One size does NOT fit all when it comes to meeting room collaboration solutions.
When it comes to your organisation, collaboration tools can dramatically improve the flow of ideas and information among employees.
Despite collaboration tools having been available for years, organisations, especially large ones, are seeing tepid company-wide adoption of these tools.
To help drive adoption of collaboration solutions across your organisation, we’ve put together a list of key considerations:
1. Ease of use
Complicated solutions frustrate users, hampering adoption or limiting the use of features of the solution. Research shows that 22 hours a week are wasted per employee, looking for information and people – costing enterprises millions of dollars per year.
If a solution is frustrating users, or worse still, slowing down their processes, they simply won’t adopt it. So it’s no surprise that when it comes to deciding on a collaboration solution, 46% of organisations cited ‘ease of use’ among the top factors they considered.
Other than overall user interface, there are a few other things to consider when choosing a collaboration solution.
How users connect and present their work is one. Do they require any additional hardware or software? Do they need to pass dongles back and forth in order to present work? And how about guest collaboration? Can guests quickly and easily participate in meetings, without having to download any additional software? And in terms of your staff, do they need to reformat content a certain way in order to share it, or can they share any medium of content at the click of a button?
These are key things to think about when it comes to user adoption.
2. Security
Every organisation is different, and they won’t have the same security requirements as others. Take the Ministry of Defence as an example. Their security requirements will be a lot different than, say, a university. They don’t permit employees to plug any external hardware into their devices for a start – not even a USB stick. Many other organisations have these security restrictions as well.
So a potential solution could sound great, but if it’s hardware, for example, dongles, it won’t even get through the door.
We advise that you work through a baseline security questionnaire with a potential vendor. Ask questions regarding the security around user identification and authentication, passwords, network segregation, data encryption, anti-malware, etc.
3. Workflow
What you need to consider from the outset is your current workflow, and what will help keep that workflow efficient, or what will enhance it. What will enhance the sequence of processes through which a piece of work passes from initiation to completion?
Some solutions introduce friction: they require users to exit their usual applications. Data shows that users want to stay in one place, not jump from application to application to get what they need. As mentioned previously, consider whether solutions only allow for content sharing of certain formats. Or whether users need to download any extra software in order to use it. If these are the case, the solution is not enhancing workflow.
A great way of driving user adoption is having the solution tailored to your branding, to help keep the solution familiar for the user.
Something we see a lot of, is users wanting to wirelessly share content, and they already have a video conferencing solution in place. Does it make sense to force them to use the new built-in video conferencing solution? Or replace the entire video conferencing system? No, it doesn’t. They simply want the video conferencing capability to be ‘switched off’. Options to disable/enable features, or having a branded solution can help hugely with user adoption. Choose a vendor who will work with you, to deliver the solution that’s right for your organisation.
Some organisations still have the mindset that collaboration solutions are always off the shelf, packaged solutions. This simply isn’t true. With today’s advancement of technology, organisations want more of a say in the solutions they are using, so that they will be adopted by their staff. There are vendors out there who will work with you, in partnership, to deliver tailored solutions for your organisation.
Take the time to research what users need, and bring your IT department into the conversation to establish what they need. Review your current technology, and consider the impact on changing this. Then work with a trusted advisor to deploy the right solution for your organisation.
Don’t settle. Deploy the right solution for your company.
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