Tips to make MS Teams adoption journey easy

Introduction

The need for improved employee communication, enhanced efficiencies and workforce productivity continues to push organizations toward cloud adoption.

Cloud collaboration is a common practice in majority of organizations across the world today which includes storing files in the cloud and then sharing and co-editing corporate content among virtual team members. We all know how successful Microsoft Teams has been as a cloud-based collaboration tool used for knowledge sharing, mind-mapping and other collaboration needs. As the demand for cloud collaboration is steadily on rise, the future of MS Teams is predictably bright and beneficial.

How to ease Teams deployment journey

Yet, there are confusions and hypes that surround MS Teams establishment as mainstream in organizations. This is because there is a constant set of myths that emerged with the advent of Microsoft Teams and are still prevalent among IT leaders. To learn about these myths, please check this blog.

Another reason is the challenges they encounter during change management such as user resistance, inadequate technical expertise, and lack of executive engagement which impede MS Teams adoption and progress. So, let us now uncover a few important MS Teams adoption strategies to effectively counteract such challenges and derive greatest value from Teams –

1. Prepare your organization

Assess your organization’s technical readiness for Teams. Verify your bandwidth requirements as per the amount of traffic your environment will need, Microsoft 365 domain as well as licensing agreement with Teams. Talk to companies that are already using Teams to get the best user experience from them.

2. Conduct an internal pilot

Test a broader roll out on a smaller scale by running a pilot program to validate user readiness. Involve actual users and impersonate communication and collaboration on Teams to achieve realistic outcomes. Keep utilizing your legacy applications and use Teams side by side to let users develop the flavour of it gradually. Alternatively, you can choose to deploy one functionality such as calls and conferences to tap into the right path forward for your organization.

3. Communicate the value

Engage executive sponsors to evangelize Teams value and communicate cultural transformation benefits to prepare employees upgrade to Teams. Create enthusiasm among employees for the new ways of working and demonstrate how to use Teams as a hub for teamwork. Provide them the content such as guidelines, training materials, etc. at different stages of adoption journey. Also, let users have a conceptual understanding via hands-on training.

4. Develop product thinking for Teams adoption

We suggest you treating MS Teams adoption as a product, not a project. A project has a start and finish date, but a product undergoes repeated testing and tweaks throughout its stages of development. Based on user feedback, you can also keep incorporating additional features or functionalities in MS Teams to ensure a smooth transition.

5. Create tangible use cases within business

Users tend to develop more inclination to a software or application that can offer a creative solution to their business problem. So instead of mentioning about features during the roll-out, a more practical approach to boost MS Teams adoption is to say something like  – ‘Here is how you manage guest access in Teams’.

6. Simplify Teams administration

Let not MS Teams governance create any havoc or burden on your IT teams or stakeholders and create user frustration. Teams is closely knitted with Microsoft 365 apps which demands constant monitoring and management of remote workforce.

Furthermore, writing complex PowerShell scripts or configuring governance policies manually and repeatedly is an arduous and time-consuming process. This creates inefficiency which is a major roadblock in Teams adoption. To ensure that end-users work flawlessly, securely and effectively, automate MS Teams governance and provide them an exceptional user experience to enjoy scalable and consistent collaboration.

If you want to know more about MS Teams adoption or need any help in defining adoption strategies for your company, please visit https://teamshub.io or contact sales@cyclotrongroup.com