Moving to Office 365 ? How to ensure a smooth transition
Congratulations!
You have made the decision to move your organisation from a traditional in house server based system to a cloud based Office 365 one.
How can you get your people on board fast?
What can you do that will enable a smooth transition from a system that your people are familiar with to a new way of working. The new way of working for the Modern Business means access to all working documents from anywhere on any type of device. Access can be via a traditional computer, a laptop, a tablet or the web.
Educate
- Start with education.
- News email to staff telling about what is coming.
- Meetings in small and large groups to discuss.
- Arrange for a trainer to come in and demonstrate what the new system is capable of and how it can help them work seamlessly.
Prepare
Talk to your IT support company or in house team. Ask them what the time frame is. How will they manage the switchover, by team? By department, by business section? Work out how you can work together to ensure that it all goes as smoothly as possible and everyone is happy
Create a learning plan
Before you start to move people to Office 365 or indeed any new system make sure you have a learning plan in place. Talk to your IT Training partner to come up with a series of options. They could include:
- Short presentations on different elements of the new system
- Longer training sessions where participants can get stuck in and learn by doing
- Short video tutorials customised for your environment available on the intranet
- Floor Walking – a trainer walking around answering questions as they come up
- Short sessions delivered via Skype for Business so people can attend from their desk and get to grips with Skype for Business too!
Remember that the more planning you do and the more you involve all those who will be using the new system in the decisions and implementation, the easier it will be.
If you create the right buzz around the new software, your staff will come on board and drive the change themselves.
If you are reading this and thinking of upgrading or moving to this new way of working, give us a call and we will be very happy to help you with any or all of the items on this list!
You can call us on 020 8203 1774