In my last blog post I talked about user adoption and some of the hurdles that you may face. This time, I want to talk about one of the tried and true methods to user adoption that I have used in the past.
A Voice on the Battle Field
I’ve often told co-workers that we need to find evangelists for BI, someone in the business who not only “gets it” but is willing to shout it from the mountain tops about how BI has helped them work smarter. Unfortunately this isn’t always the easiest task to accomplish, as you have to find the right combination of risk taker and analytical thinker.
You might think that you should head straight to the most successful line of business since they are the most visible, but since they are already doing well, they might resist change. On the other side, the worst performing areas are not a good candidate either because they might not have time to wait for a solution, and if they are trying to keep their head’s above water they won’t want to take time to learn something new.
Your best bet might be a middle of the road player… someone who isn’t struggling but in the same regard they aren’t killing it either. The middle of the road player is looking for a game-changer, something to make the move to the next level a little easier and BI just might be their ladder to the next step.
Make Friends and Influence People
Early in my career, my manager taught me that sometime you have to “sit on someone’s desk” to get their attention, but in the process you also get to know them because on a face to face visit, verses and email, you will naturally engage in small talk. In one instance I was getting to know one of the marketing managers and he mentioned he was looking for some reporting around his product lines but he wasn’t getting what he needed. I saw this as an opportunity so I started to show him some of the things I had been working on but hadn’t gotten in to production yet. With a little tweaking he was able to get what he needed and it helped him move up the corporate ladder a bit in the long run.
From that point, he became an advocate and when people asked him about his reports he was happy to point them in my direction. Soon we had all the sales office managers using our BI solution, and they were extremely thankful once they adopted the technology and made it part of their daily lives.
Not Just a Flick of the Switch
One of the more delicate points that often gets overlook is the training side of BI adoption. We need to aim to deliver BI solutions that are easy to use and require a minimal amount of training, but that training has to be effective.
With evangelists, it always starts as a one on one session at their desk and I watched how they interacted with the tool. Make note of the questions they asked and the order that they asked them in because it can aid the development of the training materials. After a few of these desk side sessions you need to take your notes, and feedback from your evangelist and start building your training library.
Think about delivery method; should it be a downloadable instructional video, a self guided Power Point presentation or are small group instructor lead session most effective in your organization? Maybe the answer is all three, because if you give them choice on how they are trained they will do what they are most comfortable with in the end.
In the End, it’s All About Showing Value
When it’s all said and done, the value of the BI solution has to be evident. if the evangelist just thinks that his dashboard is cool but it’s not really driving his business what have you really delivered? The more obvious the KPIs and ultimately the value of the solution is to see, the easier the BI adoption will be to achieve.
