‘Set It and Forget It’ is a Recipe for IT Disaster
IF ONLY IT IMPLEMENTATIONS WERE JUST THIS EASY
In the days of yore, Ron Popeil, infomercial pioneer, made it look easy.
He invented a kitchen gadget to make our lives easier, and the only direction he gave was ‘set it and forget it’. One step to make a “delicious six lb. chicken!” or “not one but two delicious rotisserie chickens!” How much simpler is that than the way our moms and grandmothers cooked chicken?
If only the rest of life were that easy.
Especially new software systems.
In an ideal world, your IT team would come in, install the new software, and it would be such an great experience they’d just magically sit down and start using not only because it’s easy to use but because they want to use it. This scenario is as likely to fool the seasoned implementation manager about as well as Hair in a Can spray dispelled notions of impending baldness.
So what are you to do when – as typically happens – you introduce a new system, everyone’s excited at launch time and then several weeks (years) later you look at the usage statistics and you’re disappointed. What happened? Looks like you set it and forget it.
But people were trained, you say. We worked for months to convince them this change was a good thing, you insist. They were even kind of excited, you protest. On top of that, they’d had no choice but to use this new system and things still aren’t working out as you’d hoped. Now what?
CONSIDER THIS
Fundamentally, IT systems and user adoption are not set it and forget it kind of things.
Typically IT implementations follow a simple formula: go-live and go home. But the users don’t go home and they are what makes -- or breaks -- any IT investment.
In today’s world everyone needs to maximize the ROI of any IT investment, and the only way to realize that ROI is by holistically taking care of the people who use it.
It’s not traditional thinking but after go-live, users need constant care and feeding, no matter the system, no matter the type of implementation, no matter the organization.
So what do you do? You need to do something, you know this. But what?
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Assess the situation for your user
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Develop a plan accordingly
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Assign someone responsibility for executing that plan
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Create the infrastructure so that person, and the plan – and your users – will succeed
The fact of the matter is, an IT implementation doesn’t end at go-live, but rather it begins there. The world –inside your organization and with your competitors’-- is constantly changing. People will always need new and different information, there will always be turnover, and you will need specific people focused on getting the value you need from this investment. Only when people use the technology will you get the value you want.
WHAT IT MEANS FOR YOU
‘Set it and forget it’ is how implementations used to be delivered. But the world has changed. These days you need to build a flexible, scalable and sustainable user adoption strategy before you implement your system. You need to map out the necessary efforts and actions your organization will take so it can extract the maximum business value from your investment. Comparatively, the technology side is easy; it’s all 1s and 0s and it does what you tell it to do. It’s the human element that complicates matters and requires you to focus more on the people and the organization than on the technology and the tools.
THINGS TO THINK ABOUT
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How do you do implementations? Do you typically take a holistic approach, or do you set it and forget it? What have you experienced?
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Whose job is it to make sure this happens? Do they have the skills?
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Do you have the organizational capacity and willingness to carry out a sustainable user-focused program?
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Does your internal team have the skills and experience to address these issues?
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Do you have the infrastructure to achieve this in a fast, flexible and affordable way?
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For examples of what to include in a holistic user adoption strategy, go to MyUserAdoptionPlan.com
And if you’re not sure how your project may be affected take the challenge. After all, saying they have no choice but to use it is ultimately counter-productive when you have the choice to be proactively motivating people to use it.
RELATED RESOURCES
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Take the User Adoption Challenge to see what specific user adoption issues you face on your IT project.
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Schedule a demo of Tri Tuns' "My User Adoption Plan" portal to see how it can provide a comprehensive infrastructure for ensuring effective stakeholder engagement & communications over the life of your system.
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Read "How to Sustain High CRM User Adoption" to learn more about how to have successful CRM (or other systems) implementations.
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Read "Does your User Adoption Methodology Remove Organizational Barriers" to learn about the limitations of traditional IT implementation and Organizational Change Management methodologies and how you can overcome these shortfalls.
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High Stakes Gamble: Many Organizations Bet on IT Success with only a 1 in 4 Chance of Winning
REPORTED
A recent article by the Corporate Executive Board (CEB), a research and advisory firm to leading organizations, stated that many companies in the Financial Services (FS) industry are increasing their investments in IT solutions, despite the volatile market conditions. What is shocking is that CEB reports, “only 24% of the controllers we recently asked believe they are realizing positive returns.” CEB is advising organizations, “to get more value out of finance IT by upholding data standards, aligning IT investments with real business needs, and focusing on end-user adoption”.
TRI TUNS VIEW
At Tri Tuns, we have found that many firms do not have effective User Adoption Strategies. Effective user adoption programs focus on driving desired user behavior – such as how and when people use the technology, the actions they take to ensure data quality, the degree to which they follow defined business processes, and the actions they take to ensure compliance. The skills and methods required to drive effective user adoption are very different from those required to implement IT systems. Unfortunately, these are often missing from most IT implementation projects.
The CEB post indicates that only 24% of controllers “believe” that they are realizing positive returns on their investment. Based on this, consider:
- The remaining 76% of organizations do not believe they are getting a positive return on investment. This is a ridiculously high percentage. Even in Vegas you have a better shot of getting a positive return!
