communication, training, engagement – the keys to sustainable user adoption of sharepoint

Communication, Training, Engagement The Keys to Sustainable User Adoption of SharePoint

SHAREPOINTSOLUTIONS

1Protiviti Communication, training, Engagement the Keys to Sustainable User Adoption of SharePoint

ExECUtivE SUmmAry

This white paper provides guidance on quantifying the financial return an organization can achieve by creating and sustaining effective use of Microsoft SharePoint. Too many organizations fail to realize the potential value of the SharePoint investment because business users arent included in SharePoint planning decisions and, therefore, arent empowered to take advantage of the benefits.

According to AIIM Industry Watch: SharePoint 2013 Clouding the issues, the IT department is the driving force for SharePoint adoption in 49 percent of organizations.1 Findings from Protivitis 2014 IT Priorities Survey also indicate that nearly half of all organizations rely on IT to deploy, configure and launch SharePoint, as well as train business users.2 This is a daunting proposition for IT, given that teams are already tasked with managing even more business-critical initiatives, such as business intelligence and data management (which includes information security), as shown in the chart below.

Key Findings from Protivitis IT Priorities Survey*

Management and Use of Data Assets Results for CIOs/IT Executives and Large Company Respondents

management and Use of Data Assets overall Cios/it ExecutivesLarge Company

respondents

Business intelligence and reporting tools

Data analytics platforms and support

Data and information governance program

Data lifecycle management

master data management

Short- and long-term enterprise information management strategy

Big data initiatives

End user adoption of data tools

Significant Priority index of 6.0 or higher

moderate Priority index of 4.5 to 5.9

* respondents were asked to rate, on a scale of one to 10, the level of importance their organizations assign to each priority. A 10 rating indicates the issue is a high priority while a 1 indicates the issue is a low priority.

To achieve and sustain value from the SharePoint investment, and help reduce any unnecessary burdens on IT resources, business units need to partner with IT and be primarily responsible for business adoption of SharePoint. This white paper explains how organizations can engage users by clarifying and personalizing the benefits that can be achieved. It also examines how executive communication can enable organizations to track and quantify the value delivered by SharePoint.

1 The Association for Information and Image Management (AIIM) report is available at www.aiim.org/Research-and-Publications/Research/Industry-Watch/SharePoint-2013.

2 Todays IT Organization Delivering Security, Value and Performance Amid Major Transformation: Assessing the Results of Protivitis 2014 IT Priorities Survey, 2014, Protiviti, chart is on page 22: www.protiviti.com/ITpriorities.


ovErviEw

The promise of an enterprise software platform like SharePoint lies in time savings, enhanced business processes, revenue gains, increased efficiency, more effective teamwork, greater access to analytics, better client and partner collaboration, and more.

Seems pretty straightforward, right? Achieve one or more of the above and the investment will likely provide returns that are at least acceptable, if not extraordinary. So why, then, is it so difficult for organizations to realize the value that they invested so much to achieve?

Given the sheer size of the enterprise content management market, as evidenced by the fact that more than 100 million SharePoint licenses have been purchased, it seems that modern organizations should be collaborating, analyzing and teaming better than ever before. In some cases, they are. But far too often, theyre not.

thE ChALLEngE: LACK of ExPErtiSE AnD EmPhASiS

The chart below shows the findings of a recent AIIM survey focused specifically on users of SharePoint.3

What would you say are your biggest ongoing business issues with your SharePoint systems?

This same AIIM report revealed that only 28 percent of responding organizations were using SharePoint across their whole workforce. So, how do we explain that less than one-third of all organizations widely use SharePoint and that almost 50 percent of organizations responded that lack of expertise was the top ongoing issue with SharePoint? After all, shouldnt all of this investment in money, time and effort create adoption and expertise?

