7 Steps to a Successful Technology Roll-Out

No matter what the size of your organisation, it should always be a goal to increase productivity and efficiency throughout different functions. The way we all operate today means the two most important aspects to any organisation are people and technology. Without exceeding in both, it’s likely you’ll fall behind.

But we all have those moments with a new piece of technology where we just don’t get it. We can’t always grasp everything immediately. Adapting can be a bit more difficult than usual sometimes, varying across types of technologies and who is trying to use them, so we need a step by step strategy in place of how we plan to roll out new technology or software in our organisation to make sure everyone is on board.

There are a few mistakes which can be made. The right technology could be implemented poorly. The wrong technology could be implemented correctly. The technology is correct but doesn’t actually solve your business needs. It doesn’t match how your employees do things. To get the most value, you need to understand what your employees want and what your organisation needs – then you can start looking for the best technology that is the right answer to both.

Introducing new technologies is essential in running a successful company, but how we choose to introduce them can make or break their success.

It might not seem like a huge challenge at first glance. It needs to be approached as a larger organisational change project, as it will disrupt the roles of your employees who are currently comfortable in the way they’re used to doing things. Sure, many will grasp it straight away and there will be no issues – but this is rarely the case.

Here are a few things to consider when implementing new tech:

1. Identify Stakeholders

You can’t move anywhere in the implementation process without identifying everyone who will be affected by the new processes. You need to have a thorough understanding of who the new process will affect and how it will affect them. This will help you to anticipate potential resistance and pain points that might occur by understanding the needs of everyone involved.

The involvement and engagement of your stakeholders is the key to success. Ideally, you’ll have full buy-in from everyone involved and you can only achieve this by understanding who is affected.

2. Communication

Communication. Sounds simple, right? But it can be surprising how many people do not succeed due to insufficient communication. The most effective communication plan is not just announcing the change with a short burst of training, but constant communication over time. The learning process will not be instant, so ensuring constant communication means you can solve any teething problems while communicating the payoffs and benefits of the process you’re introducing.

3. Training

The training schedule for your new technology roll out should be well thought through, in a step-by-step format. For example, you can delegate particular roles to those heavily involved in the planning and implementation.

So, you could potentially have an executive or high-level employee responsible for overcoming issues regarding resources and budgets. An administrator who plans the implementation. A support team for any tech related issues. And depending on the size of your organisation, you could also have separate training teams.

The idea here is that the depth of training will depend on how many people will be using the system and what your resources are. But your training schedule should be thorough and considerate of everyone involved.

4. Identify your power users

Hopefully by a certain point in your process, you’ll be able to identify a group of ‘power users’. These are people who are enthusiastic about the new process and are picking up the new technology fairly quickly. Working with a group of go-to power users across the organisation can be a very useful approach to lifting adoption rates, especially in larger organisations where it would be difficult to provide training to everyone at the same time.

They can be advocates for the new process and therefore help other employees and stakeholders adapt, potentially acting as a first point of contact for any employee queries to provide additional support.

5. Don’t rush it

It would be quite an achievement to completely roll out a new technology overnight – successfully, anyway. Remember that it takes time to transform a process efficiently! Work from the ground up and take everything one step at a time. You can solve small problems as they come, rather than just creating one very large problem. Trying to move too quickly risks going ahead without an adequate plan in place.

6. Stay on top of training

Training should not stop once the “go live” date passes. The internal communication plans need to continue past this to ensure it’s being used successfully. Especially when things such as product updates might cause disruptions for some employees.

Always accept feedback to continuously improve! It’s also worth considering the level of client support given from the provider of your new software. They can be a great use in solving any implementation issues.

7. Answering “what’s in it for me?”

Throughout the entire process you need to be communicating the benefits for each stakeholder and the reasoning behind the new implementation. Let’s use the example that you’re implementing video interviewing into your recruitment process. If you implement it successfully you can see a whole range of benefits such as reduced time to hire, reduced cost to hire, better collaboration with hiring managers, the ability to better assess more candidates, and so on. Each benefit will affect a different group of people. Your in-house recruitment team need to understand that they can get a better grasp of each candidate while still reducing time spent screening. Your hiring managers can collaborate better with the recruitment team by sharing videos and feedback. Candidates can even be told the benefits of submitting their video – to let their personality shine.

In order to get people fully on-board with the new process, they need to understand exactly why it’s being introduced. Knowing this, they’ll likely be more eager to get going and using the technology.

We live in a SaaS world and we’ll be pretty lost without it. There’s a platform out there to solve issues and pain points in every aspect of business. Using the right tools can help to increase efficiency, but not every platform will be suitable for meeting your business needs. The logical starting point is a thorough and detailed analysis of the different platforms available so you can make an informed choice.

Lack of a correct change management program in place can lead to damaged productivity, efficiency, and morale throughout a variety of teams. But with careful planning and consideration, you can implement a successful technology roll-out into any part of your business. Head over to our Ultimate Guide to Recruitment Technology to see how the right recruitment tech can make your processes faster and more efficient than ever.