried our best to compile many approaches and resources that we have seen work into an 80+ page whitepaper on "Driving Office 365 Adoption & Usage". It can be found at http://Office365Campaigns.com. Within it you will find all sorts of guidance - but in particular detailed guidance on how to actually improve and plan for adoption using adoption campaigns. Including how to define tips, contests, training, communication and more to effectively improve Office 365 adoption. That's not all. We realized that 80 pages weren't enough. So we also released a few supporting resources with EVEN more content and guidance. These additional resources are available in our “Office 365 Success” Resource Kit at http://Office365Resources.com. (Think of a zip file of various samples and guides - with many more to come). Quiz Contest Samples & Guidance For Office 365 - Running a quiz contest can help improve organizational understanding, awareness, and readiness around Office 365. This resource contains a sample quiz and additional quiz questions for Office 365. Contests, Challenges & Ideas For Office 365 - Running contests or challenges can help reinforce the tips you communicate in adoption campaigns. This resource contains a listing of sample contests and user challenges. Survey Sample & Guidance For Office 365 - Surveys can help improve organizational understanding, awareness, and readiness. They help provide insight based on participation of a targeted user group to improve the roll out of Office 365. This resource includes a few sample surveys and survey guidance. Office 365 Success Readiness Questionnaire - This questionnaire is designed to collect the information needed to support the construction of a governance plan and an adoption plan tailored for Office 365. What about the resources you use? What are some great ones we should add to the resources section of the whitepaper? What did we miss and what else should organizations know?Driving Adoption Friday Feature: Loryan Strant
We are very excited to introduce this week’s Friday Feature— DeletedUser2246. Loryan recently started his own consultancy, The Cloud Mouth, aimed at helping companies through their cloud transformations. He has received 6 MVP Awards in Office Servers and Services. MVP Profile LinkedIn Blog Twitter Tell us a little bit about who you work for and your role in the organization. I've recently upgraded The Cloud Mouth from being my persona to a bona fide consultancy. I work with customers to determine their Office 365 strategy either pre or post sale, especially for those who have only deployed basic workloads like Exchange Online or OneDrive for Business. My goal is to achieve true productivity transformations for organisations and users. What’s the most rewarding part of a cloud transformation? Seeing users improve their day to day work lives is the most rewarding aspect of a cloud transformation. People have gotten so used to the way they work for so many years that change is frightening, but seeing how they become more productive and collaborative across a variety of little or large ways is really enjoyable. How do you handle the skeptics/’sticks in the mud’? Can you share any best practices for encouraging end-user adoption? I view all users on a spectrum. You can’t please everyone all the time, so my best practice is to identify the range of the spectrum and to work to getting the change to only be 20-30% away from those who are sticks in the mud. From there we’ve covered most users, and those that are hardest to change have less ground to cover. The main way I work to influence the skeptics to change is to find at least one or two little things that annoy them and make it better. Even if it’s cutting down a few clicks or speeding up a process, that creates a win and opens them up to the possibility of more improvements. My aim is to make everyone a “raving fan”. What resources do you use the most to stay up to date? How do you keep up with new technologies and updates? My morning routine involves reading through a plethora of blogs in my aggregator service Feedly. A lot I will skip over as I may already know them, but I do read a lot. Luckily I’m a speed reader so that cuts down the time to consume content. Usually when I first sit down at my computer my “work” morning routine involves trawling through Tech Community and various Yammer networks. Beyond that if I need to attend a webinar or watch videos I’ll carve out some time through the day, get cosy on the couch and set myself to Do Not Disturb. I find the content on http://reoffice365.com a great way to keep up to date from though leaders in the field. 😊 IT Pro Communities are highly engaged and seem to play a large role in IT Pros careers. Can you share how these communities have helped your career and your motivation for keeping up with your own blog and giving back to the community? I’ve been using communities since the early days of the Internet, be it IRC or bulletin boards. It’s been a great way to find experts and tips & tricks that you may not find elsewhere. Since the early days of BPOS I have been actively involved in the community and it’s actually that community I thank for nominating and supporting me in becoming a MVP. I’m a big believer in community and people helping each other out, so that powers me to keep sharing knowledge and content with those who choose to follow and engage with me. What’s the most interesting thing about you that we wouldn’t learn from your resume alone? I used to be an avid hiker, mountain climber, have long hair, and frequently enjoy mosh pits. 😊