3 The SharePoint Puzzle, AIIM, 2012: www.aiim.org/pdfdocuments/iw-sharepoint-puzzle_2012.pdf.

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50%

Matching our business processes toSharePoint workflows

Not doing as much as weplanned at the outset

Managing SharePoint within the bounds of our centralized information policy

Managing process change

Resistance from users: committingtheir documents to SharePoint

Lack of strategic plans on what touse it for, and what not to

Lack of expertise to maximizeits usefulness


Simply put, user adoption is not a high priority for IT executives and, therefore, doesnt get the emphasis it deserves in the product and application lifecycle. Consider for a moment Protivitis 2014 IT Priorities Survey4 though application management, security and social interaction all rated as high priorities among executives, user adoption only ranked as a moderate priority. Given the significant number of high priorities in this survey, the moderate ones are sure to get little or no attention in the coming year.

EffECtivE CommUniCAtion StArtS with A CUStomiZED PLAn

The first priority in accomplishing sustainable user adoption will be clear communication with employees who will be leveraging SharePoint, but this communication presents a distinct set of challenges that arise from the diverse makeup of these workers. The challenges could include language barriers, cultural differences, varying education levels and wide age gaps, as well as varying use requirements of SharePoint, all of which affect how information is processed and applied. Leadership must recognize these differences in their workplace environment and communicate and train accordingly if user adoption efforts are to be successful. A customized communication plan is, therefore, essential for optimal learning. This type of approach can be particularly effective when messaging contains the following characteristics:

Relevance

Messaging often does not resonate with the front line because it fails to consider how technology and process changes will impact the existing day-to-day execution of roles and responsibilities. The best messaging addresses process and how-to issues that directly affect the employees required to use SharePoint. Ideal examples reflect their day-to-day activities and provide user- or function-specific guidance on how these employees are expected to interact with the application. Introductory education needs to cover the basics and should be accompanied by practical training in the form of labs designed to provide users with a solid foundation of understanding and experience. After they are familiar with the technology in a general way, business users can utilize custom-built communication materials to apply the new processes effectively to their specific jobs. If messaging is too generic or not applicable, it will not resonate and will become more difficult for the employees to retain and subsequently apply.

Multisensory Learning

How people learn is an important consideration when developing messaging. Cognitive science shows that people have separate channels for processing visual material (e.g., pictures) and verbal or auditory information (e.g., words). If messaging engages multiple senses, more cognitive connections can be made. Concepts explained through both words and imagery can be more readily grasped, retrieved and applied by the front line because there are more ways the information recall can be triggered. Pictures (e.g., photos, illustrations, charts, animation and video), in particular, are powerful learning tools, as evidenced by the picture superiority effect, a theory that pictures have a greater recall value than their associated words.5 Imagery, therefore, should not be an afterthought or discounted as decorative fluff.

4 Todays IT Organization Delivering Security, Value and Performance Amid Major Transformation: Assessing the Results of Protivitis 2014 IT Priorities Survey, 2014, Protiviti: www.protiviti.com/ITpriorities.

5 Conceptual and perceptual factors in the picture superiority effect, by Georg Stenberg, European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 2006, 1-2: www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:208813/FULLTEXT01.pdf.

KEyS to EffECtivE ShArEPoint CommUniCAtion AnD trAining

relevance technological Applications

multisensory Learning Understanding the generation gap


Technological Applications

Leveraging the technological advances that are ingrained in peoples everyday lives makes messaging more easily accessible and convenient. An email that includes an embedded graphically designed image and message, for example, can be received and internalized quickly and differently than if that same message were in hard-copy form and posted in the break room (although both may be used for added reinforcement). But communication technologies have progressed far beyond electronic messages. Training tools now include computer-simulated environments, and online learning modules with video and animation. All can be adapted to the specific learning needs of various user groups and reinforce training with immediate practice.

