Why Your Adoption Plan Must Include Benchmarking, Policies & Evaluation

Published 8/10/2012

David Danto

Principal Consultant - AV / Multimedia / Video / UC,

Dimension Data

Director of Emerging Technology, IMCCA

In the first part of this conversation, I wrote a blog describing why a formal usage and adoption plan is critical to achieving ROI in a videoconferencing implementation. I recommended putting people first -- obtaining actual business needs from a focus group before selecting a product or service.

Once you have that and the other information from your focus group, and you select and plan to implement your videoconferencing technology, you should also begin to plan your steps to drive adoption. These can vary depending upon the specific needs of your organization, but a good plan usually blends the following elements:

User segmentation planning
What are the various user groups that will interact with videoconferencing (executives, managers, administrators, work team leaders, etc.)? Which video tools will be appropriate for which groups? How do you present that "sweet spot" information differently to each individual in a different role?

Benchmarking
What are realistic utilization goals and targets? What do you say when some senior executive calls a month after implementation and asks about utilization in his area. (Someone says "20 percent." "Is that good?" Do you know? Does he?) The wrong time to be trying to figure out benchmarks is after you've gone live with your systems.

You need to determine in advance what metrics you will track. Before the first device is purchased you should set 30/60/90/120 day targets that are realistic. Pre-plan automatic actions that kick in if you are over or under your expected numbers.

Onboarding/communications
How do you handle the "awareness" messaging? Who are your champions/evangelists? What kind of launch events can you create? How do you provide training materials for your identified user segments -- each with different needs (one-on-one training, group training, Web instructions, on-demand video)? How do you continue to get your message out post launch?

Policy review
What things at your organization need to change now that your video tools are available? How does one ask for a system? Who's allowed to get it? Will anything change in your room reservation process or your travel approval policy?

Evaluation and management
At some fixed point you need to take a long look at how it's going. What do the metrics say? Are any adjustments needed? How is ROI looking? What can be improved?

As I stated in the first part, getting these and other elements planned and executed correctly is as complex as the technology implementation itself. If you've never created an adoption management plan it is wise to reach out to service partner firms that have done so (with a track record of success), and can help create a plan customized for your organization's needs.

As a final step, it's a good idea to get your original focus group back together again to ask "How did we do?" and "Is there anything we can fix?" A solid, ITIL based strategy involves a continuous improvement cycle, and a videoconferencing implementation is no different. All aspects should continually be reviewed for opportunities to improve the service.

If a thorough and well thought out usage and adoption plan is implemented correctly, the increase in videoconferencing ROI and user satisfaction will more than cover the required investment of time and resources.

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This blog was written by David Danto and contains solely his own, personal opinions. It originally was published at UBM’s “The Video Enterprise” website that was closed down November 1^st 2012. Here is a link to the Google cache of the page with comments. I do not know how long Google keeps these pages.

David has over 30 years of experience providing problem solving leadership and innovation in media and unified communications technologies for various firms in the corporate, broadcasting and academic worlds including AT&T, Bloomberg LP, FNN, Morgan Stanley, NYU, Lehman Brothers and JP Morgan Chase. He recently joined Dimension Data as their Principal Consultant for the collaboration, multimedia, video and AV disciplines. He is also the IMCCA’s Director of Emerging Technology. David can be reached at David.Danto@Dimensiondata.com or DDanto@imcca.org, he can be followed on Twitter @NJDavidD , and his full bio and other blogs and articles can be seen at Danto.info.