Ways to increase Microsoft 365 adoption

Introduction

End-user adoption must be in the mind of every business leader while deploying new technology such as Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365) in their environment. No matter how profitable the tool is, it is hard to derive full benefits from it if your employees won’t embrace or like to use it. Remember, as your employees are naïve to it, you need to give an extra push for the successful implementation of Microsoft 365.

In this blog, let us talk about a few strategies to ascertain high adoption rate of Microsoft 365 in your organization. Let’s begin –

1. Eliminate confusions with the new system

Employees are naturally resistant to change. Hence, it’s important for you to demonstrate the value, usage and overall benefits of Office 365 to make users confident before exploring it.

2. Encourage users to use key features

Office 365 suite is packed with useful features to amplify productivity. You must allow your users to integrate Microsoft 365 tools into their daily workflows and processes and realize the difference in results by themselves.

3. Give liberty for self-service

Imposing too many restrictions, especially at an initial stage of Microsoft 365 implementation, would retract users from getting familiar with the tool and developing an interest for it. With some guidance in place, you can provide flexibility to your users to use Microsoft 365 and learn efficient ways of team building and collaboration.

4. Educate and train users

To discard old ways of work, user education about the new technology is must. It’s imperative for users to understand Microsoft 365 features, functionalities, and all apps and tools associated with it. For this, you can mentor them by developing a hands-on training program to discover their growing likeness and knowledge for Microsoft 365.

5. Set clear guidelines on an effective usage of the tool

You need to let know your employees your expectations about how they should communicate and collaborate using Office 365. For example, you can define which tools you want them to use for email, chat, and file storage. As Office 365 provides multiple collaboration approaches, by setting clear guidelines, you can reduce confusions when users create teams, give names to teams, share files with external users and so on.

6. Appoint champions

Use Microsoft Teams to identify early adopters. Note their activities using Teams analytics and know who uses chats, messages, or posts the most. Start sending praises, badges, and kudos to them. This way, you can gamify adoption process by letting enthusiastic people spread the good word about Microsoft Teams to their peers.

7. Monitor and enhance

Continuous monitoring on the usage of Office 365 is important to maintain high adoption rate. It helps you to detect any abnormality or sluggishness that may arise after a long period of time. Gain clear picture on user work habits and ensure that they are using best practices for Microsoft 365 adoption.  

Summary

Office 365 is a prolific collaboration suite to revolutionize your business inside out. Sadly, many organizations fail to unleash its massive potential because of slow adoption rate. Deployment and adoption are two important phases in successful implementation of Office 365. Hence, help your users to recognize real business value of Microsoft 365 by developing a comprehensive user adoption strategy. Raise awareness and promote it till they start loving it.