Understanding the Generation Gap

When messages must reach and resonate with a multigenerational workforce, insight into the mindsets and performance motivations of each age group can help leadership customize communications. Generation X (those born between 1965 and 1980) and Generation Y (those born between 1980 and 2000) typically make up the majority of todays employee base, with baby boomers (those born between 1946 and 1964) still strong in numbers but decreasing.6 Understanding how these groups learn, view training and accept changes in technology can help shape the direction communications take. Gen Yers, for example, generally bring a fearless, exploratory approach to learning technology, so they prefer their training to be independent, as this allows them to be active and self-directed. Gen Xers, on the other hand, might like a mix of classroom-based training where guidance is readily available, along with another nontechnical training tool, such as quick reference cards.

Communicating effectively with a diverse audience, therefore, demands a diverse approach.

thE tyPiCAL ProCESS

Generally, the organization considering SharePoint (or any enterprise content management application) diligently studies the available options, invests significantly to make the right choice, empowers key staff to spend necessary time with the selected vendor, and manages to the established project plan created for the implementation effort.

Then, after the much-anticipated go-live event, accomplishments are acknowledged, stakeholders are thanked and everyone breathes a sigh of relief: We did it! Now back to the question posed earlier: Why is it so difficult for organizations to realize the expected value?

The simplest explanation is that project teams place significant emphasis on application features, data management policies, and security concerns. Very little emphasis is given to end users and the business problems they face on a daily basis.

The business user community is the largest community of SharePoint users and, therefore, will have the most impact on the overall success of the solution. Unlike a very specific line-of-business application, the promise of SharePoint is as an enterprise platform, so achieving the buy-in of the largest community of users is essential.

Typically, these business users are not engaged as part of the implementation, and the training plan generally consists of basic department-level training required to use the simplest tools in the application. Of course, this approach is destined for failure because business users are often resistant to change, especially when they dont understand the reason for the change. Without a consistent user-adoption strategy (and feedback mechanism) in place, even the best implementation efforts can be wasted due to lack of adoption.

6 Supervision of Intergenerational Dynamics, University of Iowa School of Social Work National Resource Center for Family Centered Practice, 2009: www.uiowa.edu/~nrcfcp/training/documents/Participant%20Packet%20Intergen%20Dynamics.pdf.


To achieve effective and sustainable adoption, the user-adoption strategy should be planned and executed along with the rest of the project implementation on a parallel track.

Of course, some advanced organizations do plan for the future by identifying a cross-departmental team responsible for encouraging use and tracking results, by offering engaging adoption plans that include embedded video, on-demand training, in-person training and active mentorship. Practical experience demonstrates that many more organizations do not incorporate this type of long-term discipline.

thE SUStAinABLE ShArEPoint USEr ADoPtion moDEL DESignED for thE LEArnEr

Dux Raymond Sy, author of SharePoint for Project Management, coined the phrase sustainable user adoption. Sy points out that achieving user adoption isnt just one point in time, but rather an evolving process that continues to mature along with the enterprise application. Solving the challenge of user adoption is not a one-size-fits-all approach. Increasing user adoption is a lifecycle made up of practical steps that each business must take to enable long-term SharePoint success.

Consistent execution of these priorities will position the organization well both to enable staff and measure the specific return on investment (ROI). The following chart demonstrates the continuous lifecycle of achieving and sustaining high levels of SharePoint user adoption.

GeneratingAwareness

SustainableAdoption

CapabilityAssessment

LearningObjectives

Curriculum-Based Training

Environment-Based Training

MeasureableOutcomes

The Sustainable SharePoint User Adoption Model


Ideal training and awareness programs are based upon an informed learner-centric approach. This approach needs to first address the big picture, including where the organization is now and where it wants to be. At this stage, it is prudent for organizations to undergo a cultural assessment, which helps to determine client needs, set objectives and understand the audience. Audience analysis takes into account demographics, preferred learning styles, position in the organization and more. For example, online learning modules engage Gen Yers, while classroom-based training speaks to baby boomers. Its useful to send the following link to users prior to creating a training session: http://www.vark-learn.com/english/page.asp?p=questionnaire. The VARK learning model7 assesses users inclinations toward different learning models. For example, if users are largely aural learners, it will be worth planning to include audio recordings of each training session so users can listen to them at their leisure.

