Boosting software adoption
Encouraging employees to use new tools is hard. You can make boosting software adoption easier with these top tips.
ERP. HRIS. CRM. CMS. The software systems we use at work love an acronym. Yet while acronyms may make it simpler to spell out the tool – actually using them isn’t quite as easy as we’d like. That makes software adoption a challenge.
One reason is internal systems are often so customised that finding support online is near impossible. And when we’re learning to adopt new ways of working, we need that support in order to do our jobs.
As businesses rapidly digitise the way they work (adopting five years of digital tools in the space of eight weeks), we can do employees a massive favour by making software adoption as easy as possible.
At Bundle, we help organisations to make it easy (even exciting) for employees to change the way they work. Here’s our top tips for boosting software adoption within your workplace.
Spell out the benefits
We often see communications going out explaining how much has been invested in a new tool. Most people don’t care (your Finance team aside). What we really care about is how that system is going to make it easier for us to do our job. Will it be easier to find stuff? Will I have more time to spend on my own development? Will my customers/partners/peers enjoy a better experience? Focusing on the benefits when communicating about the tool is guaranteed to generate more interest.
Test it rigorously
If your people’s first impression using the new system is terrible, it’s going to be hard to recover. Carry out User Acceptance Testing (UAT) with a selection of employees from across your business before you launch. And turn your testers into a network of change champions to help you promote the tool.
Share the testers’ stories
Ask your testers how they think it will help the business and employees. Did it take less time to complete an internal process? Are there any other benefits of using the tool? We tend to trust our colleagues and peers more than our leaders, so sharing the experiences of employees will help convince others to invest their time in learning to use it too.
Create perfomance support
No one wants to spend days in a classroom learning how to use a new system (even if we could). You can easily boost software adoption by creating short how-to guides that each focus on specific tasks within the tool. Provide those guides in different formats to meet different learning styles. Just make sure people know where to find them.
Create a one-stop-shop for employees
Create a dedicated space on your intranet or a microsite where people can go to find all of the training and information they need to adopt the tool. Having everything is in one place (even if you add links to content that sits on other tools like a Learning Management System) makes it so much easier for people to find support.
Provide technical support too
Some people will pick up a new tool easily. Others need a bit of hand-holding. Line up technical support for the rollout period and expect a spike in support tickets coming through. At the very least, make sure you have a member of the programme team on hand to answer questions from employees across the business. We also love the idea of using chatbots to answer FAQs (watch this space).
Encourage feedback
Your employees are clever. They’ll quickly work out shortcuts and workarounds. Set up a dedicated channel in Teams, Slack, Workplace by Facebook or Yammer to capture their crafty ideas so that others across the business benefit too (or use a specialist system like Sideways 6). Just make sure you have someone on point to respond to questions and comments or engagement will quickly fade away.
Keep communications short
It’s our Bundle MO for a reason. Your teams have their usual workload to contend with while learning new ways of working. So make it easy for them by keeping everything short and snappy. We don’t have time to wade through long content. Regular bite-sized communications keep people informed and engaged and linking back to your one-stop-shop allows people to easily find out more.
At Bundle, we’re experts at helping make it easier for employees to adopt new tools and ways of working. We’ve helped organisations like Kantar, Capita and Todd Energy to boost software adoption across their business. If you’d like to talk about any of the tips above, or find out more about how we work, get in touch and speak to one of the team!
