Thanks to Microsoft’s continued dominance of the global business software market, Skype for Business quickly became the default UC platform for tens of thousands of businesses around the world when it was launched in 2015.
As part of the Office and Office 365 bundles, Skype for Business provides a ready-made comms solution for Microsoft business customers. Within a software architecture which also includes Sharepoint, Exchange and the famous Office program suite, Skype for Business represents the ultimate in convenience for Microsoft devotees.
Yet simply making a video, voice, conferencing and collaboration platform available alongside your company email and document software does not mean everyone in a company will automatically use it. As with any new tech, there will always be enthusiastic early adopters and those who were perfectly happy with the systems they were already using, thank you very much.
New technology and resistance to change are old foes in the workplace. It doesn’t matter how convenient, streamlined, efficient or clever a new piece of tech is – if you can’t get the overwhelming majority of people in the company on board using it, its implementation won’t be successful.
Three step plan
Steve Harris, EVP for Unified Communications at IT distribution specialist Nuvias, believes successful change management and on-boarding is critical if companies want to get the most out of their Skype for Business migration. He outlines three steps every company adopting Skype for Business needs to follow.
“Firstly, the technology needs to work within the existing business culture and deliver tangible benefit to users who see the solution enhancing productivity and helping them meet their work objectives,” he said.
“If the value is not demonstrated upfront and the solution is unreliable or not easy to use in any way, repeat usage will not occur. This will then not deliver the ROI and the object of the whole project is defeated.
“Once you have the buy-in from the users, it is vital that they are given the tools to adopt the technology so it becomes second nature and ingrained into the daily routine of the individuals and the business itself. This includes the right training and access to online resources to deepen users’ knowledge as required.”
“Lastly, it needs to be a reliable and performant solution, which means it needs to be deployed well and integrated into other systems and devices. Getting the deployment right is an obvious one but can be overlooked. If this part is not done well, technology can be dropped just as quickly as it is tried by a user.”
Making use of Enterprise Voice
Demonstrating value across a workforce can be challenging when different groups of workers have different expectations about what they want to get from a communications platform.
Without wanting to draw too sweeping a generalisation, many companies may see an age gap between workers who embrace Skype for Business readily and those do not. This will likely revolve around existing levels of familiarity with voice and video messaging apps.
Your millennial workers have probably have grown up using Skype or similar platforms, and be very much at ease with the idea of integrated voice, video, chat and conferencing in the workplace. Older workers are more likely to prefer the telephone.
Companies perhaps don’t do themselves any favours here by not making use of Skype for Business’ dual capabilities as a very modern messaging app and a complete telephone PBX. Studies suggest that just a third of companies which run Skype for Business server edition use Enterprise Voice, the telephone system option.
This doesn’t help perceptions amongst workers who are unfamiliar with or suspicious about messaging apps. If they prefer to make a phone call and the company Skype for Business doesn’t let them do so, what incentive is there for them to use it?
This is a missed opportunity, as out of those companies which have adopted Enterprise Voice, nearly two thirds say it is better than their previous PBX. By running Skype for Business to the full extent of its capabilities, not only are you offering something for anyone, you are increasing the chances that the telephone users in your organisation will be won over by the quality of its PBX functions.
Skype for Business Rollout & Adoption Success Kit
To its credit, Microsoft recognises the importance of sound change management to ensure positive user adoption experiences for its customers. With such a massive presence in the market, it would have been easy for Microsoft to assume, correctly, that huge numbers of existing customers would sign up for Skype for Business, and leave the rest to them.
But poor adoption rates and negative user sentiment would only damage the Microsoft brand. To try to avoid that, Microsoft has produced a Skype for Business Rollout & Adoption Success Kit (RASK) offering best practice tips to organisations on how to get everyone on board.
RASK includes many familiar recommendations borrowed straight from the change management canon:
- Telling system users, clearly, what is changing and why
- Having a formal roll-out strategy with defined success indicators
- Setting up pilots and trials for users
- Encouraging feedback and comment from staff throughout
Communication is critical. One of the most common mistakes an organisation can make with new tech is to take a one-size-fits-all approach. So you might announce a voluntary trial of Skype for Business and get a bunch of tech-savvy bright young things rush forward enthusiastically to have a go. To extrapolate their feedback and experience with the platform across the whole workforce would be dangerous, hopefully for obvious reasons.
Instead, effective communication has to focus on the reluctant groups, as these are really where the need to encourage adoption lies. Then it becomes a case of listening as much as explaining.
Finally, the Skype for Business RASK raises one other potential pitfall worth mentioning – the assumption that training equals adoption. Showing people how to use Skype for Business is one of the three steps to successful user adoption Steve Harris sets out, but only one of the three. Training people without demonstrating the value, and without deploying the system so it delivers that value, will just waste even more resources.