An overall strategy must be outlined up front, determining what the key messages will be, the frequency of messaging, and the media that will be used to communicate the messages. Key messages are most effective when they educate employees on the value to them in leveraging the benefits of SharePoint and communicate best practices in doing so.

The following training strategy is comprehensive and effective.

Generating Awareness

Sustaining and achieving user adoption requires significant attention to change management within an organization. The critical factors are engaging the business user community early and actively focusing on the benefits to users and their roles (commonly known as WIIFM whats in it for me?).

As in any other team pursuit, executives have the responsibility for defining the vision so that team members are informed and empowered to take action.

The elements of success must first be defined and communicated by an executive staff member to the staff at large. This communication should address the goals meant to be achieved by the effort. For example, the investment in SharePoint will:

Increase internal efficiency by automating expense reporting processes, providing easy access to benefits information, and tracking help desk requests.

Create greater collaboration opportunities for staff to share experiences and develop relationships.

Even better, these goals should be measurable. For example, SharePoint will:

Allow the organization to better serve clients by virtue of a real-time collaboration portal. On average, the support team responds to tickets within two business days. This service is meant to decrease response time to clients by 50 percent.

Enable the organization to improve the results of its annual client satisfaction survey from the current 80 percent approval to 90 percent over the course of the next year.

Establishing goals that are both easily understood and provide a clear benefit are the surest ways to generate awareness and sustain momentum across the business user community.

7 VARK is a questionnaire (www.vark-learn.com/english/page.asp?p=questionnaire) that provides users with a profile of their learning preferences.


Capability Assessment

After the measures of success are communicated by the executive team, the focus should turn to assessing the capability of the staff at large. Too often, training happens when the solution is nearly ready to launch, giving users little time to absorb and think analytically about the solutions implications for their personal business situation. Capability assessments and training should

be conducted in parallel with implementation. Results can inform the project teams decisions regarding information architecture and business process design. Capability assessments can be completed by creating a simple survey intended to set a baseline for the knowledge that will be required to effectively accomplish the goals established for each type of SharePoint user.

It is common for a wide disparity in capability to exist across the user community, so this step is critical to understanding the initial areas of training focus. Not only will this effort provide insight into staff capability, it will identify potential leaders among the business user community who can be empowered to help colleagues along the way.

Learning Objectives

The assessment will also identify specific learning objectives for the training process. These objectives will clearly define the intent of the effort to the users being trained.

The objectives should be practical and measurable, characterized by the intended future capability of the SharePoint user community. Here are some examples, by typical user types and associated

capability:

Business user The primary focus is on using key SharePoint functionality.

Sample objectives:

Upload and download documents

Apply metadata to documents

Create search queries

Power user The primary focus is on creating and designing content.

Sample objectives:

Personalize SharePoint

Implement profile management

Create and publish content

Site owner The primary focus is on managing users and site features.

Sample objectives:

Create content types

Manage the term store

Maintain site security

Site collection administrator The primary focus is on managing site collection features.

Sample objectives:

Manage caching mechanisms


Create an advanced search configuration

Audit content

At minimum, anyone who is able to log in to the SharePoint site should receive business user training. While its true that not all users should become site administrators, the progression from business user to power user is tantamount to user adoption success. Business users tend to focus on SharePoint at face value, and capable document storage does not represent effective adoption. Rather, user adoption strategies should focus on building power users. Power users view SharePoint with a more critical eye and are able to assess business problems and consider ways in which SharePoint might solve those problems. Power users cant implement the solutions but thats not the point. They use the technology at a deeper and more meaningful level.

Also, while these types of users are common to nearly every organization that uses SharePoint, there are specialty areas like business intelligence, workflow, application development, administration and architecture, styling and branding, responsive design, and project management that will require focus. Advanced training for staff involved in these areas is another important component of the overall user adoption approach.

