The purpose of this post is to shed some light on the importance of a robust communications strategy before and during the roll-out of Microsoft Office 365 (0365). I will do another post surrounding the communications post deployment.
Communicating what we are planning to do, when we are planning to do it and most importantly – why we are doing it is often forgotten, under-valued or thought of at the end of what we are doing. This is particularly true when it comes to managing projects, and an effective deployment of 0365 should be treated as such. I have seen examples of organisations making the same mistakes over and over again (despite Einstein stating “The definition of insanity is repeating the same mistakes over and over again and expecting different results”) when it comes to this.
A couple of examples of the mistakes
- Creating and signing off on an Office 365 deployment plan which does not consist of a communications plan (“we are too busy moving mailboxes to Exchange and assessing network bandwidths to do that”).
- Deploying Office 365 and sending an all org. email after with or without a link to the products. This is the classic ‘one email to rule them all’ strategy.
- Communications strategy which only go as far as the deployment and does not consider post deployment adoption activities (keeping the momentum going). I will cover this one in another post because it deserves it’s own book.
Personally, I do not think there is a holy grail communications strategy for any technology adoption project. This is mainly because factors such as the channels available to the organisation, their goals with the technology, resources and skill-sets all play a role. A communications plan for one organisation will differ from another organisation because of these factors. Microsoft also has an abundance of marketing and communications material on the web for 0365 but the difficulty in pulling all of the material together and making something effective out of them can leave you thinking less really is more.
A recommended solution
It’s easy to get lost in the rain-forest of resources on the web so take it back to what matters – what your organisation actually wants out of Office 365. If this not yet clear then I recommend:
- Starting by identifying your organisation’s vision/s (include the date to fulfil the vision by)
- iterate what role/s Office 365 can play in fulfilling those vision/s
- Put together a plan (Excel or a SharePoint list is great for this) which maps out what you are going communicate, when, how, who(audience) and why
| Vision | Office 365 Role | Communication headliner | When to communicate | How (channels) | Why | |
| we want to enable staff to work from home and any other safe location with an internet connection by x date. | All 0365 apps are web-based and can therefore be accessed on any internet enabled device and at anytime. The ability to access files, emails and calendars from anywhere enables the ability to work from home and/or coffee shops with or without an organisation owned device. | Confidently work from home and/or other locations by x date by using Office 365. |
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Enabling the fulfilment of the organisation’s vision. |
A pre-deployment plan should have communications going out weeks five weeks, four weeks, two weeks and one weeks in advance.
Where to begin with it all?
Dedicate some of you project plan to reading through these resources and writing down how they can be applicable to your organisation’s strategy for 0365. There is a lot of information out there because Microsoft has a lot of clientele so the trick is understanding what is relevant to the specific needs of your organisation.