After a lengthy and challenging period of testing, discussing and weighing up the pros and cons of a variety of potential new software tools for your business, you have finally made your decision and settled on the product that best fits your business objectives. Whilst that might be the start of your journey towards a successful roll-out of this new software product, you still have a team to convince.
When it comes to presenting any new tool, process or device to a team currently familiar with an incumbent solution, you might well face some resistance, confusion and any amount of time-consuming procrastination as people adjust to this new direction.
In this article, we look at some of the ways you can make this transition a little smoother.
1. Advocates Are Key
There will always be a select group of influencers and potential advocates amongst your team who’s authority, influence, and enthusiasm you can enlist to help you get your transition moving in the right direction. Your initial product testing team, staff who are most likely to use the software regularly or perhaps those who you’ve identified as ‘early adopter’ types when it comes to new technologies, can all be roped in to help you convince the rest of the team that what is happening will be painless, productive and maybe even fun.
2. Engagement for The Win
If your team fully understands why they are being introduced to this new software, then they are more likely to willingly engage with its adoption; you need to give this change a real sense of purpose.
- How will it be used?
- How can it save your staff time and effort?
- How can it help them make more commission or speed up typically time-consuming processes?
Keep these discussions open and transparent and encourage staff to contribute to the testing and decision-making process. An engaged team will more readily buy into the new software.
Top Tip: Use the help and advice of a professional software licensing service such as Bytes to help you make a successful software upgrade.
3. Integrate the Software Slowly
Get the team together and show them how it all works. Provide useful training for the new product and encourage an open forum so everybody can get used to the functionality and potential benefits of the software whilst being able to ask questions and stay in touch with the transitional process.
4. Plan Your Content Migration
The change must occur sooner or later, and this step is all about the timing. Once the team is committed and you are confident that sufficient training has allowed them to get to grips with the new software tool, then you can start to migrate content from your incumbent product to the new one. This will force your team to use the software and flag up any initial hiccups or roadblocks. A soft and gentle approach here should allow everybody to move at their own speed whilst identifying and solving any adoption issues as they arise.
Keep everybody involved, informed, well trained and engaged as you progress through this transition and you should have your new software up and running smoothly to the satisfaction of the whole team in no time.
