How to Prioritize Your SharePoint Adoption Campaigns for Optimal Results

image How To Prioritize Your SharePoint Adoption Campaigns For Optimal Results

No company has unlimited resources. Helping employees to fully embrace and actually use SharePoint is an expensive and time-consuming endeavor. That’s why it is wise to prioritize the most effective efforts first — prioritizing your SharePoint adoption efforts may yield more results at lower costs.

Although every SharePoint adoption plan is different, there are 3 activities that are universal, essential to the success of every project plan. They are:

  • Communication (explaining to employees all the benefits that come with using SharePoint)
  • Training (showing employees how to use SharePoint)
  • Motivation (giving employees incentives for using SharePoint)

When these activities are well planned and meticulously executed, you can call them “campaigns.” Over the years, many SharePoint adoption experts and consultants have laid out step-by-step action plans for these campaigns.

Let’s briefly descuss what each campaign may look like.

A communication campaign usually consists of explaining to your employees the following:

  • How SharePoint solves their problems
  • The features and capabilities of SharePoint
  • Quick tips on how to use the company’s SharePoint workflows

An effective training campaign may include

A motivation campaign is always tailored to the corporate culture of an organization. It may include

  • Incentives and reward programs
  • SharePoint success stories
  • Improved productivity case studies
  • Business benefits of adopting SharePoint

These campaigns do not cost the same amount of money nor do they take the same amount of time. And, depending on a company, they produce different amounts of results.

A motivation campaign usually costs more than the other two, and a training campaign usually costs more than a communication campaign. At the same time, based on results they may produce, here they are in descending order: communication campaign, training campaign, and motivation campaign.

Does it make good business sense to prioritize less expensive and more effective campaigns?

Of course, it does.

But, before you implement these campaigns, you need to understand why some get more people to adopt SharePoint than others.

Here is why — employees are different. Some just need to know why they need to start using SharePoint for them to actually start using it while others need to be supported and motivated.

So, to prioritize your SharePoint adoption campaigns for maximum results, you need to first roll out your communication campaign, followed by your training campaign, and then your motivation campaign. In the process, distribute your resources accordingly. But, first, you need to understand your employees.

In every company, based on character traits, you will find 3 types of employees:

  • Novelty-lovers
  • Trend-lovers
  • And value-lovers

Novelty-lovers are the kind of people who love all things “cool.” It is enough to demonstrate to them some of the cool things that SharePoint can do for them to be enticed to try it. They easily adopt new things; they are typically the first adopters.

These are the people who are instrumental in spreading the enthusiasm and influence others into adopting SharePoint.

All the novelty-lovers need in order to start using SharePoint is to understand why they need to use it. That’s why they are easy to persuade to adopt SharePoint. But, your communication campaign needs to be effective.

Trend-lovers are actually people in the majority. They love popular stuff and tend to follow early adopters. They usually do new things simply because other people are doing them.

In the case of SharePoint adoption, once they see their colleagues, the novelty-lovers using SharePoint, they will follow. They are your typical second adopters.

However, they can adopt a new thing only if they find it easy to use. That’s why a great training campaign will help them very well. It’s not enough that they understand the benefits of using SharePoint and see success stories from novelty-lovers; they need to be supported with training and guidance.

Value-lovers are the hardest to get to use SharePoint. Value-lovers dislike interruption and tend to resist change. They are usually persuaded by benefits and love incentives. They are the last adopters.

For them, understanding the benefits and getting training are not enough; they need to be motivated.

As you can tell, in order to drive SharePoint adoption quickly but with fewer resources:

  • First, launch a communication campaign to help novelty-lovers adopt
  • Second, launch a training campaign to help the trend-lovers (who will already be influenced by novelty-lovers)
  • And then, launch a motivation campaign to help the value-lovers (who will already be seeing the benefits experienced by the novelty-lovers and trend-lovers)

Starting with a motivation campaign without a communication and training campaign rarely yield optimal results.

Prioritize communication and training.

If you can afford it, you can launch all these 3 campaigns at the same time. But, it is still helpful to know the kind of employees each campaign will help the most. Also, with this knowledge, you can allocate your resources properly.

In the short video below, Richard Harbridge, CTO at 2toLead, gives you insights on the same subject but with a slightly different perspective.

To learn more about how to plan and implement successful SharePoint adoption campaigns, check out the training courses at visualSP.com.