Hello, my name is Kira Bezler and I work as a Management of Change consultant
here at Hewlett-Packard Enterprise.
Today I'm joined by two of my colleagues who recently completed a project.
The project was all about introducing Microsoft Teams to the HPE organization
within Belgium and Luxembourg.
Kris, why don't you start with telling me a little bit more
about the benefits that Microsoft Teams has to offer?
Yeah, Microsoft Teams is an application that combines a
number of very powerful tools and services of Microsoft.
You can chat with people, you can have audio and video meetings,
you can make telephone calls, share documents, and even
collaborate on them. So it's really a very powerful tool that
combines almost everything you
need, to do proper communication and collaboration
Sounds like it's a completely different way of working.
Can one tool like Microsoft Teams change the way we work?
The real value of Microsoft Teams does not come out of the
tool itself. It helps of course, but you really get the full benefit
if you look at your business processes and see
for which of them the power of Microsoft Teams could really make a difference.
And so then for those business process
you have to change them. Adapt them so that Microsoft Teams
really fits within those processes
and that means you need to change your way of working as you mentioned
and that's difficult. That's a challenge.
Because most people have a natural resistance to change and
so changing the way how people work, that's really not easy.
And that's where Management of Change comes into play because
Management of Change, if done properly, can really help there.
Sounds like you've set yourself quite a task there.
How did you do it? How did you go about? How did you drive User Adoption
and how did you motivate people to learn more about yet another tool?
Yeah, let me start by giving a concrete example of one
of the many things that we did now first, a little bit of
background, as when we started this project, Europe went into
lockdown because of the pandemic.
So all the employees were working from home.
And of course, at that moment, the organization needs to find
ways to stay in touch with its employees
And that's why in Belgium the Managing Director
organized a weekly 30 minute Skype for Business call
to keep in touch with everybody.
Now the first thing that we did was to move that to Microsoft Teams.
That way all the employees had their first
experience with the new tool and what was really cool was that
our Managing Director really acted as an ambassador
and he showed how to use the tool.
Yeah, that was a great start.
And then on top, of course we developed some online trainings.
We offered quick reference cards, short videos, FAQ,
so variety of things to help.
To make that transition and we could build on our own
experience because we have been doing this for customers for
more than two decades, helping them with migrating
to a new tool or a new service. And on top we are a
Microsoft adoption and Change Management Partner and that means that we really
have access to a rich collection of Microsoft Resources
which we could use on top of our own experience. And on top of our
own HPE Management of Change methodology.
And that whole mix that really made it all work.
Yes, and you know during the whole project we really made
sure that we like catered all the needs of different user groups.
Because you can imagine that someone who is working
in sales does not have the same needs as someone who is working
as an assistant. So that's why we created specific material
for the different user groups and we also for example did
specific Q&A sessions. For example for the assistance where they could
ask questions that were really
about their job, and they could also then share experiences
amongst the each other which was really nice.
Yeah, and on top of splitting it out by user group. It's also important
to think about what level of knowledge and skills do people need.
Of course we had an introduction session for everybody,
but then we also created a session for power users,
people that really wanted to go a step further
and we also had a session for team owners. Because if you own a team
in Microsoft Teams, you have some additional responsibilities
and so you need to know more in particular about how to
configure and to maintain and manage your team properly.
Sounds like you spend a lot of time on understanding your
customer and their needs to really ensure success, and it
sounds like you've been very successful with this.
What kind of results have you seen since the introduction?
Well, it was really cool to see that everybody was attending training sessions,
for example, or if they could not attend the
training sessions that they listened to the recording.
And it was so nice to get positive feedback from everyone and they
really are engaged and they are so thrilled about what we have created.
So yeah, after the hard work that was really rewarding.
Yeah and what I like a lot is that you
see more and more what I would call key users.
So people that really are getting enthusiastic about the tool.
Want to know more, want to do more with it and also spread the word in the
organization. So they have become also real ambassadors of Microsoft Teams
and that was so nice to see
Great! Sounds like you've got a lot of well deserved positive feedback.
What are you taking away as a learning from this project?
For me it was really the speed of adoption.
If we would not have used Management of Change
then I think it would have taken a lot longer
before people were even used to using the tool,
let alone the additional benefit that you try to get with this tool.
For people really to become more efficient and more productive
and so by doing a proper Management of Change and
User Adoption you reduce the time for people to get used to
the tool and also you get
to a position much quicker where people really get the
benefits out of it.
Absolutely agree with you Kris, because although it seems like
only a very small change to introduce another tool
but to make this change stick, it is really indeed necessary to have User Adoption.
And that's where Management of Change can make a difference.
Absolutely thank you very much for your time.
Congratulations on your success.
Great work and thank you very much for sharing.
I hope to speak to you soon again. Bye bye.