Neha Dave
Senior Training & Business Change Consultant
Bluefin Solutions
If a system is deployed and no one uses it, does it exist?
01 Feb 2011
Business Intelligence (BI), Project Management & Methodology, Consumer Business
If a system is deployed and no one uses it, does it exist? How can you recognise the full business value of a system if no-one is using it correctly? User adoption is, at least indirectly, a critical project success metric. But how can you tell if your user group is actually using the system? More importantly, how can you tell whether they are using the system as intended in order to meet the project’s business objectives?
The decision to implement a system is not usually an end user’s prerogative and yet this is the group that is most affected by something new or a change. So what can be done to help them cope with their new and improved situation?
Know the beast
In other words, understand the system itself. I don’t mean knowing the transaction codes or the particular functional module that automates a business process. I’m referring to dissecting the system to understand the 2 basic parameters: perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use. (These are tenets of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) by Fred Davis and Richard Bagozzi (Bagozzi et al., 1992; Davis et al., 1989).
Training
There needs to be a holistic approach to training. This means that the training materials and tools need to be built around roles, business processes and tasks. The goal is to ensure that the users are trained to perform their jobs and not merely execute system transactions. So whilst training is often focussed on the technical solution, it should also provide the user with the context or business purpose behind the new solution, illustrating why the solution has been implemented, and demonstrating how it can help the trainee to do their job better.
Strong user community
This group has been identified by many names in the past – super users, key users, expert users, champions. Whatever we decide to call them, their existence is vital to keeping the momentum alive. It is best if these persons are identified at the requirements gathering stage. If for some reason this has not been possible, we must involve them during the testing phase. There is a strong positive correlation between early business engagement and user adoption.
Metrics
Measuring the benefits is not always an easy task. The typical metrics tend to be increase in response time, reduced number of errors. But these do not necessarily paint an accurate picture and do not necessarily tell us how a user is interacting with the system.
A good measurement technique tends to be the balance score card where you are able to break down the areas of measurement and use this to paint the entire picture. Areas can include:
- Business adoption
- Stakeholder satisfaction
- Business benefit
- Process improvement
The balance score card then helps us understand how this adoption can be measured by looking at the 4 cornerstones of adoption and once again viewing adoption as a holistic experience
In my next blog I'll show you how I used the above principles in a recent global BI implementation.
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