Thinking about rolling out a collaboration site at work? Been researching online workspaces but you’re not sure how to get one going? There’s a lot of buzz about the social enterprise, collaboration software, crowdsourcing, etc. But frequently there are obstacles to getting full user adoption. Here are some lessons we’ve learned at FMYI after six years of empowering teams to make a difference:
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1. Rally your team around a goal.
• Bring together people motivated to work together to achieve a goal.
• Make it clear what they are responsible for contributing.
• Focus in on how the collaborative effort benefits them.
• Get support from leadership and share the results of the collaboration.
Case study: A global hospitality corporation brought together green team members across hundreds of locations worldwide under the common banner of achieving their sustainability goals. They tailored their FMYI collaboration site to easily capture best practices and green team results. Everyone understood their posts would generate visibility for their sustainability efforts. Their CEO supported the initiative and had visibility to posts on the site, which gave transparency to the efforts of the green team and the VP of Environmental Affairs.
2. Cut the red tape by making the business case for internal stakeholders like IT.
• Focus in on how this specialized collaborative effort addresses a specific goal.
• Be sure to convey how your initiative is different from others.
• Make sure to address IT’s requirements and reduce their workload.
• Lean on your vendors to help provide technical and customer support.
Case study: A global media corporation rolled out an FMYI collaboration site focused on keeping everyone on the same page when it came to strategic planning. They wanted to make it easy to share information quickly, make changes to the site on the fly, and empower other team members to share information as well. This helped reduce the workload on IT by eliminating the need to deploy or customize another enterprise platform that was struggling to get user adoption. And FMYI addressed IT’s security requirements and provides all support needed, minimizing the burden on the media company’s team.
3. Make it as easy as getting back on the bike.
• To minimize the barrier to user adoption, set things up so the collaboration is as natural and familiar as possible.
• With the rise of social networking, embrace the spirit of those sites to enhance adoption.
• To create the conditions for maximum user adoption and stickiness, provide easy ways for people to collaborate together to answer questions, share updates, and get things done.
Case study: A global sportswear corporation is using FMYI to easily and effective engage over six thousand athletes to provide input and data regarding new products. With a userbase reflecting a wide range of computer skills, and the importance of getting regular input from a cross section of athletes, FMYI’s social networking site look and feel helped increase user adoption, made the transition from an older solution seamless, and reduced the need for support. FMYI’s collaboration features also made the site more than a data repository and enabled collaborative conversations to happen, creating a private social network for greater engagement and insight.
4. Give a helping hand right at the start.
• It’s critical to understand how you can help the team achieve its goals, and build the collaborative effort around that. This includes learning what motivates most team members.
• Involve key “change agent” team members in planning the rollout. They will give great input and assistance with getting others on board.
• Schedule a kick off training event (in person, virtual via webinar, or a pre-recorded video/slide tour) to convey excitement of the benefits in addition to showing how things work.
Case study: A multinational insurance corporation is using FMYI to help its salesforce improve results, track prospects, and manage clients. FMYI helped them understand the needs of its field force sales teams, worked closely with top agents across its salesforce, created customized template sites, and rolled out entertaining and approachable training sessions to engage the sales teams.
5. Like karaoke, you need to rely on continuous improvement.
• You can count on not getting it completely right the first time.
• Ongoing support for the entire team is important for input to refine things.
• It’s essential to have a solution that easy to update and change on your own.
• Incorporating sustainability can help increase performance.
FMYI provides all its customers free support no matter how small or large they are. This helps refine the features in our software. Configuration changes to FMYI sites are easy for site administrators to do without any technical knowledge, and updating pages in the site are intuitive for users. That way, the site stays relevant and useful over time. And FMYI’s commitment to sustainability means we minimize our environmental footprint, maximize our positive impact on our community, and empower our clients to do the same with built in triple bottom line (people, planet, and profit) features.
Click here to view and download slides illustrating these five keys to collaboration success.
