As the pace of business and technology continues to accelerate, organizations and their employees are increasingly being challenged to quickly learn, adapt and adopt. This was evident at last week’s 2019 SharePoint Conference, where Microsoft announced several new and enhanced features and functionality within SharePoint and Microsoft 365.
From the announcement of SharePoint home sites that use Yammer and Microsoft Streams to the release of Microsoft Search, attendees left the conference with much excitement, but also with a considerable challenge:
How do they quickly understand the full impact these new product releases and enhancements will have on their organizations and users? And how will they empower their employees to use these new features to increase their productivity?
This is where technology change management and continuous learning programs can have a major impact.
Microsoft’s product roadmap for Microsoft 365 shows hundreds of new releases and enhancements to be made in 2019. By employing a change management approach, organizations can assess which of these features are most important for their users, plan and prioritize deployment, and ensure that they have a training and support strategy in place to help employees adapt to the changes. The key is to avoid disruption and confusion, and to enable users to understand how they can use the new features to be more productive.
Given the pace of new product and feature releases from Microsoft, many organizations have begun implementing continuous learning programs to ensure that their employees are aware of and know how to use the latest Microsoft features and functionality. At Vitalyst, we have developed our Active 365 Managed Service for Continuous Learning to provide organizations with an adaptive solution that will help them to accelerate their adoption of the latest releases of Microsoft solutions. Our approach combines change management best practices with our Propel Methodology to enable organizations to remain on the cutting edge of technology, while reducing the risk of disruption that can occur when new technology is deployed.
With all of the new features and enhancements to SharePoint, Yammer and OneDrive for Business that were announced at the SharePoint conference, now is the time for organizations to evaluate their approach to change management, technology adoption and employee training.
With the right strategy in place, companies will not only accelerate employees’ mastery and use of these new features and solutions, but also translate that into innovation and competitive advantage.
READ MORE: Vitalyst change management and continuous learning solutions
Illustration: Jen Sweeney