- Would you make an investment if you only had a 1 in 4 chance of getting a positive result? (Well, you might if your portfolio includes shares in Solyndra.) Before making major IT investments, you should have a clearly defined strategy for when and how you will measure the ROI on your IT investment. What you will find is that User Adoption is the biggest item on this critical path. What you will probably find is that you are not doing enough to maximize and sustain user adoption over the life of your system, and this is the leading cause for failed IT investments.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Before investing in IT projects, make sure you have a clear User Adoption Strategy that aligns user behavior & adoption of the IT system with your business goals and IT ROI needs. Further, you need to determine how will you implement your user adoption strategy and sustain your User Adoption Program over the life of the system. Be sure to recognize that changes in the levels and effectiveness of user adoption (over time) will change the ROI you receive from your IT investment. Quite simply, whenever you stop measuring and driving effective user adoption your IT investment is at risk.
TRI TUNS CAN HELP
Tri Tuns helps organizations maximize the ROI on their IT investments by developing and implementing User Adoption Strategies that maximize and sustain effective user adoption over the life of the system. We conduct User Adoption Assessments, Develop User Adoption Strategies, and provide hands-on User Adoption Program Implementation services.
Tri Tuns also provides the MyUserAdoptionPlan.com, an online User Adoption Portal that addresses all of your critical User Adoption needs. MyUserAdoptionPlan.com is an all-in-one solution that helps you lower the time and cost to create and maintain user adoption programs, while increasing the effectiveness of your User Adoption Program. MyUserAdoptionPlan.com is based on User Adoption Best Practices and comes preloaded with the core content you need to quickly define and launch your User Adoption Program. Contact us to learn more.
The page above is from MyUserAdoptionPlan.com and shows some of they key User Adoption Program areas that you need to address as part of your User Adoption Program.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
- Check out MyUserAdoptionPlan.com – an all-in-one User Adoption Portal
- Read: “Design the right metrics to improve user adoption”
- Read: “Motivating User Adoption: Commitment, Compliance Or WIIFM?”
- Read: "What is IT "Success"?
- Read: “Leadership: Are You Really Committed?”
- Read: “The Myth of User Resistance”
Book it! Scheduling User Adoption activities is a must to ensure long-term IT success.
OBSERVATION
We have all experienced this: a round of discussions generating wonderful ideas, with a promise to reconvene and determine next action items. The problem is those action items rarely become a reality, because there was never a sufficient amount of follow-through to act on those ideas. We know that user adoption (UA) of IT systems does not occur without deliberate action items. Since the goal is to conduct specific activities that encourage end-users to engage your IT system as designed, we need to move from mere discussions and ideas to committed actions that promote user adoption. In order to maintain both focus and follow-through of user adoption plans, it is recommended to reconstruct your project team meetings in a way that generates ideas and creates specific follow-up actions.CONSIDER THIS
For each strategy phase of the user adoption (UA) plan (e.g. analysis, engagement, learning, support, etc.) create two separate meeting times and agendas:- “Brainstorming Session”
- “Implementation Planning”
- Ascertain and list the relevant topics for that phase of the UA plan (rely not only on the project plan and initial team discussions but also on your UA consultant/expert).
- Organize each agenda topic in a logical sequence to create a seamless and singular focus throughout the session.
- Place specific time limits for each discussion topic, and be realistic as to what can be accomplished, as brainstorming/discussions can take longer than expected. Therefore do not attempt to overload the meeting agenda with too many topics. If needed, consider more than one brainstorming session vs. one long session.
- During the brainstorming session, ALWAYS include the predicted impacts to user adoption of each idea.
- Assign specific assignments to session participants with the due date set for the following meeting: “Implementation Planning”. Typically, these assignments are data gathering/research in nature, which shall help the team determine the implementation plan.
- Revisit each discussion topic in the same sequence from the brainstorming session.
- Address the findings from the various assignments in order to decide how to best proceed. Again, validate each decision based on predicted impact to user adoption.
- Agree to a specific series of implementation activities to enact your team’s decisions. This must include primary ownership and enactors of activities, time-frames, resources required, leadership endorsement and support.
THINGS TO THINK ABOUT
As you plan for your next UA meetings, remember what the overarching goal is: to enact specific actions that will create user adoption of your IT system. Using the above steps can help you and your team follow-through on your user adoption ideas to create long lasting results.RELATED RESOURCES
Check out these other resources for more information related to this topic:- Check out MyUserAdoptionPlan.com - an all-in-one User Adoption Portal
- Take the Tri Tuns User Adoption Challenge - a free online assessment tool
- Read: “Does Your User Adoption Methodology Remove Barriers To Adoption?”
