Is SharePoint working for you, or are you working for SharePoint..?
Why do many end users cringe when they hear the word 'SharePoint'? It's not because SharePoint is a bad platform (quite the contrary actually), it's because of their past experiences with SharePoint.
This webinar explored how you can make your users fall in Love with SharePoint and drive end user adoption in your organization!
2. A quick story about technology
adoption
The story of a beautiful looking Intranet…
that didn’t help its users
Time for a Quick Poll
3. Agenda
2 minutes intro about me and our company
Discussion on why we should care about ‘Adoption’
Overview of current challenges and true stories to learn from
Strategies to overcome those challenges
4. About me - Asif Rehmani
Trainer
Founder and CEO
VisualSP
Chicago, USA
Contact
@asifrehmani
asif@sharepointElearning.com
www.VisualSP.com
Author
Trainer and ConsultantSharePoint MVP, MCTConference Speaker
5. About our company - VisualSP
Two Solutions
Help System Training Center
6. Help users when
They need it
most
Help items for
current page and
context
List of in-context Help
Items
Help Tab
VisualSP Help System
In-context support through Help tab
7. SharePoint topics covered
End User SharePoint Site Administration
InfoPath SharePoint Designer
Workflows Branding
Project management Metadata Management
Access and Access Services Records Management
Business Connectivity Services Search
Reporting JavaScript customizations
• Hundreds of SharePoint
video tutorials
• Fully narrated by
SharePoint experts
VisualSP Training Center
11. 11
1. Make you look like a
super hero
2. Progress your career
3. Help you get a job in
any industry vertical
you choose
1. Make you look
completely foolish
2. Get you fired
3. Make you change your
career and go to a
different industry
13. Why is adoption of a technology by
Information Workers so important!?
14.
15. 15
Adoption of any new technology is not easy
A new product has to offer a 9x improvement* over the
existing solution in order to be easily adopted.
*Source: Harvard Business School Publishing, 2004
22. SharePoint support person point of view
1. Users ask the same question again and again
2. I don’t have enough hours in the day to support
SharePoint users and do my ‘real’ job
3. SharePoint is one of the many systems I support
4. People keep going back to the old way of doing things
and not using and adopting our Awesome Intranet the
right way
23. End User point of view
1. I like the way we are currently doing things. Why change it?
2. I don’t want to learn a new technology/software
What they are Really saying is:
WIIFM - What’s In It For Me?
30. Components of SharePoint Adoption
1.Get an Executive sponsor
2.End User Training and Support
3.Build ‘no-code’ solutions and create ‘no-code’
developers in-house
4.Empower the Help Desk
5.Keep things Fresh!
32. Follow the leader
Top down support is a Must!
(otherwise, you might as well call it quits now)
Employees model the behavior of the leader
Without Executive support, your top talent will eventually leave
33. What can an Executive do to show
his/her support for SharePoint initiatives?
34. Executive Support in Action
Public proclamation of support and vision for
SharePoint based initiatives
At least one executive should have an internal
active blog
Have executives refuse to accept emails with too many attachments, large
attachments or messages to too many people
Have CXO answer one submitted question a week on the front page of portal
Jeff Immelt – CEO GE
35. End User Training and Support
“If you build it, they will come” is sadly not true for
SharePoint
36. Empathy for end users is the key!
What’s in it for them? Why should they care?
Understand before being understood
Seemingly simple things to You might not be as simple to Them
37. Empathy generating exercises for
SharePoint Admins
If you are a Mac user, try using a PC for one day (or vice versa)
Remove yourself from the SharePoint administrator role for 3 days. Try
to get by with just contributor rights or below on all sites you have
access to.
38. What users experience when they come across
something they don’t understand in SharePoint
Example
A user sees that a document is checked out in a document library.
This person wanted to edit this document.
Steps they take:
1) Look around on the page for any info on what that means and
what they can do
2) Ask someone nearby
3) Google/Bing it
4) Email or call help desk
5) Give up (ask someone else to do it)
39. Sequence of 'training' end users
1. Communicate business goals – weeks or months in advance
of a new initiative
2. Clarify how the changes apply to their role
3. Train on software/technology (this usually comes first
unfortunately)
40. Cost of “training” users the traditional way
Approx. $115 / user (not counting the time off from work)
for an average 2 day training
Size of Organization Total cost of 2 day training for
end users
500 $57,500
1,000 $115,000
2,000 $230,000
5,000 $575,000
10,000 $1,150,000
41. A Bold statement coming up…
A thorough end users Training on SharePoint is a waste of time
- Theirs and Yours!
