Is Your Business Truly Ready To Roll Out That New Cloud Service?

You’ve done your due diligence; you compared platforms and features, figured out the licensing, landed the budget and maybe even defined your team, created the project plan and set a deadline.  Nothing left to do but to do it, right?  Maybe.  How would you answer the following questions?

• Do you know why the business is changing platforms (hopefully)? Does everyone else?  (Hint: 'We want to move to the cloud' is not a solid reason)
• In the age of too many tools, have you created your strategy for training and governance around what tools will be used for which tasks?
• Have you taken a good look at current processes to identify gaps and redundancies?
• Do you have a solid strategy to get your Help Desk ready to support employees?

If you don’t like all your responses to those questions, you’re not alone.  Below are some of the more common assumptions that we’ve witnessed trip up the best intended roll outs.

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COMMON ASSUMPTIONS
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Does everyone know why the org is changing / adding platforms and do they know when they’ll feel the impact?
​Yes?  Then you’re off to a great start.  Not so much?  Then more communications to the business need to be done.  We talk about more about addressing these communications in a previous blog post, ‘Have you Started your Cloud Adoption Strategy'.
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Everyone will like the new software, it’s really cool.  We’re not concerned about resistance.

​It probably is cool.  If it’s being added on top of your existing suite of tools and it has some overlapping functionality (think WebEx and Microsoft Teams, or Smartsheets and Excel) then expect confusion and frustration.  You likely understand the differences between the toolsets but to everyone who just needs to know what to use when, they’re not interested in taking the time to click on every button and trying out a bunch of different scenarios.
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Get to know how your users work and what they need.  Create cheat sheets, self-service web pages and hold some lunch & learns to let them know which tools to use in their daily business routine.

We just need to roll the new software out.  People will figure out how to use it.
There is no amount of technology that repairs broken processes.  It doesn’t matter how ‘smart’ or 'modern' it is; if employees have built their workarounds and they’re comfortable working in silos, then the investment will not be fully utilized - adoption will lag.  Learning something new, regardless of how much time it may save, takes more time than most people want to give up.

So, what can you do?

Get your key stakeholders involved and in the same room.  For example; if this is a new Customer Relationship Management system, get Sales, Marketing, Customer Support, Product Management and Delivery Services, etc., together and start with the basics.

Agree on definitions, processes, expected outcomes, escalation points and paths.  It may feel silly when you start, but it can be quite eye opening to hear how many different definitions everyone will have for the same terms.  We suggest starting with anonymous surveys and showing the results in your kickoff meeting.  We've been in sessions where they scoffed at the exercise and then 5 people returned 5 different definitions of the word ‘Lead.’
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And let’s not forget Parkinson’s law, “work expands so as to fill the time available for completion.”  So, if you plan on saving your team 15 hours a week, there should be a discussion on inspiring ideas that can fill that void.

We’re moving to the Cloud.  Security is built-in, we’re not really worried about formal training for our support desk.
​I hope you cringed when you read that.  Believe me when I tell you that we’ve heard this...too many times.  We’ve seen it first-hand; environments with all the settings still set to default.  The support desk isn’t trained and the end users haven’t been trained.  All that company data waiting for a single simple human mistake.
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The Cloud is making our lives easier in many ways, and the sales and marketing materials do make it all sound as easy as turning it on, adding your users and data and voila!  You’re set.  But your Support Desk has a critical role in keeping your data safe.  Respect that role by making sure they have the training they need and are ready to support your employees.  Not only will it make you more secure, it will also make them the champions, the ones who know all the features and tips & tricks and can help your organization make the most of your investment.
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How can we help?

​Pivotal’s team of Training and Adoption Specialists can help you regardless of what phase your project is currently in.  We’ll help you find your resistors and champions and align your goals to a strategy and roadmap, then tailor a communications and training plan to fit.  We can partner with your in-house trainers or we can lead the training sessions, both on-site and online.

Interested in learning more?  Get started.
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Also, tune into our new webinar series where we’ll cover all things Office 365.  July will kick it off with ‘What’s New in the Office Suite’ where we’ll show you our favorite new hacks as well as tips & tricks to help you be an efficiency pro.  Register here.