Communication is paramount to the success of an internal, cross-team tool.
While launching a new internal system may require technical prowess to set up and the training of hard skills to maintain, the success of the system’s adoption relies on effective communication.
When preparing to launch a new system, separate your strategy into 3 parts:
Strategic alignment & planning
Setup & training
Maintenance
Let’s explore how communication bolsters success at each step.
Part One: Strategic Alignment and Planning
Let’s assume you have already vetted tools and partners against your strategy and budget and have chosen one to move forward with. From that point forward, everything you do must be well-coordinated.
Start with a rollout plan. Create a document that houses your goals, points of contact, and projected timeline. This can also be an effective place to start drafting the various use cases of the system – which teams will need access and how they will use it – as well as ideas for application. You may even find a natural split among a launch phase and a phase 2.0 based on budget, timeline, and resources. Anything that needs room to breathe – an early draft, early ideas, context, options – can go in this master document. This is your chance to sort through the project as a whole and move things around based on strategic alignment.
Bonus: This document can also house a section of challenges or risks, so you can mitigate them as early as possible to remain agile. Additionally, consider adding a parking lot of questions here to capture and answer along the way.
Then, create a spreadsheet to organize the plan into digestible bites. This might look like a Gantt chart or a content calendar. You can decide how much information to include here, but here are some options:
If you want to create a robust content calendar to use for project management, consider these categories:
Project group
Deliverable
Department
Owner
Status
Format
Link
Assigned date
Due date
Completion date
Notes
Otherwise, a Gantt chart can group deliverables into chunks and provide an overarching view of the timeline. You may even want to do both – a Gantt chart to give you a glimpse into your roadmap and a content calendar to ensure each step is getting done along the way.
This is also the perfect spot to identify dependencies. For example, you know you can’t publish a press release until messaging is solidified; you can’t provide training until documentation is finalized; you can’t start creating lists until you’ve decided how to organize them. Structure tasks in whatever order makes the most sense for you – chronologically or per project group – but make sure you are consistent throughout.
Next, consider how this will be communicated. You may want to put together a messaging document or a communication plan that helps you plot out a decision-making matrix. Different departments and use cases will need to know different information, and internal training will be far more robust than external messages (if you even plan to release anything externally – this may all stay internally, which is fine, and should be communicated as such). Chart out the different messages per use case and the various ways of delivering each one.
Communication is Key
Before moving onto implementation, involve the appropriate stakeholders. Assemble your project team, and determine who else needs to be notified (tip - think of who you need to help support maintenance down the road, and get their buy-in early). Who do you need to get approval from? Whose opinions need to be incorporated? Who do you need to give an FYI to? What order should those communications take place? Who will be part of the rollout team, and what will their roles be? How often will you meet, and what will be expected of each person? A RACI chart can help here as you determine who should be Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed per task. You can incorporate this into your content calendar, create a new tab in your Gantt spreadsheet, or create a separate file to house this information; regardless of where it goes, ensure you abide by the information within it and gather buy-in and compliance from the appropriate parties.
Bonus: It's also important to note at this point that file and folder process matters. It may seem trivial to talk about where all of your information will live, but these elements will help make your project launch much more successful if they are strategized around and organized early on in the process. Consider whether you should create a new parent folder for this project. Will you organize the subfolders per stage of the project – 01 Strategy, 02 Onboarding, 03 Training, etc.? Or will you organize subfolders based on project type –Contact lists, Messaging strategy, PMO, Email copy, Training resources, etc.? Or will you organize them per department – Sales, Marketing, Account Management, etc.? Determine your organization structure at this stage – once your strategy is in place, as structure follows strategy – and ensure its maintenance throughout.
Note: This is the biggest step, as a major internal system launch is often front-loaded with heavy strategic planning to ensure everything is aligned, considered, communicated, and organized before taking action.
Part Two: Setup and Training
Now you have your plans in place. You know what you want the process to look like, you have documents to help organize the rollout effectively and efficiently, and the right people are informed and on board. You know where your files will live and what will need to get done for this project to proceed. Now, let’s dive in.
Set up the system according to your needs. If you are working with a vendor to customize the tool, try to do that all at this stage so you aren’t making too many changes after people have already been trained (changing behavior is very difficult and needs to be done strategically and carefully to mitigate risk of people giving up or finding loopholes).
Again, communicate
Communicate the process to your project team. Let them know how the system will be set up or involve the appropriate people to provide input in specific ways. For example, if your system will capture marketing leads in Tool A, then pass them over to Tool B for sales to nurture, you will need to coordinate that setup and process with marketing and sales leaders.
