Boosting Office 365 Adoption: What You NEED to Know

Ready to make the move? Start the planning process with our free webinar “Move to Office 365 Fast and Accelerate Remote Work.“

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Read other #ShiftHappens Conference session recaps below:

• 3 Must-Know Remote Work Tips From Microsoft
• How to Establish Data Governance Strategies in Times of Change
• How to Maximize Data Retention in Office 365
• A Glimpse at the Microsoft 365 Collaboration Roadmap

Looking for advice on how to handle a large Office 365 deployment? The #ShiftHappens Conference session “Ensure Collaboration Success: Best Practices for Delivering Office 365 as a Service” covered just that. AvePoint’s Dux Raymond Sy and Deloitte’s Rob Foster sat down to discuss how Deloitte manages the pace of change, creates accountability through charge-back models, and managed a large, advanced deployment of Office 365.  

With employees suddenly needing to be able to work from home (and remotely in general), it’s more important than ever for organizations to accelerate the adoption of cloud services. Without further adieu, let’s dive into some best practices for how you can deliver Office 365 as a service!  

How Deloitte is Structured 

Due to Deloitte being an international company, they have multiple geographies for SharePoint Online. Thes include locations in North America, Europe, Africa, and more. Here are some stats to give you an idea of what their adoption framework was based around:  

So with that in mind, let’s go over how they managed to drive adoption within their vast userbase. 

Validating a Product or Service 

Let’s start by a great quote from Ryan Holiday, “A critical test of any product: Does it have a purpose? Does it add value to the world? How will it improve the lives of the people who buy it?”  

That was the approach Deloitte took (as do many other organizations) when it comes to checking the validity of using a product or service. They also used measurements and reports to create a virtuous circle of feedback/action to reinforce and drive effective adoption for their end users. 

Deloitte had three distinct phases to their adoption cycle. This included:  

1. Onboarding and initial perception,
2. Core Usage and mobility,
3. Team collaboration.

Onboarding and Initial Perception 

The first step that organizations should take when it comes to their onboarding is getting a feel for what end-users’ initial perception is. This is imperative to adoption since it will help properly gauge the willingness of employees to adopt new technology.  

For example, if you’re hearing overwhelmingly positive feedback from users, then adoption becomes easier. But if there’s any rebuttal or questioning of why the organization is shifting from something that was seemingly working just fine, there will be inherent adversity and perceptions to overcome. This is why getting feedback should always be the first step, and should be constantly reiterated on.  

Core Usage and Mobility 

The next step in delivering Office 365 as a service is identifying what the core application usage will be and ensuring that it supports a more mobile workforce. For Deloitte, they monitored the uptake of the Teams and OneDrive mobile apps to see which business units were driving the most usage and which were more lackluster.  

Not only that, but there was also the perception that teams are not making the most of the sharing features within OneDrive, which means that there was still some training that needed to be done to show how resourceful the OneDrive sharing is. Again, this is where monitoring perception and feedback is important.  

Team Collaboration 

The third and final way to look at adoption and delivering Office 365 as a service is ensuring that it is truly enhancing overall team collaboration. For Deloitte in particular, they had to reflect on whether or not Microsoft Teams and OneDrive were really enabling their organization to collaborate better as a whole.  

This take on adoption also made them look into whether or not they were using other supporting applications, like Planner, to help ensure team collaboration was maximized. Deloitte also looked at behavioral shifts to see how end-users’ day-to-day work was being impacted.  

Conclusion 

When it comes to driving adoption, Deloitte took an all–encompassing approach to make sure their employees were able to make the most of Office 365. Adoption is not a one-size-fits-all model, and it shows through their constant monitoring and reporting to ensure everyone understands the value and enablement that Office 365 brings to teams. 

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