Proven Strategies for increasing Adoption and Engagement

While Office 365 continues to grow at a rapid rate, adoption can be slow and difficult without a strategy in place. This presentation covers a number of different topics that all have an impact on end user adoption and engagement. This presentation shares: a "go to market" strategy for a successful Office 365 deployment; productivity features that will enhance adoption; strategies for keeping end users engaged; how to track usage and activity so you can measure your success; and touches on many of the productivity features (Groups, Delve, Yammer, co-editing, etc). The primary focus, however, is on the management/ongoing educational aspects of a successful deployment.

1. Proven Strategies for Increasing Adoption and Engagement Christian Buckley Founder & CEO of CollabTalk LLC Office Server and Services MVP

2. Christian Buckley Founder of CollabTalk LLC Office Servers and Services MVP [email protected] www.buckleyplanet.com @ buckleyplanet

3. CollabTalk.com CollabTalk is an independent research and technical marketing services company. We focus on key tools and trends in the enterprise collaboration, social, and business intelligence ecosystem, allowing you to stay on top of these changes -- and ahead of the game. Our latest research project: The State of Hybrid SharePoint http://hybrid-sp.collabtalk.com/

4. What are we talking about today? Focusing on the right features to enhance adoption Recognizing that adoption and engagement are not, ultimately, a technical problem Developing a "go to market" strategy for adoption Refining your training and adoption strategies to keep your end users engaged Tracking usage and activity to measure your success Having the right feedback loops in place to ensure you can keep up with evolving business needs

5. When you release a new feature or tool, what tends to be the first thing you hear from your end users?

6. http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2005/10/getting_users_p.html

7. https://www.slideshare.net/BambooHR/using-analytics-to-make-smart-hr-decisions

8. https://www.slideshare.net/BambooHR/using-analytics-to-make-smart-hr-decisions

9. Adoption happens when you deliver: the right solution at the right time within the right context as part of an overall strategy

10. REINVENTING COLLABORATION, TRANSFORMING PRODUCTIVITY

11. To simplify the interface into SharePoint To better align end user activities with the needs of the business To better streamline business processes To get more out of SharePoint Why focus on Productivity?

12. Faster employee on-boarding and training More business output More usage of the platform Faster realization of the financial investments you’ve made in SharePoint Better adoption and employee satisfaction The result?

13. Productivity is User Adoption Realized

14. Microsoft is adding features , but relying on OOTB without a strategy can be an uphill battle . 15

15. In  The Social Organization  by Bradley and McDonald (Gartner), the authors talk about the components of successful collaboration: Community Social Purpose

16. Small Team vs. Large Team strategies (Size Does Matter)

17. Why is small team collaboration easy?

18. But why doesn’t small team success easily scale to large organizations?

19. Failure to create any serious or lasting change Failure to integrate with business processes Failure to understand how the technology will improve upon what they already do today Failure to understand why end users go “rogue” Common collaboration failures

20. Why do end users go astray? Too complex Too simplistic Lack of control Inability to collaborate with the people/content required Lack of mobility options

21. What is pulling end users away? ESNs, consumer-based tools, Jive, IBM Connections Slack, WhatsApp, FB Messenger Dropbox, Box, Google Trello, Wunderlist, Basecamp, PM tools Collaboration Communication Flexibility Complexity

22. Outlook Groups Skype for Business Yammer Microsoft Teams SharePoint Social ISV solutions

23. BUT IT SHOULD BE PART OF A PLAN

24. Modern SharePoint and Office 365 Groups

25. Patterns for Successful Collaboration within the User Experience (it’s more than just a UX problem)

26. Discover Follow-up Recover What’s going on? What’s interesting? Things I did The universe of user needs

27. Start page My profile Discover Follow-up Recover Other’s profile Discover Common pattern in social network interfaces

28. Start page My profile Discover Follow-up Other’s profile Discover Recover Discover Discover Example: Twitter

29. Start page My profile Discover Follow-up Other’s profile Recover Discover Discover Discover Example: LinkedIn

30. Start page My profile Discover Follow-up Other’s profile Recover Discover Example: Facebook

31. Start page My profile Discover Follow-up Other’s profile Recover Discover Example: Google+

32. Start page My profile Employee profile Follow-up Recover Discover Discover Find the patterns, keep it simple

33. Users want to focus on “ the stuff they care about ” but it is important to provide them with discovery opportunities.

34. Users develop blindness Discover Follow-up

35. Follow-up Discover Recover Translate across navigation menus

36. Identify how people are sharing and consuming information Provide a blend of known and “discovered” content and features Iterate on your page layouts

37. MENU HEADER WIDGETS NEWSFEED More structured and stable content More fresh and dynamic content Extend these patterns to other pages

38. Is this what your end users want?

39. Or this?

40. Or this?

41. No. In fact, they want to: access key systems from anywhere in the world complete forms and initiate workflows using any device while taking a selfie

42. Developing a Go-to-Market Strategy What do I mean by GTM? Why treat it like a product? To cover your bases To be more prepared To mitigate the risks Too many orgs just lob tech over the wall without truly understanding the impacts of what they are unleashing The point is to have a plan

43. Make the User Experience a Priority How involved were end users in the design and deployment of your current system? Involved at every step Provided detailed input Somewhat involved Rarely involved Were handed completed system with zero input

44. Think about how and where they will access the system http://sharepoint.protiviti.com/support/Pages/Responsive-Design.aspx

45. Creating a Culture of Adoption and Engagement

46. Education is Key Classroom training Online training Self-directed and instructor-led Brown bags Gamification tools Rewards One-on-one discussions Mentoring programs

47. Three stories about change: The long walk home The over-eager manager The ambivalent organization

48. Successful collaboration includes monitoring and measuring

49. How many are actively monitoring and measuring usage analytics of SharePoint and/or Office 365 today? How many think you have a good idea of the ROI of your existing tools and systems, including SharePoint and/or Office 365?

