How can software onboarding be made more effective?
Here’s the thing: Employee onboarding and software onboarding share many similarities… And in fact, we can learn from employee onboarding to make software onboarding a much smoother process.
Want to know how? Read on.
If you are an employee, I am sure you are familiar with the employee onboarding process. As you might know, this stage is extremely important for both the employee and the employer.
Why?
Employee onboarding is crucial for employee success.
Without the onboarding process, employees wouldn’t know how to operate within the work environment.
You see, in big organizations, employees are usually part of a big team. The jobs executed by employees depend heavily on the input from other employees and lots of internal systems.
For employees to be able to collaborate with other employees, the HR department invests heavily in these areas here below:
Now, who's responsible to ensure proper onboarding?
The HR team is the main player when it comes to successful onboarding.
By coordinating with the business owner to some extent, the HR onboarding team sets the plan for onboarding and works on executing it.
That’s right- instead of the recruitment agency, it’s the HR team that executes onboarding. Now, why am I emphasizing this point? It has everything to do with effective software onboarding. Read more to find out...
Let's take a look at the typical process when an organization onboards a new software.
And the onboarding is done!
But if you analyze this process, you will see that the onboarding process is assigned to an external party.
This external party has no clue about the internal environment and fatal errors that cause more than 80% of complex software deployment failures.
On the other hand, if you think about employee onboarding, the recruitment agency wouldn’t be responsible for successful onboarding. That’s the HR team’s job.
In our company, we execute 104 activities for employee onboarding.
At the same time, software onboarding isn't done properly at most organizations. In fact, no one is responsible for it. It's actually not even a function within the organization. Unfortunately, the most critical activity usually gets assigned to an external provider.
But who should be responsible for software onboarding?
In the future, IT departments will hopefully be in charge of software acquisition and onboarding. I am sure many might not understand why, but when you think of software as another employee and IT as the HR department, then this idea becomes much clearer.
In the end, this is what is needed to make software onboarding a smooth and effective process. After all, both software and employees have a major impact on your organization’s future success.
That’s it! Now you know how to make your software onboarding more effective. You need to get your IT department to take charge of the process… Just like HR is responsible for employee onboarding.
At Exceeders, we don't offer onboarding services because we recognize that it should be an internal team who understands the whole environment.
Instead, we help organizations build software onboarding processes by providing the tools, processes, marketing, and training material. We have years of experience doing this and know what you need to do to use software in the most effective way possible.
Want to know more? Take a look at our tool for increasing employee or customer engagement at your organization, Ta7awul, for more details.
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Originally published Aug 28, 2019 12:52:47 PM, updated December 3, 2019
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The Enterprise Digital Canvas is a comprehensive and structured blueprint of your Digital Enterprise. This article summarises learnings from effective Digital Workspace design for COVID-19 response, using the Digital Canvas model.
See how it works here:
Architecture Is The Foundation Digital Workspace
A successful workspace for recovery and growth requires you to have a 360-view of your operating capabilities. This is only possible by effectively leveraging The Digital Canvas (World’s leading framework for Digital Design).
For more information, visit our Partner Arqitek.
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Over the years, we noticed that businesses initially choose solutions that tick all the technical boxes or ones that are least costly. However, emphasis should always be placed on tools that are simple to use, efficient, & that provide a good user experience. We urge our customers to pay close attention to the user experience, especially when it comes to having a return on their investment in remote working.
Not doing so will put your business at a risk of increased support costs as employees become less productive while trying to figure out how to utilise the business’s technology.
On the operational side, there are 3 categories of platforms that we believe are essential:
Foundations of remote working
Systems of record
Systems of engagement
Laptops
Internet Access
VPN: A Virtual Private Network is imperative to remote working as it creates a secure, reliable, & safe connection between the employee & the organization’s resources.
Storage Platform: Every organization needs a cloud storage platform such as TechnAdopt to enable file sharing and easy access for all employees.
Productivity apps: Teamwork is the number 1 pillar of business in which it involves using shared assets like documents, reports, infographics, & structured & unstructured data. These assets can be created with the likes of the popular office suites like Microsoft Office365 in addition to document management systems, corporate intranet, HR Systems, CRM, & ERP to name a few.
Simple Strata: With this shift in work norms, companies might not have the instant visibility on the efforts taken by an employee to complete a certain job, & consequently might not know what to improve first. Our systems will detect causality and based on that, will analyze and provide reports to identify the employees who are facing difficulties in performing their jobs in comparison to others. With this visibility, the company will be able to adjust its new processes or provide support for employees who are facing challenges in the most suitable way.