Instead…
Provide kick off/intro training
Then frequent awareness sessions in form of lunch and learns (by peers)
Provide on-demand quick help - tip sheets, video tutorials and reference
documents when users need them
Provide a reference Knowledge Portal – online or on-premises
After two days of training, people
remember:
10% of what they read
20% of what they hear
30% of what they see
Copyright 1999 Open-Book Management Inc.
44. 46
Questions to ask yourself
Incorrect questions
What can SharePoint do?
How much is the initial cost of the solution?
Correct questions
What do our users need?
What does our business need?
What’s the return on investment long term for those solutions?
Who’s going to maintain the solutions?
45. What can SharePoint do for your
business?
Human resource on-boarding process
Vacation scheduling system
Vendor management portal
Employee training scheduling and materials
Business performance reporting
Company knowledge base
Help desk portal
Inventory tracking
…
46. Reasons for going ‘no-code’
Possibilities of what you can do are Enormous!
Quick learning curve
Easier ongoing management of solution
Delegate responsibility easily
47. Who is building these no-code solutions and why?
Not end users!!
Power Users / Evangelists in each department
• SharePoint is a platform for solution creation
• Create team specific solutions quickly!
• Creates a sense of pride and accountability
48. Identify true pain points and focus in on them
sounds easy, right..? Not so fast
Implement Quick Wins
60. How do I practice my ideas and concepts?
Get a 30 day trial of Office 365
Watch free sample videos at:
http://visualsp.com/video-categories/all-sample-videos/
62
62. Typical Technology Help Desk Setup
Big companies:
Internal Help Desk supporting multiple applications
Small to Medium size companies:
1 to few people in support role
Or
Help Desk is outsourced
Small companies:
It’s Joe or Sarah in each department who is The Help Desk
63. Providing Help to the Help Desk
Formal training (in-person or online) on SharePoint at the
Power User level – browser and no-code
Ability to tap into available knowledge base as needed
Wiki pages and documentation
Video tutorials
Established connections with department/team evangelists
Online resources
Remote consultation with SharePoint experts
65. Focus on continuous re-marketing
There’s a reason why movie trailers are created months or years in advance.
They create much needed excitement!
Hold mini launch and re-launch events
Focus on the WIIFM aspect when designing campaigns
Tools for marketing:
Videos, Posters around the building, special Announcements at company events,
internal Social Media, Newsletter, etc.
66. Example of a simple launch campaign
Currently our Intranet is like
But a new one is on the horizon!
67. Create sense of Accountability
SharePoint doesn’t drive culture change, People do! Empower them!
Place owner info on every page
provides accountability
creates End Users 'comfort' - someone is out there who can help
68. Hold Food related events on a regular basis
SharePointOberfest (Oktoberfest)
CollaBOOration (Halloween)
SharePointgiving (Thanksgiving)
30 for 30 – give us 30 mins and we’ll teach you 30 things
(another name for Lunch & Learn)
70. Call to Action
(Raffle coming up)
Always have clear goals defined before proceeding
Commit to continuous improvement
Check out the VisualSP Help System to help improve SharePoint
Adoption in your organization
@asifrehmani
asif@sharepointElearning.com
www.VisualSP.com
Thank You!
Hinweis der Redaktion
Poll on what the problem was
Intranet that looked beautiful and to the eyes of the developers was very functional.
Couple of months after the launch, everything seemed to be going smoothly and then the search logs were checked. Who knows how many people went away disappointed
Feel free to interject with comments and questions
Focused on educating and empowering all SharePoint users
Target audience is anyone whose job it is to make SharePoint successful in the organization!
Ultimately, there has to be something You would want from it. Dig deep and understand that before you start evangelizing it.
Career progression
Satisfaction of helping users
I’m in love with SharePoint
It’s my job. Otherwise, I could care less about this SharePoint thingy
Poll
SP Online as well
Challenge of adoption has still remain even though the feature set has increased exponentially over the years.
Buying SharePoint and not getting the users onboard is like buying a Jumbo Jet, learning to fly it and then flying around in it without passengers. What's the point?
That’s what happens when end users are not provided the support they need when they need it!
