Moving your data and systems to the cloud today is something almost natural.
Why is such a case planning adoption process for new Office 365 Apps is not something obvious?
In many organizations deployment of Office 365 is heavily focused on the technical part. Moving data of on-premise systems like Exchange or SharePoint, setting up the single sign-on or deployment of Windows 10 could fully cover the attention of the management team.
In real word key triggers that move organizations to the cloud are:
- cutting IT costs
- minimizing risks related to legacy technology and lack of IT experts
I try to present a little more of this perspetive in shared presnetation of moving SharePoint to cloud. If you are interested in this idea feel free to check it out 😉
This kind of perspective does not include business users and their needs.
Strong focus only on the technology could be very painful for the end-users not ready for new modern collaboration space. Even the best system not used by anyone is worth nothing. It is a great loss to do not to try to help users to utilize new tools to address crucial business needs.
Unfortunately delivering new tools, adding new operating systems or putting a new icon on the desktop automatically will not transfer the knowledge, understanding, and will not make business users try or use them. The organization will have to make an effort to help business users to move to new tools and use them with additional value.
If your organization plan or already launch Office 365, planning the adoption process of Office 365 apps for your colleagues is must-have activity.
Office 365 Adoption Process
Any adoption process which is done in the organization should focus on three main goals:
1.Improve awareness
It could be surprising for you, but most of your organization users can have no idea that something like Office 365 is coming. Moreover, almost nobody will understand what does it mean to the company or themselves. Planning communication with employees about the change, new tools, and possibilities is the first step.
Moving users to “something new” starting from making them aware of the existence of it.
2.Build engagement
Building engagement on the business side is heavily required to make the rollout of Office 365 a success. The main goal of the nomination of Busines Champions, discovery workshops, online training is to engage people in the new apps. Making them confident that the new cloud-based platform can improve their daily work should be priority number 1 for you.
If you thinking what is the main goal of Office 365 adoption process, it is moving business users from indifferent employees to engaged users of Office 365.
3. Utilize
When you have to engage business users next step is to show and help them address their needs using Office 365 applications. To do that you can plan the Handholding process for each department after Go-Live. The additional activity you can plan to improve utilization of Office 365 tools are regular Adoption meetings when you can share new cool features coming to the platform.
What next?
If you feel that the adoption process of Office 365 is something missing in your organization, start to plan it! On the blog, I will share with ready-to-use materials which will help you to move your users to Microsoft cloud with success.