- Read: “Design the right metrics to improve user adoption”
Design the right metrics to improve user adoption
OBSERVATION
Have you noticed that you spend a large amount of time documenting process flows but fail to measure their IT implementation? How do you know if the end-users are enacting the system as designed and contributing to the business goals? We know that process documentation is necessary to ultimately guide system end-users once an implementation is complete. However, many fail to realize that metrics need to be prepared to adequately determine if the new process flows are followed by system end-users. User Adoption metrics is the link between the new process design and the organizational change effort.CONSIDER THIS
When determining which particular metrics to focus on, it is critical to consider user behaviors that both follow the new process design as well as behaviors that deviate from your intended process. Important user adoption metrics determine how much deviation there is between end-user behavior and the intended new process. Knowing these levels of deviation will help you determine how to influence and guide end-users toward the new process. The right metrics don’t necessarily need to be complex or sophisticated to provide accurate insight into the impact of current business processes (e.g. how long it takes to perform a particular process).THINGS TO THINK ABOUT
Brainstorm both intended and unintended behaviors and outcomes during implementation in order to create the proper user adoption metrics. Here are some examples of insightful metrics: • How many resources touch a process from beginning to end? • List which resources touch that process. • What is the scope of the process activities performed by each resource? • Are there fewer or more resources (or handoffs) required due to automation? Remember, when planning user adoption metrics, determine what is valuable to know about a particular process. Metrics must be designed to ensure that the behavior of the new processes deliver the intended results. With proper metrics and planning, you will have the insight needed to reinforce desired behavior.RELATED RESOURCES
Check out these other resources for more information related to this topic:- Check out MyUserAdoptionPlan.com - an all-in-one User Adoption Portal
- Take the Tri Tuns User Adoption Challenge - a free online assessment tool
- Explore the array of Assessments that Tri Tuns offers
- Read: “Accelerating User Adoption”
- Read: “Motivating User Adoption: Commitment, Compliance Or Wiifm?”
What’s wrong with my questions? How IT projects typically fail to ask questions pertinent to long-term user adoption.
OBSERVATION
Does your IT implementation plan include a Change Management (CM) effort? It probably does. Does this CM effort include attaining information about the user community’s needs, in preparation for an IT build? Again, your answer may typically be yes. So what could possibly be missing? The answer lies in what you are not asking about your client. Most often, consulting firms and IT implementation teams only seek information about the technical requirements to an IT build. What they forget to determine are the organizational impacts and barriers to actually using the new IT system. Once the IT system is built and installed, it is a fallacy to assume the user community (system end-users) will adopt the new system fully and as designed (known as User Adoption). Therefore is imperative to determine factors beyond technical requirements that can positively and negatively affect system usage.CONSIDER THIS
Below are just a couple of example questions one may ask the user community, in order to determine both organizational impacts and barriers to using a new IT system:- In addition to technical system training (e.g. classroom, reference guides), what other support mechanisms or skill set needs would help you operate the new IT system as designed (e.g. scenario process steps, vehicle for sharing best practices, etc.)?
- What support would you like to see your managers provide to assist you in delivering quality services regarding the use of the new IT system?
- Who will be responsible for the ongoing assessment and management of user adoption? How will you adjust their current roles & responsibilities to handle the added role?
THINGS TO THINK ABOUT
As you plan to implement a new IT system, include assessments in your project plan that will address issues that will foster user adoption. Identifying user adoption issues during the project will better prepare the user community for both initial go-live of the system as well as long-term system usage.RELATED RESOURCES
Check out these other resources for more information related to this topic:- Check out MyUserAdoptionPlan.com - an all-in-one User Adoption Portal
- Take the Tri Tuns User Adoption Challenge - a free online assessment tool
- Read: “Does Your User Adoption Methodology Remove Barriers To Adoption?”
Influence culture to drive user adoption
OBSERVATION
People often talk about corporate culture but they really don’t know how to sufficiently explain / define it, how to influence it, or how it can influence an IT project implementation. You may have tried to define what the culture of your client’s organization is today, but have you given thought to the readiness of your client’s organization to accept a new technology? You should, as this readiness is a key influencing aspect of your culture, and will influence the adoption of the technology you are implementing (User Adoption).Low adoption of the technology will keep the organization from getting the most value out of its investment. Without driving adoption, you might see:
- Limited usage of the new technology
- Users expressing frustration and difficulty with the new system
- Poor performance results at the individual and division level Let’s think about the technology implementation for your client. You may encounter resistance to the new technology.
- Leadership: Do leaders promote and support the new technology?
- Processes: Are there multiple or conflicting processes in the way?
- Training: Are staff properly trained, including and beyond technical training?
- Project overload: Are there simultaneous projects competing for end-users’ time and attention?
CONSIDER THIS
If your client’s technology is great but the level of readiness to apply the technology is low, you will not see much user adoption. In the below diagram, one can see a direct correlation between organizational readiness and end-user adoption. Your goal is to focus on increasing readiness by utilizing and acting on the assessment criteria stated above. This will put you on the way to creating a culture of increased readiness and improved user adoption, the goal for any technology implementation. 
THINGS TO THINK ABOUT
Have you thought about user readiness for new technology when trying to assess the culture of an organization?RELATED RESOURCES
Check out these other resources for more information related to this topic:- Take the Tri Tuns User Adoption Challenge - a free online assessment tool
- Read: “Accelerating User Adoption”
- Read: “Motivating User Adoption: Commitment, Compliance Or Wiifm?”