One of the main challenges for any technology is adoption, this is true especially in enterprises. Often a new technology replaces an existing technology or platform, which stakeholders are accustomed to. If the adoption strategy is not aligned, it results in losses both due to investment and employee dissatisfaction (if they are forced to adopt).

Adopting Office 365 is not different. It has long been a favourite technology for CIOs who focus on enhancing collaboration at workplace. IT teams tend to design Information Architecture in ways they think is best for their organization. They create site maps and determine which apps are available for a team site and expect team sites to be actively used by all departments in the organisation. This is the standard practice for Office 365 implementation. This practice worked and will continue to work in structured organisations where information is limited. But such implementations may result in low adoption rates as we move into an age of Information Abundance.

Microsoft recently introduced Office 365 Groups, which is a great service to empower members in an organisation to come together and collaborate better. Teams in an organization can create a group in Office 365 and it creates the following features automatically, which can be shared with team members:

One can see the features and latest updates of Office 365 groups here. This service can be a very good tool to improve adoption and increase collaboration. Consider a roll out scenario and IT teams delegate the responsibility of group creation and sites to individual teams, participation will be greater from employees across the organization. Since they know which app is better for their team, they get what they really want. It will increase the sense of ownership and belongingness that is required for successful adoption and collaboration. The IT team can also come up with a governance plan. They can make apps and features available across the organization and leave it to the groups to decide what’s best for them.

At Acuvate, we believe that change is good and live up to that promise when delivering our services and products to customer time and again. We’ve recently adopted the above-mentioned strategy for roll out of Office 365 at one of UK’s largest Fire and Rescue Service Organisation.The adoption was a great success with around 600 group sites created and actively used within a span of fewer than three months. To know more and emulate a similar success story in your organisation, write to us at info@acuvate.com