ESP: The Enterprise Submission Platform is a linear workflow that enables function owners to automate their business processes without reliance on IT personnel. This platform will allow users to create requests and approvers to approve them from any location with the use of the web or the app. It is necessary especially in remote working situations as operations need to keep moving regardless of the whereabouts of users.
Engagement Pro: Engagement Pro is an application that helps you plan, organize, & track projects - all in one visual, collaborative space - to increase visibility & alignment within team members. This tool facilitates remote collaboration on projects.
Opportunity Pro: Every company with a sales department surely should use a CRM platform. Opportunity Pro enables the sales team to improve their winning rates by having accurate forecasts, details about customers & their needs, & keeping track of all actions taken & planned in order to close a deal. Rather than managing each sales team member individually, managers will be able to have top view visibility on all the pipeline remotely and will be able to review team members accordingly.
Mobile Apps:
As we live in the age of a “smart phone take-over”, it is essential that our work is accessible from the number one tool we use constantly. Whether at home or outside, employees should have the option to interact with team members via their phone.
Similarly, employers should expect their employees to have access to their work from anywhere, especially given the remote working situation. For that reason, all of our recommended products are available as mobile apps in addition to web as we have anticipated that a time will come where reliance will be solely on smart phones. We like to think we are pioneers in this field. 😉
Emails
Idenedi: A communication tool that provides an enjoyable user experience is one that sticks. Idenedi is a tool that has proven to be one of the most requested platforms as it combines ease of access with ability to deliver critical information. While emails remain the number one tool for exchanging work-related documents, they are lacking in the push notification department.
With Idenedi, managers will be able to pass important announcements regarding changes in the work environment with absolute assurance that employees will be notified. This is crucial especially in remote working as managers can track to check if important messages have reached everyone. They can even create a space for team members to interact in the comments section, and soon via chat.
As we have provided our recommendations for the infrastructure on the operational side, we also believe that there are steps to be taken to prepare teams mentally for this sudden shift in our work space.
Check out here our tips on how to adapt in the time of a global pandemic.
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COVID-19 has become the most circulated word in 2020. This pandemic has already impacted the way organisations operate and will continue to fundamentally change them in the foreseeable future.
As this continues to impact our lives, remote working is our new reality. So, how do leaders, managers, & employees make this abrupt shift with minimal dips in efficiency?
Since we have been implementing remote working since 2014, we have come up with some guidelines on how you & your employees can effectively transition into remote working.
Any sudden change in the work environment is enough to disrupt operations if the business is not prepared or if it has not anticipated such a change. And this is exactly what is happening with most businesses today. In order to adjust to this new - hopefully temporary - “normal”, leaders should first prepare their employees mentally & should get the appropriate infrastructure to support remote working.
These are some of many things to consider during a transition like this.
We have listed below some pointers that have proven effective over our 6 years of implementing remote working:
Aside from the operational side of things, leaders must ensure that their employees are ready to handle their new lifestyle. COMMUNICATE. Have a group conversation with employees assuring them that there is certainty in the midst of all their uncertainty. Team members should constantly feel like they know what’s going on.
“This is a different time for us. We don’t know how long this will last but we are here to support each other and lift each other up. We will make sure you have what you need to continue your work as “normally” as possible.”
This type of assurance will help ease employees into this lifestyle and give them confidence that it will work. It is also imperative to set recurring meetings just so there is clarity on things and so the “teamwork” vibes are sustained. Frequency of contact should be maintained to keep the connections people had at the office.
It can be quite a shock to the human being to go from one way of life to another in a short period of time. Psychologically, employees need to be ready. That’s why it is advised to encourage employees to develop disciplined rituals so that they can stay on top of their tasks and remain productive:
As for infrastructure requirements, we compiled a list of the most crucial systems you need to thrive today.
The Enterprise Digital Canvas is a comprehensive and structured blueprint of your Digital Enterprise. This article summarises learnings from effective Digital Workspace design for COVID-19 response, using the Digital Canvas model.
See how it works here:
Over the years, we noticed that businesses initially choose solutions that tick all the technical boxes or ones that are least costly. However, emphasis should always be placed on tools that are simple to use, efficient, & that provide a good user experience. We urge our customers to pay close attention to the user experience, especially when it comes to having a return on their investment in remote working.
COVID-19 has become the most circulated word in 2020. This pandemic has already impacted the way organisations operate and will continue to fundamentally change them in the foreseeable future.