50. Benefits of tracking usage Prove out basic adoption of new features Help identify shortfalls in the design Indicate how searches are being used Whether search is effective, where it should be optimized Track basic historical patterns in usage, such as the number of visits, time on site, and unique users Simple usage trends, determine times of high and low activity

51. New Office 365 reporting dashboards With both the in-product Office 365 usage reports and the Office 365 content pack for Power BI, you have more tools to monitor how your users are leveraging the service and how you can maximize the ROI.

52. “Measuring ROI” is a really broad topic What are you measuring? What then needs to be monitored? You can look at usage metrics, but is that truly the right measurement of your ROI?

53. Monitoring User Engagement

54. Identify requirements Map requirements to O365 functionality Make the difficult decisions Ongoing operations management Business Need Service Change management is labor-intensive

55. How can I apply this? Step 1-Collect data: Start with collecting actual document and solution usage and metadata from end users. Step 2-Analyze data: Identify the business-critical documents and add-ins that need to be ready on the first day of your deployment. Step 3-Start a pilot deployment, focusing on the most critical solutions: Focus on testing documents and add-ins that are necessary to run the business. Proactively monitor how the business-critical documents and add-ins are behaving when they are tested. Quickly figure out resolutions to issues. Step 4-Deploy and continue monitoring your solutions: Deploy the new solutions, and look for cases of errors or poor performance to be addressed.

56. Measuring Adoption and Engagement Focus your innovation on where you’ll drive the most benefit REALITY: measuring can be really powerful, but difficult Pilot first, rinse, repeat Focus on very specific metrics, expand from there Focus on a key workload – like reducing product delivery time Map out the key business activities Identify measurable activities Create a baseline measurement Pilot the activity first Monitor and iterate

57. Three components to your strategy: People Process Technology

58. It Depends. What is the right solution for your org?

59. CULTURE IS KEY

60. Focus on Key Business Problems Many collaboration efforts fail because key users decide to “play with the tools” rather than take the planning process seriously. The lack of goals and purpose quickly leads to low levels of engagement and superficial usage. Without clear goals and engaged users, you’ll never gain a clear assessment of the end results. Take it seriously. You will be using other people’s time to make your decisions on how to move forward. Make good use of their time – and yours.

61. What does success look like?

62. If you haven’t defined the end result, how do you know when you’ve reached it?

63. Where to begin… Start with a user-centric plan Identify opportunities to build small pilots Involve your end users early, and often Map out your key workloads, and understand what you’re building before you start building

64. Mapping your key workloads Find the critical moments of engagement Engage your leaders and influencers Develop a balanced approach (quantitative and qualitative) Come back to the case (measure) Measuring the Value of Enterprise Social Technologies: It’s All About That Case! by Susan Hanley

65. HOW you measure depends on WHERE you measure SharePoint Office 365 Internal social collaboration tools External tools

66. Don’t over analyze Some teams take their pilots “so seriously” that they are unable to make a decision for a real rollout. When it comes time to deploy enterprise collaboration solutions, over-thinking your pilot process can be also extremely damaging. Collaboration solutions go along with changes in the way people work, so you should always leave room for unpredictable behavior. Set specific timeframes for feedback and target metrics – and stick to the plan. There will be some negative feedback from those who prefer the data to action, but the majority will appreciate well-defined timelines. Remember, at some point you need to move forward.

67. Culture is Important

68. Step 1: Break down the communication silos Form some kind of a governance body, giving you the change management infrastructure needed to take action It is NOT about the governance body you form It is NOT about the methodology you use It IS about starting a dialog The goal is to provide transparency for the various business teams and stakeholders, as well as the technical teams delivering solutions Cross-team participation is essential

69. Step 2: Develop a shared understanding Every SharePoint deployment begins as a business analyst activity You need to begin with a clear picture of what you are trying to achieve – before you attempt to achieve it Don’t jump to solutions until you can agree on what is to be solved Prioritization can be hard, but do it anyway Leverage data from your system How are people using the system today? How are they leveraging alternate technologies and systems today? What is the request backlog?

70. Step 3: Wash, rinse, repeat (Iterate!) Need to establish core reporting, so you can monitor usage patterns What the data shows you today will change your priorities for tomorrow Develop dashboards for your leadership, but be prepared to change based on what you see As you iterate and refine based on what you learn, there will be less change – and more innovation Change = course correction, adaptation, refining what you know Innovation = leveraging what you know to do something new that pushes the business forward

71. Wrapping Up

72. In my personal experience, what works is: Focusing on specific business problems – and clear outcomes. Making governance and change management the priority. Testing various solutions to better understand how they will help or hinder your collaboration culture. Looking at your systems holistically, understanding both company-wide and line of business needs – and the gaps between them. Regularly iterating on your strategy. Focusing on organic growth through pilots as the most sustainable model for successful enterprise collaboration.

73. Christian Buckley [email protected] @ buckleyplanet Thank you very much!