5 Ways to Drive Office 365 Adoption

We have a lot of organizations that are on Office 365. And with more and more organizations moving away from an on premise environment to the cloud you can be sure we’ll see more subscriptions to the awesome service that’s Office 365.

For the uninitiated or those that are yet to get with the program here is the elevator pitch for Office 365—”Office 365 is a suite of powerful tools that optimize productivity, collaboration and communication in the Modern Work Place”.

For more information on what Office 365 offers please click here

Having said all that what we have found, and the gist of this blog post, is whenever you’re introducing new technology, be it Office 365 or any other, you’re bound to contend with adoption and utilization challenges.

Adopting new technology involves change and change can be daunting to say the least.

Here are 5 ways in which you can foster increased adoption of Office 365 in your organization:

1. It’s about People and Human Behavior: Successful adoption of any new technology requires behavior change. It’s not just simply learning a new app but fundamentally introducing a new of working.
2. Engaged Sponsorship/Leadership: To be able to push through any change which affects everyone in the organization you’ll need political will. This will only come from the Executive Team with the CEO leading from the front.
3. Leverage Champions/Power Users: Appoint champions (usually your early adopters and those that are more enthusiastic about technology) to help evangelize and train other end-users on this new way of working. It is said that users learn better from their fellow co-workers hence the reason why you need to groom and embed champions across the organization to help in this effort.
4. Training: End User training is important and more importantly it needs to be offered in all available formats e.g. through LIVE classroom style setting, online and on-demand platforms (Learning Management Systems), “Brown Bag” session or even through a regular tip session that’s delivered during your regular huddles or staff meeting.
5. Ongoing Engagement and Promotion: To keep your user community engaged and informed throughout the period of the change it is recommended to run a promotional campaign through Email, posters, teaser videos, intranet portal and newsletters.

Microsoft has provided an Adoption Guide which is a recommended read for any who has or is about to roll out Office 365 to ensure maximum ROI (Return On Investment) for your organization.

In addition, we also recommend the following tools and resources:

• Download Adoption Planning Workbook
• Join the Driving Adoption Community