THE OFFICE 365 CHANGE CHALLENGE: TURN POTENTIAL INTO PERFORMANCE

SUMMARY: THE OFFICE 365 POTENTIALThis eBook argues that while Office 365 has huge potential for boosting productivity, cutting IT costs and changing how your colleagues work, this will not happen automatically. We therefore outline five steps to help your organisation turn that potential into performance.

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1 Donnelly, Caroline. 2016. Microsoft Office 365 is beating Google Apps in enterprise adoption – Gartner Research. Available online: http://www.computerweekly.com/news/4500272206/Microsoft-Office-365-is-beating-Google-Apps-in-enterprise-adoption-terms-Gartner-research-reveals

2 Forrester. 2014. The Total Economic Impact of Microsoft Office 365 – Enterprise Customers.

ACHIEVING THE FULL POTENTIAL OF YOUR OFFICE 365 INVESTMENTOffice 365 is the world’s leading cloud-based enterprise productivity platform1. Designed to provide a flexible online environment, Microsoft has incorporated the full range of its enterprise productivity tools onto the platform, and created an environment where businesses can bring all their required solutions into one place. It provides a central hub from which users can launch a whole range of cloud-based productivity apps – anything from Yammer to Project Online or Dynamics CRM.

By allowing companies to base all their productivity tools in the cloud, Microsoft promises a drop in spend on expensive on-premises hardware and infrastructure. At the same time, the cloud takes all the stresses of security out of the IT director’s hands. Office 365 is constantly updated, meaning customers save on intermittent and costly upgrades and it is designed to be mobile-friendly, encouraging new ways of working. The list of benefits goes on and, according to technology analyst Forrester, the platform can provide the business with enormous ROI. A recent report – The Total Economic Impact of Microsoft Office 365 – Enterprise Customers2 - reported an ROI of 162% within seven months for enterprise customers, among many other additional benefits.

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While these predictions are certainly helpful, they must be understood in context. The report assumes that enterprise users do actually use all of Office 365 to its full potential; for example:

n They use Yammer to communicate fastern They instant message with Skype for Business n They actually collaborate with Office 365 Groupsn They really store documents correctly in SharePoint

Online/OneDrive for BusinessTo achieve the ROI that Forrester has predicted, companies need to ensure the platform is actively being used as intended. However, in many cases this simply doesn’t happen. Once the company has moved to Office 365, many employees continue their same working habits, using the platform about as much as they did with their previous systems: perhaps they previously had a SharePoint environment where documents were stored in a shared place and the company used Outlook for desktop.

Users may well enjoy using Office 365 and use SharePoint Online and the Outlook Web App, however, if they do not ‘venture out’ into the rest of Office 365, and get the benefit from all its additional features, a large proportion of the platform will remain redundant.

This eBook outlines how your organisation can use Office 365 to its full potential and provides a series of practical steps to implement so as to ensure users turn that potential into performance.

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FIVE WAYS TO IMPLEMENT CHANGEThe challenge of introducing employees to a new platform like Office 365 is that they are often unlikely to fully understand its potential. They will see the email and document management features they know already and will happily carry on using them. However, when they click on the Office 365 app launcher, they are also presented with a range of additional tools that, for the most part, will mean next to nothing to them. Take Delve, Sway, Power BI or Yammer – until employees understand what these things are and how they can be utilised, they’re very unlikely to use them.

The challenge with Office 365 is that it presents a fundamentally different way of working to the approach most employees are accustomed to. Office 365 is more than simply a place where your documents live – it attempts to almost replicate the life and atmosphere of the ‘real world’ bricks and mortar office. It incorporates Yammer, a social hub that aims to facilitate the kinds of social interactions that occur in the ‘real’ office. It includes Delve, a machine learning tool that brings documents and conversations direct to users, almost like a real world office assistant, and it includes Office 365 Video which provides the business with a central space to share company news and messages.

To encourage colleagues to begin using all these additional tools and begin reaping the benefits, you need to foster a change in how they work. The following five steps provide a means of encouraging that change.

WHAT IS CHANGE MANAGEMENT?Change management refers to bringing about a change in processes, systems, job role or organisational structure that is permanent and alters how a business works.

Change is often met by resistance and can also easily get side-tracked, so change management practitioners tend to follow one of a range of recognised change management processes to improve chances of success.