Ask yourself: is the SharePoint based solution better than what folks currently have?
Fileshare
Intranet
Document Management
Search
Business Intelligence
Fundamentally what SharePoint can do has not changed from version to version
Some things it does really well. Others not so much.
Intranets I have worked on or seen at my customers have been beautiful looking
None of them are called ‘SharePoint’
It’s a pretty tall order to support the demanding true end users
Same questions asked by various people – how do I create a new contact? Why am I not seeing the list on the left hand side of page (quick launch)? How do I put more stuff on this page?
My real job on SharePoint is to build and maintain solutions on top of it, not support end users continuously.
Many SharePoint people are also handling other servers: Windows, Exchange, AD, Identity Manager.
The old Intranet, fileshare and document management solution get more traction than SharePoint.
If these people were really technology averse, they wouldn’t be carrying smartphones and stick to the flip variety.
It’s all about WIIFM
Introduced in 2000.
Many geeks like me took to it.
But it failed to take over the mainstream.
Introduced in 2007
The same person who will tell you ‘I don’t want to try anything new’ would fall easily for an easy to use interface like this that benefits Them and it just works!
Simple, straightforward, built for the masses.
Cat scan is the best way to get the right people in the seats.
If that doesn’t work, you can use the other strategies I’ll talk about for supporting your users
No one silver bullet unfortunately.
However, a bunch of copper bullets combined together make a Big impact
I have not seen a single installment of SharePoint that has succeeded without executive support.
Story of how my fellow speaker left her company because she could not get exec support no matter what.
Exec must declare in company communication the ‘why’ of SharePoint
My understanding is that Jeff Immelt’s SharePoint blog is still current.
Refusal to accept emails with too many attachments or people can start slowly by one executive than others would start modeling it.
CIO, CMO, CEO, etc can answer one submitted question a week on the home page of portal
You have to proactively help users. It won’t happen automatically.
Empathy and not Sympathy.
Why should they care? Would you care if someone came in and told you to change how you have been doing things for years?
Creating a new document – at least 3 ways to start the process.
But wait… only Word documents can be created..?
Tell the Mac users to start using a PC or vice versa and the reaction is the same. No way!
Usually after a couple of these steps, you have lost the user.
Once frustration sets in, the user probably won’t be back.
Business goals – how does it benefit the company and their department/region. Market the new launch around the office – posters, signs, announcements, internal social media, etc.
Roles in various industries – secretary, paralegal, biologist, analyst, financial advisor, banker, school faculty, ‘knowledge worker’
More often than not, No 3 is the No 1 and the other two just don’t happen. They are expected to be known variables
That is ridiculous amount of money if done this way. Especially because this type of training just isn’t that effective.
The return on investment of in-class end user training is not good.
The story of how end user training didn’t work.
Kick off/intro would be half day or 4 hours. Two groups done in one day.
On-demand quick help in form of physical docs on the desk (but unfortunately, they tend to get misplaced or damaged) or on the screen help
Check out http://www.VisualSP.com for an in-context, on-demand Help solution for SharePoint end users
Knowledge portal can be a library of videos and documents either accessed online or available on location
How does this fit in the adoption story?
Creating no-code solutions and no-code developers in-house has major benefits enhancing adoption in the organization.
Focus on value and business need, not features.
Look at the ROI long term, not cost of acquisition – sometimes it’s better to buy then build.
SharePoint as a platform. Talk about Benefits, not Features to internal customers (end users)
Imagine using Windows without any applications.. That’s how SharePoint is when it’s first turned On
Most can be developed as no-code solutions
Power Users in each department are the ones whose technical acumen is respected by all in the department.
They are the ones end users ask when they have a technical question or request.
Don’t try to go for Everything at once. It’s been a recipe for failure for many orgs
The story of the secretary from Tennessee
Some examples of no-code solutions and the technology used to create them.
No credit card required to get an Office 365 trial
Question is: how do you empower these folks to help their users?
In-person training is the best, but not always the practical choice these days. Online training is the next best choice.
Help desk should be able to get the expert help they need when they need it.
WIIFM – what’s in it for me
It’s a continuous cycle and not a one time effort
SharePoint is just a tool/platform. People make it successful/unsuccessful.
Preferably owner’s picture on the page as well
Food in general always brings people together as we all know
This stuff is important to folks.
Remember to provide what’s important to Them first before expecting them to pay attention to stuff that’s important to You!