Curriculum-Based Training

SharePoint is an enterprise solution; as such, its important to help business users focus on the areas that will be most important to their roles and responsibilities. Professionally developed curriculum creates confidence in interacting with the application and accomplishing common tasks such as accessing project sites; checking out, modifying and checking in documents; using versioning capabilities; inserting images and hyperlinks; checking out, modifying and checking

in pages; applying metadata to lists and documents; leveraging the search capability; using search filters to access relevant information quickly; and so forth.

Some examples of the curriculum-based approach:

Learners are given step-by-step instructions through on-screen text and audio.


Key steps are demonstrated live so learners can see the steps in action.

The most effective approach is to enable users to accomplish these tasks after they have been introduced and demonstrated. Providing a lab environment, with active instruction and support available, greatly increases the comfort level of each individual user. This hands-on experience helps take the mystery out of SharePoint and provides necessary encouragement for even the most skeptical users.

Environment-Based Training

As the implementation effort progresses toward completion, business user training should become more specific to prepare users to best leverage all of the accomplishments of the project team. This phase applies learning achieved within the curriculum-based training, but makes it very specific to the actual SharePoint environment that will be deployed in the organization.


Animated business users add a friendly face to learning and speak directly to the learner.

This is also an ideal opportunity to introduce the governance strategy that has been developed as part of the implementation work to clearly define best-use practices for the users and let them know how SharePoint will be managed after go-live.

Introducing (and reinforcing) the importance of the governance strategy will increase the likelihood of active buy-in informed users are engaged users. Just as the executive team should define the overall vision of SharePoint for staff, executive management should actively participate in establishing (and reinforcing) the governance strategy.

Also, similar to curriculum-based training, representative exercises should be delivered within the development environment to provide hands-on learning and increase each users comfort level.

Once this environment-specific training has been delivered and the governance strategy has been communicated, the organization can then reasonably expect accountability for individuals and departments in applying best practices.

Measurable Outcomes

Its necessary to understand and document users progress in accomplishing the established learning objectives. This can be achieved simply by reissuing the assessment (in the form of an exam) to compare to the baseline established in the Capabilities Assessment phase.

This provides a concrete opportunity to measure and document the value that has been created as a result of the previous activities and sets the stage for a practical way to begin to measure ROI even before the official go-live.

For example, what is the value to the organization in communicating with staff exclusively within SharePoint? Are there practical savings in terms of technology resources (Microsoft Exchange capacity, for example)? What benefit is achieved by collaborating in SharePoint and avoiding shared drives?


Sustainable Adoption

Organizations focused on long-term value and continued adoption deliver consistent and ongoing training for both newly hired staff and existing staff. It stands to reason that newly hired staff members require training to understand SharePoint, but existing staff members will also benefit from ongoing training to maintain skills and stay up-to-date on the improvements that have been

made in the organizations use of SharePoint.

BUDgEting for USEr ADoPtion

The cost of running an effective, on-premise SharePoint solution over the course of three years for a company of 3,000 employees can exceed US$4 million.8

The good news is that achieving user adoption need not be expensive (relative to the licensing and services investment) or complex (relative to the implementation project). In fact, the investment necessary to achieve and sustain results is modest in comparison to a failed SharePoint project.

Ideally, there would be a formulaic approach to budgeting for this effort that could be applied consistently across organizations. The reality is that many factors contribute to the effort necessary; for example, the type of business (a technology organization may have a head start over a manufacturing company), the experience of the workforce, the culture of innovation within the organization, and the relationship dynamic between IT and other business units.

Simply put, an organization should create a budget for user adoption with the intended benefits for the organization in mind. Michael Sampson, author of User Adoption Strategies (2nd Edition): Shifting Second Wave People to New Collaboration Technology puts it this way:

You need to understand what the potential value that using the technology well could confer on the organization, and thus what magnitude of resources should be invested in building capability among staff. If SharePoint is being used to improve processes and introduce efficiencies of 20% per year, then one way of calculating your training budget would be to spend a portion of the first years gain on adoption. For 1,000 people earning an average of $X per year (lets say $50,000 for arguments sake), a 20% improvement in process efficiency across the entire employee base would be $10 million. Spend half of that on adoption and you have an ROI of 6 months. If SharePoint is used for less wonderful purposes the new file share anyone? then its a bit harder to make a case for investing much in training/adoption. 9

While a budget in the millions of dollars may seem outlandish for training, the relevant point is that achieving adoption is not just about calculating costs for training. Its about projecting benefits within the context of the overall investment.

