In a previous blog article, we told you about the four key success factors for a successful Office 365 adoption in your organization. In the first part, we detailed a first factor: choosing the right actors. If you want to read this first part, it’s here.
In this new article, we will discuss a second key success factor: communication.
Awareness
It is important to plan communications before, during and after the deployment of Office 365 in order to keep your employees enthusiastic and engaged. It will be necessary to create awareness of the usefulness of the tools through a mix of emails, posters, contests and events that you can adapt to your company’s culture. Raising awareness throughout your organization will help you gain long-term support and adoption of Office 365.
Develop your communication plan
Use a communication strategy to generate awareness and enthusiasm. Even before the service becomes available, you want your employees to be enthusiastic about the arrival of the new tools, and then remain interested in all the new features after the applications are launched.
Here are some points to keep in mind when developing your communication plan:
- Be sure to consider your users when developing messages. The question from users is very frequently “What’s in it for me?”, try to answer this question in your communications.
- Choose several communication tools: emails, posters, theme events… and plan them throughout your project.
- Consider organizing events where users can test the tools and ask questions.
- Adapt your awareness and communication activities to your company and your corporate culture.
- Remember to send the first communications from influential people in the company (CEOs, managers, champions…). This will launch the project and greatly contribute to validating its importance.
We have gathered some communication ideas to help you create an effective launch of Office 365:
- Involve the change team and your stakeholders (ambassadors, champions, managers), and make sure they spread the right messages (Office 365 t-shirt, Office 365 goodies distributions, etc).
- Create banners, posters and flyers to be posted in all offices.
- Offer workshops to demonstrate the tools.
- Organize online workshops for your remote team members.
Organize launch events
Be sure to include a launch event in your communication plan to mark the launch of your Office 365 project. Here are some elements to help you choose your launch event:
- Keep in mind your objectives for using Office 365, and ask yourself how your launch event can meet these objectives and your company’s various departments?
- Take into account your company’s culture: what types of activities will resonate with your employees?
- Consider your time and resources: can you combine different activities to plan something that fits your needs and schedules?
- Take into account existing events in your company: is there an upcoming corporate event close to the Office 365 deployment that could integrate your launch?
Encourage ongoing engagement
You can help increase the adoption of Office 365 over time through awareness and communication activities. For example:
- Create a Yammer group to continue the conversation on best practices and new features
- Share your successes on how your users use Office 365
- Periodically organize other engagement activities, such as meetings or dinners, and engage your end users.
- Challenge your employees and organize contests to celebrate the best ways they have used Office 365 to work differently
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