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STEP

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INSTRUCT, INFORM, INSPIRE

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By far the most important step in encouraging employees to use Office 365 is to educate them. If they are to understand what they can actually do with the platform, they need someone to demonstrate its potential. The idea that ‘if you build it, they will come’ is rarely – if ever – applicable when it comes to enterprise IT. You therefore need to provide colleagues with training that:

n Introduces the tools and their potential. n Provides them with real-world use cases. n Inspires them with the potential of the platform. n Emphasises its benefits so as to encourage adoption.

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STEP

02

MAKE IT IMPOSSIBLE NOT TO USE

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Simply imposing change is never a good idea. If, for instance, you cut off access to old platforms from one day to the next, you can expect a lot of resentment from colleagues. Instead, give employees positive reasons to change and adopt the new platform. And then take this further by ensuring that company leaders are also using Office 365 to its fullest. If employees see their managers using the platform, it will feel a lot harder to simply ignore the new tool and carry on as they did before.

Encourage this by:

n Achieving buy-in from executives; emphasise the fact that the platform and your licenses will be wasted if employees do not use it to the full – although you should also pitch the positive message for productivity too!

n Focusing especially on the social side of Office 365. Yammer is a great means of setting up ‘Town Hall’ meetings where employees can ask questions and senior staff can blog.

n Using Office 365 creatively – upload CEO videos into Office 365 Video which will engage employees and encourage them to use the feature further.

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STEP

03

GAMIFY IT

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Gamification is the concept that by providing ‘rewards’ or prizes to employees when they use a platform, they will be motivated to use it more. In turn, they will get to know the tool inside out and it will eventually become part of their day to day working pattern. Yammer includes certain gamification features out of the box, such as ‘likes’ and leader boards. But, it doesn’t have to stop there.

Additional gamification measures include:

n Using Office 365’s analytics features to monitor user activity, then publicly congratulate – or even award a prize to – the employees who are using Office 365 the most.

n Make an effort to reward those who are demonstrating innovation by using new or less common tools – such as Sway, the new and innovative Microsoft presentation tool.

n Create inter-departmental competitions that award creative use of Office 365 tools like Video.

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STEP

04

CUSTOMISE IT SO OFFICE 365 BECOMES YOUR HUB

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‘Out of the box’, Office 365 provides relatively limited customisation options – although you can change theme colours and other details. That said, having a pretty home screen isn’t as important as having a highly interactive and informative hub when it comes to communications, HR and fostering company culture. Office 365 excels here – you just need to use it in the right way:

Encourage this by:

n Place blogs on your homepage so employees stay up to date on company news and culture.

n Host videos and fresh content, available every time employees log in. n Incorporate Delve into your home screen so documents are brought

directly to end users.

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STEP

05

TURN OFFICE 365 INTO A LAUNCH PAD FOR PRODUCTIVITY

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One of the most attractive aspects of Office 365 is that it can become a central hub for all your enterprise apps. All major Microsoft tools – from Project Online to Dynamics CRM and also third-party tools – can be incorporated into your Office 365 app launcher. As a result, you provide employees with a central space to access all of the company’s apps and software, reducing confusion, silos and misunderstanding.

n Evaluate which additional tools your company uses and explore how they integrate with Office 365.

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SURPASS THE POTENTIAL OF YOUR INVESTMENTWhen used to its full potential, Office 365 can bring your business enormous benefits around productivity, collaboration and also cost savings. However, to achieve that potential, you need to change how your employees work, carry out processes and perform certain tasks. To do this, it is essential to support your upgrade with a solid change management strategy to not only bring about change, but to maintain it, too.

CPS CAN HELPAt CPS, we help companies like yours bring about change in the way employees use their enterprise IT platforms. To learn more about how we can help you get full value from Office 365, speak to us today.

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ABOUT THE AUTHORPHILIPPA RITCHIE

Phillippa Ritchie, ProSci®, MCP, MCTS, CSM, P-TSP, has 10 years of SharePoint and 6 years of Office 365 Consultancy experience and thrives on providing clients with solutions that make their lives better. She’s worked with clients across all verticals and loves learning about new businesses during the initial phases of an implementation. Phillippa joined CPS in October 2013 and is frequently found at Microsoft making use of her P-TSP status.

www.cps.co.uk hello@cps.co.uk+44 (0)1628 895600