As organizations consider the budget necessary for achieving and sustaining user adoption, it is first necessary to define specific corporate goals for the investment, and then encourage the accomplishment of those goals by making the benefits personal to the user community.

The former will provide guidance on the necessary budget, and the latter will ensure that the budget is well spent by achieving high levels of adoption.

8 Source: Huddle SharePoint Calculator: www.huddle.com/sharepoint/sharepoint-calculator/.9 How Much Do I Spend on Training?, posted on April 15, 2014 by Michael Sampson: michaelsampson.net/2014/04/15/howmuch/.


USing ShArEPoint to trACK ACComPLiShmEntS

Because SharePoint is the worlds leading collaboration platform and so much has now been invested to encourage adoption within the organization, SharePoint should be used to track the results of the effort. This demonstrates that the organization has a long-term focus on adoption and, more important, engages the user community directly within SharePoint.

A SharePoint site should be established that defines each user group and tracks the progress of each individual within the group. This serves to document staff capability and reinforces that SharePoint is the central location for corporate information.

Each business user who passes the relevant exam will be noted as an approved business user within SharePoint. Then, if appropriate, the user will be eligible to progress to power user status and beyond.

SUmmAry

The combination of executive staff engagement and clear communication with the SharePoint user community at each stage thereafter is the most effective way to ensure adoption. To the extent possible, make the benefits personal to each user, whether in the form of greater potential earnings or, simply, the pride involved in accomplishing a worthy goal. Track the progress and results directly within SharePoint to demonstrate practical application of the benefits.

Given that SharePoint is only valuable to the organization when embraced by the staff, educated and empowered users will greatly enhance the value realized from the SharePoint investment. Applying the sustainable SharePoint user adoption model will provide clear benchmarks and objective measures that can be used to calculate the return realized from the investment in SharePoint.


ABoUt Protiviti

Protiviti (www.protiviti.com) is a global consulting firm that helps companies solve problems in finance, technology, operations, governance, risk and internal audit, and has served more than 40 percent of FORTUNE 1000 and FORTUNE Global 500 companies. Protiviti and its independently owned Member Firms serve clients through a network of more than 70 locations in over 20 countries. The firm also works with smaller, growing companies, including those looking to go public, as well as with government agencies.

Protiviti is a wholly owned subsidiary of Robert Half (NYSE: RHI). Founded in 1948, Robert Half is a member of the S&P 500 index.

About SharePoint Solutions Training

SharePoint Solutions provides consulting, support and training expertise to help clients unlock the full business potential of Microsoft SharePoint. To do so, we design custom training and communication tools that help organizations connect with their employees improving SharePoint user adoption and helping to measure the ROI.

To learn more about SharePoint Solutions Training, including private training packages, contextual videos and user adoption strategies, please visit http://sharepoint.protiviti.com/training. For additional information about the issues reviewed here or Protivitis services, please contact:

SharePoint Solutions:

Mike Steadman Managing Director +1.913.685.6226 [email protected]

Jason Schnur Director +1.571.382.7270 [email protected]

Maggie Swearingen Senior Manager +1.540.450.1615 [email protected]

Communication Solutions:

Richard Childs Managing Director +1.916.830.0107 [email protected]

Pat Quinn Advisor, Policy & Strategy Communications +1.519.342.2727 [email protected]

2014 Protiviti inc. An Equal opportunity Employer m/f/D/v. Pro-0814Protiviti is not licensed or registered as a public accounting firm and does not issue opinions on financial statements or offer attestation services.

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communication, training, engagement – the keys to sustainable user adoption of sharepoint

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