In
Protiviti’s work to help our Clients both achieve and sustain adoption of their
SharePoint Intranet, we have found the necessary activities mirror the work
done by successful consumer brands to affect consumer choice and influence
consumer activity.
It
is well known that consumer brands are required to make significant and
continued investments to influence action.
Done well, these investments first result in awareness, then in a
transaction and, possibly, after sustained delivery of value, brand
loyalty. The drive to achieve widespread
adoption of SharePoint within organizations requires similar focus and
execution. The simple reason? Prospective SharePoint users (all of us) are
consumers.
As
consumers, we buy for both practical reasons and emotional reasons. Of course, the practical ones generally come
down to some clear benefit (cost, availability, delivery timeframe, etc.) while
the emotional ones are a bit harder to quantify, but very important. For example, when given the choice between
Coke and Pepsi, I’ll always choose Coke because I relate to the polar bear
campaign that’s been around for almost 100 years. That’s a personal choice, of course, some may
more closely identify with Pepsi and their “Live for Now” campaign.
The
point? Since we are all consumers, we
are accustomed to choice - to having direct input into the way we spend our
limited resources, be they time, money or effort. SharePoint consumers within your organization
have that same choice, so the key to unlocking SharePoint’s potential and
achieving widespread adoption is to approach the work as if the SharePoint
Intranet were a consumer brand. Let’s
think in terms of differentiating from competition and helping our consumers to
achieve benefit or avoid loss. Most
importantly, let’s define both the specific value that the individual can enjoy
by making the choice to actively use SharePoint and the resulting value to the
organization.
To
do so effectively, it’s necessary to document the metrics we want to affect and
closely monitor our progress against those metrics as we engage our consumers.
Our Consumer Behavior
We
understand that there is a choice in every scenario and the choice we make
needs to be justified based on either achieving benefit or avoiding negative
consequence. And, no one had to teach us
this outlook; it’s a natural understanding based both on our nature and our
experience. If we ever touched hot
coals, we’re unlikely to willingly repeat that same mistake because we want to
avoid the consequence. Similarly, we
may be willing and enthusiastic to repeat a decision to volunteer our time
based on the benefit it provided to us and others. The point is that we are not too rigid to
change behaviors or embrace something new; we just have to be empowered to make
an informed decision. And that decision
will always be about either achieving benefit or avoiding consequence.
Let’s
consider this behavior in the context of adopting SharePoint. What clear benefit can be realized or what
negative consequence can be avoided?
Here are some representative consumer groups and scenarios that can
guide the approach.
- Project
Managers. They are likely to embrace collaborative
SharePoint features if those features can assist in achieving projects
that are on time, on budget and within scope. If a project team member can’t access
the project site when outside the corporate network, that one factor may
discourage the project manager and team from leveraging SharePoint. If the use of SharePoint threatens to
delay a deliverable and damage a relationship, then the choice to avoid is
easy.
- Business
Developers. This team may
very well collaborate on proposal documents within SharePoint, but not if
that activity takes more time or is more complex than the current
process. In that case, it’s a
clear choice to avoid the potential loss of efficiency that could result
from the latest proposal version being “lost” in SharePoint. Negative consequences can be avoided by
continuing to use shared drives and email.
Creating new Clients will always be much more important than
efficient document management.
- Product
Engineering Teams. How about this
group that may be spread across multiple continents and time zones? Wouldn’t they benefit greatly from
having a single, web based source for the latest product specifications,
design documents and ongoing collaboration among the team? Absolutely, but they will never find
out if sites are too difficult to provision or if access is unreliable.
Much
like the consumer marketing organizations that can provide a model for us,
we’ll only achieve success by engaging our consumers and determining what it
important for them. Like a corporate
marketing strategy, the method for achieving sustainable adoption needs to be
clearly defined before consumers are engaged.
As we have all experienced at one point or another, it’s much more
difficult to re-engage our consumer colleagues after an ineffective training
effort than it is to spend the necessary time up front to make that effort
effective.
OK, but we are at work
Since
we consumers may collect benefits like an annual salary, a 401K plan, medical
expense coverage, etc., we’re not exactly like consumers in all of our work activities. After all, those benefits provided by the
employer should assure the organization of something more than fickle consumers
whose activity needs to be influenced at every turn by some brilliant campaign,
right? (Yes, but only to an
extent.) Within enterprise wide
information technology, there are scenarios in which we consumers face no
choice other than adoption, for example.
- Entering
time. Whether this process involves simply
“punching the clock” or using an ERP system to track specific activities,
consumers use it regardless of the quality of the interface or the ease of
use. Why? Because it is simple for us to
understand that the activity directly relates to getting paid or invoicing
Clients.
- The benefit gained? Collecting salary.
- The consequence avoided? Discipline for delaying the invoicing
process.
- Entering
expenses. Anyone who has used personal funds for a
business expense is willing to fight through temporary access challenges
or an initial lack of understanding to correctly enter expenses.
- The benefit gained? Recouping funds.
- The consequence avoided? Interest charges, late payments…annoyed
spouses (?).
- Tracking
Key Performance Indicators.
If any part of our earnings are variable and based on achieving
specific metrics, we will be happy to document those metrics and log
progress against them in a human capital management system.
- The benefit gained? Tracking achievement to receive
benefit.
- The consequence avoided? Loss of variable compensation.
We
consumers, being generally risk averse and focused on our day to day
professional responsibilities, won’t embrace the new or additional unless the
benefit gained and/ or consequence avoided in doing so is made clear. In the above examples, they are made
clear. So, how to communicate and prove
to these consumers already inundated with choice, that SharePoint provides
enough benefit or avoids enough negative consequence to be worth the
investment?
Of
course, there is substance to the idea of loyalty to the organization that
employs us simply because we are team players.
Some of the more self-aware consumers among us may even think “hey, the
organization has been good to me; therefore, I’m willing to embrace this
SharePoint thing, even if the value to me right now is fuzzy.”
That
type of an outlook represents a clear opportunity to those of us responsible
for influencing SharePoint behavior within organizations and is a very
significant advantage that we hold when compared with consumer marketing teams. While they need to convince consumers that
their brand represents better value (more benefit, less consequence) than tens
or hundreds of other brands with similar products, we only need to focus on how
our brand (SharePoint) is more effective than a limited amount of known
competitors, for example shared drives, email, third party online file shares,
general inertia, etc.
(Keep
in mind, though, that no one was hired to
use SharePoint, so goodwill aimed at the company is no guarantee of patience or
performance if SharePoint continues to represent a vague value proposition.)
Another
factor in our favor is that we have a captive audience. There’s really no mystery to the size or
demographic makeup of this audience. We
know exactly who we want to
influence; we need to determine what is
beneficial to our audience and communicate those benefits clearly and
consistently.
Yet
another advantage at our disposal is that the communication opportunity is
already built in for us in the form of executive updates, monthly or quarterly
meetings, regional roundtables and other common workplace meetings.
Now
our path forward to helping our consumers realize value from SharePoint is
becoming clear. First, understand that
we are in a competitive marketplace (for attention), but that we do have some
significant competitive advantages, including:
·
ready demographic information,
·
relationships with
our “captive audience” consumer colleagues,
·
emotional attachments to our brand held by some of those
colleagues, and
·
influential leaders who can help to communicate vision and
generate awareness and enthusiasm.
How can you leverage those benefits to help your fellow
consumers understand and benefit from the value offered by SharePoint?