Requesting Your Input and Insights on UCC End-User Adoption

Unified communications and collaboration (UCC) technology is great, but without proper user adoption training and resources, enterprises don’t get the full value out of their investment. In order to understand what training and adoption approaches and methods work best, especially in our new hybrid work environment, BCStrategies is conducting a UCC end-user adoption and training survey. We invite you to participate in this important survey and share your insights and experiences.

With input from both UCC implementors, such as CIOs and IT staff, as well as end users themselves, we can gain knowledge on how and in what ways organizations are succeeding or struggling in driving usage and adoption for UCC tools. The survey results and findings will be used to help organizations get the most out of their UCC deployments, and help vendors optimize their user adoption and training programs. We will examine training, communications and change management methods, internal marketing programs, and other activities that help end-users best understand and achieve improved business outcomes using business communication tools.

Survey participants will be asked questions about their organizations in a number of areas, including:

• What training methods work best
• The role of executive sponsorship, sponsorship teams, and peers related to adoption
• How successful adoption is measured, and key metrics used to identify usage and adoption
• Timing of training – before, during, and after deployment
• Methods used for awareness and measured or perceived success, e.g. posters, emails, videos, etc.
• The role of the vendor, reseller partner, and/or system integrator in training and adoption

and more.

Why Focus on End-User Adoption?

No matter how good a technology may be, unless people are using it and receiving value, it’s useless. End-user adoption is vital, especially for unified communications and collaboration technologies that require interaction with others inside or outside of the organization in order to be useful. As I like to say, collaborating alone is like one hand clapping.

Organizations have spent billions of dollars on UCC technologies aimed at improving internal and external communications and enhancing worker productivity, and most have attained important business benefits. The value received from these technologies is directly correlated to the actual usage and adoption of these tools.

However, too often, organizations invest in UCC technologies without giving thought to how end users will use and adopt them. In fact, an NTT study found that one out of every four IT departments measures the success of its UC solutions by how well they have implemented the technology, with no mention of what comes after. In addition, 17% of organizations haven’t implemented training programs for their UC technology. Organizations need to go beyond focusing on the technology, to putting more effort into end user adoption and usage.

Changes Afoot

The COVID crisis has accelerated organizations’ digital transformation strategies, including the move to cloud services. Companies that were planning on moving to cloud-based UCC services in the next 6-12 or 12-18 months realized that they needed to move up their plans and deploy the new services ASAP. As organizations deploy new cloud-based UCC services, they need to properly prepare employees and teams for these changes.

In the past 18 months, user adoption and training approaches have changed out of necessity. For example, hands-on, classroom training was replaced with online training and videos. As we move to a hybrid workplace, with a mix of on-site and remote workers, user adoption and training methods will need to change and adapt.

Your Participation is Appreciated

Were you part of a technology implementation team deploying UCC? Are you an end user who experienced a UC&C rollout? If so, we welcome your participation in this important UCC End-User Adoption & Training survey. Survey participants will receive a Summary Report of the findings and can opt in to be entered into a drawing for a chance to win a Poly headset or earbuds (retail value $379.95 and $169.99 respectively). Survey responses must be received by June 19, 2021 to be included in the drawing. We hope you can take a few minutes to share your insights to help other organizations learn from your experiences.

Please click here to participate. Thank you.