Things to consider:
Who will be using what part of the system?
What is the impact of each feature?
How do the elements work together?
Which people NEED to be involved at every step – from decision-making to FYI?
What do people NEED to know based on how the system will be used in the future?
This step requires long-term planning and a tight coordination of cross-team communication. This needs to happen before any training is scheduled. Otherwise, how do you know what to train people on? How do you know who to train on each section? If you care about being both effective and efficient – which you should! – then it is worth it to take the time here and be strategic in how you organize this phase.
Once you have the system setup properly, and the appropriate leaders know how that setup is configured and are on board with what it will take to both train and maintain the system moving forward, NOW you can finally start to bring users on board.
Schedule the appropriate trainings with the appropriate teams. Have an agenda set before each training and be systematic in how you walk through the user experience. Record sessions where possible to share with anyone who is absent or anyone who gets added to the project during or afterward. Have your core team present at each training so they can capture feedback or answer questions as needed.
Your training should not just walk people through WHAT the system looks like but HOW that particular team will use it as well as HOW their use of it will impact the big picture.
Consider:
What has to happen in order for that team to use the system properly?
If they use the system properly, what happens as a result?
Why should they be bought into this – what value does this system provide them?
Why are things going to be better as a result of using this system (versus the old way of doing things)? What new opportunities will open up as a result of using this system?
What does success look like?
Communication goes both ways
Anticipate questions and answer them in your training. Hold a Q&A at the end. Gather any unanswered questions to explore with your project team afterward. Take a pulse of team members’ comfort level with the training and follow up with them afterward to ensure they are still on board. One training won’t cut it – start with an overview of everything that is on your roadmap, but then break up the training into parts, measure adoption, then add more steps as they can handle them. Don’t let up – don’t stop training people just because adoption seems slow – stay on a regular cadence for training then adjust your agenda based on adoption. That said, if adoption is low, don’t pile too much on at once, as you could overwhelm the group and lose their buy-in – do a refresher and maybe a live walkthrough or have a team member provide a case study for better application.
Example: Schedule a one-hour meeting every Monday for a month. Ensure the appropriate parties are present. Record each session. Have a set agenda for every meeting. At the first meeting, provide a full overview and preview all four agendas. Discuss timelines, action items, points of contact, strategy, goals, and process. Then embark on your training. Adjust as necessary throughout.
Part Three: Maintenance
Debrief after your training sessions and provide a path for teams to reach out if they have support questions. Who is the point person for questions? Who will be living in the system? Is one person in charge of system maintenance? How will adoption be monitored? How will it be measured? How will it be policed? What happens when something isn’t being used properly? Whose call is it to schedule more trainings? What does success look like?
Communicate, communicate, communicate…
Onboarding a new system is not a one-time thing. You worked long and hard on the strategy and setup, and maintenance is no different. You owe it to yourself and to your company to ensure continued adoption and value-add.
Identify metrics for success and report back on them on a regular basis.
Celebrate effective usage. If someone used the system properly and benefitted from it, share that story with your teams. For example, if a sales rep used to be confused about where a lead came from, but the new system provides an automated email that tells them exactly where the lead is from and what content they engaged with, the sales rep can provide more personalized outreach communication, which maybe evolved into a closed/won deal. Figure out a way to capture these stories then share them with the team to spread the idea that this system is helpful to them. Put the impact in their perspective so they want to use the system.
If you have a pool where questions are being gathered, ensure timely responses. Who is answering questions? How are the answers being devised? You may even want to convene with the project team to crowdsource the questions, discuss challenges, and arrive at decisions together.
Communicate adoption, challenges, and impact across teams and up to your leadership members. If the system spans the entire company, this is absolutely critical. Your leaders need to know that all of the money and time that went into this system is being returned – and then some. What is better now because of the system? What areas did it impact, and what value did it add? How can you craft a narrative that proves that benefit and makes everyone feel they are better off now?
What’s next? How will this be maintained moving forward? Will this be built upon? Will it evolve? How will changes be made to the system if strategy changes? What questions do users have? If employees leave, what happens to their accounts? When new employees are onboarded, is this system’s training part of their new hire package? Embed system usage into the onboarding process as well as daily work-life for proper adoption and maintenance into the future.
Once everyone is comfortable with the system, remove legacy systems, loopholes, and alternative options. This is the new normal, and this is non-negotiable. Ensure this message is being driven or supported by team leaders and managers at every level.
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