5 Key Considerations for Adoption & Change Management

Explore the tactics that help improve adoption and ROI

Define the
goals & vision

Too often, organizations undergo change without a true goal, vision, or outcome in mind which often leads to failed projects. In order to keep projects on track and successful, it is imperative to understand why the organization is going to make a change and how it will manage that change to drive positive impact for the employees.

For example, why is the organization going to deploy Microsoft Teams? Aside from the fact that Skype for Business is retired, the column to the right cites an example of defining a goal and vision:

WHY ARE WE DOING THIS?

To make staff more efficient, consume less storage for inboxes and promote more collaboration.

WHAT DO WE WANT TO ACCOMPLISH?

Have time and storage by offering a more efficient alternative to emailing attachments. Make files more accessible to co-workers and teams.

HOW WILL BE DIFFERENT AND BETTER THAN BEFORE?

Having a centrally located place for multiple people and teams to collaborate on a single document will help us develop proposals quicker.

WHAT WILL SUCCESS LOOK LIKE?

Decreased mailbox sizes, faster project delivery times, and increased user satisfaction (all three will be measured over the six months following implementation)

WHO OWNS THE INITIATIVE?

The technical implementation and user training program is owned by IT. Adoption is owned by lines of business managers, as indicated in the project plan.

KEY KPIs

Getting proposals developed quicker
Delivering proposals to customers faster
Developing and delivering a larger number of proposals due to the new streamlined way of collaboration
Ultimately increasing revenue as a result of a more efficient way of getting a larger number of proposals out quicker

Give your initiative a brand!

Branding the initiative can be a good way to get recognition and support for the planned changes. But beware that branding requires committed communication and ongoing management to be effective.

Articulate "why"

In the McKinsey survey referenced in the previous section, the action most likely to result in a successful digital transformation was a telling one: Establishing a clear change story for transformation.

Adoption and change require buy-in from employees and other users. And their buy-in hinges on how well they understand why a given change is happening, when it’s happening, and more importantly, how it will affect them directly.

Your ACM strategy must answer the question on every employee’s mind: "What’s in it for me?”

After all, they may have spent years getting accustomed to a certain way of doing things—creating a familiar comfort zone they have no desire to leave.

It’s on the organization to convince users the new way is better than the old.

Make your case for change just as your marketing team might develop a campaign. Proactively deliver persuasive, data-driven messages to groups of employees that articulate how new technology and/or processes will make their own work faster, easier, better, more satisfying, more efficient—the list goes on. Leave no end benefit unturned but make it as personal as possible.

Consider departmental perspectives also. Your accounting department won’t just want to know how new software will make everyone’s life easier—they’ll want to know how it will make their processes faster and help them keep better tabs on accounts.

Start at the top!

Leadership alignment is critical to transformational success of any kind. But it needs to be genuine, so work closely with the executives that support your initiative and have a vested interest in the benefits it will deliver. When your executive sponsors are truly passionate, their enthusiasm will carry through the organization.

Build a champions network

Meetings, email, presentations — all the traditional communications channels apply for introducing a change in your organization. But in isolation they are also becoming steadily less effective.

SHI recommends going a step further (and increasing your likelihood for success) by identifying and empowering your own champions network.

A champions network includes enthusiastic, respected individuals from different departments who are natural evangelists for new solutions and even troubleshooters at the grassroots level. They recognize early how a given change will benefit the team.

They can be invaluable for helping to:

Increase understanding and rationales among colleagues
Build authentic excitement at the peer level
Provide support and informal training
Serve as liaisons between management and staff

Champions provide eyes and ears on the ground—they see what issues others are experiencing and can intervene. For instance, let’s say your organization recently deployed Microsoft Teams. Within the communications department, a change champion overhears her colleague voice frustration about an email he can’t find. She helps him find what he needs and tells him about the Conversation Channels function, so he can find emails more easily in the future.

In other cases, a change champion might become the go-to source when a colleague has questions—either because they’re sitting two desks away, they have the same position, or they are more approachable than a manager.

Champions or super users? They can be the same!

Some ACM experts will insist that “super users” are the key to transformational success. We think champions and super users can be one and the same, so don’t get too hung up on the differences!

Take the
time to train

Once you’ve covered the “why” around a given change in your organization, pivot to the “how” with a formalized component for learning and development.

Failing to properly train staff on newly deployed technology is an all-too-common mistake that quickly derails ACM efforts and devalues your investment. Through training, you make changes and features tangible for employees and remove fear of the unknown.

Like effective communication, training should address the needs and wants of specific users, because each user will engage with the technology differently. Training should also be prioritized with dedicated time set aside rather than just ‘making it available’ to staff.

As with so many other factors involving ACM, training is most effective when viewed not as a one-and-done endeavor, but as an ongoing process. Providers introduce new updates and features at an astonishing pace. It’s imperative that users stay up to date to continue getting the most value from the tech investment.

Your training efforts can take many different forms according to your organizational and staff needs:

Technical training for IT staff on how to use new tools and become a resource for others
E-learning for remote and geographically dispersed staff
Instructor-led courses in person or online
Custom training videos for unique scenarios
Quick reference cards to drive home key points

User & technical training go hand-in-hand

For transformational initiatives to succeed you need both! Technical training will ensure the smooth administration and support of new technologies, while user training is key to adoption and achieving desired operational improvements.

Measure Progress

Too often, organizations focus so intensely on onboarding new technologies that they don’t plan sufficiently for proving its value once implemented (which often involves starting to take measurements before new technologies are implemented).

Successful ACM requires a process that goes beyond the technology rollout to periodically measure adoption, individual feature usage and even user satisfaction. Having this makes it easier to:

Demonstrate ROI to stakeholders and decision-makers
Identify gaps in awareness and adoption
Find opportunities for improvement
Build on or replicate what’s working well (and address what’s not)
Secure future funding

Executives will also want to know, via hard data, if new technology has achieved the original objectives, whether that means saving time, saving money, increasing revenue, reducing risk, improving security, or something else.

Some methods of measuring technology adoption can be done with in-app analytics, some will require additional tools like those commonly used by IT Asset Management teams and some require commonly available tools, such as online surveys.

It’s also worth keeping an eye on other KPIs, such as help desk call volumes and resolution times.

Measurement is a team game!

Be prepared to join forces with other teams that can provide insights, such as improvements in order processing, service delivery, task completion rates, revenues and security incidents. It’s a good idea to make friends with allies in teams like IT Asset Management (for tracking consumption and feature usage) or even Marketing or Internal Communications (for conducting user surveys).