SharePoint adoption has always been an elusive goal for many organizations. It is critical for the whole organization to buy into the SharePoint initiatives and adopt it fully. This presentation attempts to shed light on many aspects of enhancing SharePoint adoption.

1. Crank up SharePoint
Adoption in Your
Organization!
Asif Rehmani
SharePoint MVP and MCT
@asifrehmani
SharePoint-Videos.com

2. TM
VisualSP
in-context and on-demand
Help for SharePoint users

3. Multi-User access to All videos on
SharePoint-Videos.com
• Hundreds of no-code video tutorials
• Fully narrated by SharePoint experts
SharePoint topics covered
End User
SharePoint Site Administration
InfoPath
SharePoint Designer
Workflows
Branding
Project management
Metadata Management
Access and Access Services
Records Management
Business Connectivity Services
Search
Reporting
JavaScript customizations

4. Target audience for this session:
Communications Specialist
Intranet/Web Content Manager
Portal Solutions Manager
SharePoint Guy/Gal

5. Why is adoption so
important?

6. Is SharePoint up for the job?
And what can it do for You – the SharePoint guy/gal!

7. What SharePoint Can do for You!
1. Make you look like a super
hero
2. Progress your career
3. Help you get a job in any
industry vertical you choose
1. Make you look completely
foolish
2. Get you fired
3. Make you change your career
and go to a different industry

8. Poll: What SharePoint version are you on?
(or navigating towards)
Earlier
2007
2010
2013

9. Trivia
What was the name of the first
SharePoint release?

10. SharePoint Intranet
SharePoint Web Application
site collection
site collection
site collection
site collection
(root)
/sites/marketing
/sites/sales
/sites/finance
top-level site
top-level site
top-level site
top-level site
(root)
(root)
(root)
(root)
child site
child site
child site
child site
/West
/North
/FY2012
/FY2013
child site
You can have 1000s of site collections
(keyword here is can)
child site
/Reports
/Dashboards

11. An typical Intranet page layout

12. SharePoint Intranet Designs
Hint:
Notice the
unique naming
of each intranet
Source:
http://www.steptwo.com.au/columntwo/make-sharepoint-intranets-beautiful/

13. Best rated intranets of 2013
70% of 2013 top 10 winners used SharePoint*
On average, to create a great intranet from inception to launch:
2.3 years!
* Nielsen Norman Group (expertise in user experience research)
http://www.nngroup.com/articles/intranet-design/

14. So why isn‟t SharePoint adoption as high
as it should be?
End User feedback heard around the water cooler:
I don't want to learn a new interface
I have heard SharePoint sucks
We tried the SharePoint thing at my last job… what a disaster that was.
I'm not getting in that anymore

15. Let‟s talk Technology Adoption

16. Here is the quick solution to End User
Adoption:

17. Adoption of any new technology
A new product has to offer a 9x improvement* over the existing
solution in order to be easily adopted.
Is your intranet implementation that good?
*Source: Harvard Business School Publishing, 2004

18. Implement Quick Wins
Identify pain points and focus in on them
Video:
Sean Murphy Chalk Talk on Technology Adoption

19. What can SharePoint do for your
business?
Human resource on-boarding process
Vacation scheduling system
Vendor management portal
Employee training scheduling and materials
Business performance reporting
Company knowledge base
Help desk portal
Inventory tracking
…

20. Helping SharePoint users be successful!
Get them excited and help them understand what’s in it for them!
Provide them help and support when they need it
Don’t make the users jump through extra steps to get the help they
need
Empower your help desk (or yourself if You are the help desk) with the
tools you need to help your users

21. Components of SharePoint Adoption
1.
2.
3.
4.
Get an Executive sponsor
End User Training and Support
Empowering the Help Desk
Building ‘no-code’ solutions and creating ‘no-code’ developers inhouse
5. Keep things Fresh!

22. Executive Sponsorship

23. Follow the leader
Top down support is a Must!
(otherwise, you might as well call it quits now)
Employees model the behavior of the leader

24. Question
What are couple of things that an
Executive can do to show their support
for SharePoint initiatives?

25. Executive Support in Action
Public proclamation of support and vision for SharePoint based
initiative(s)
At least one executive should have an internal active blog
Have executives refuse to accept emails with too many attachments or
large attachments or to too many people
Have CXO answer one submitted question a week on the front page of
portal

26. End User Training and
Support
“If you build it, they will come” is sadly not true for SharePoint

27. Empathy for end users is the key!
What’s in it for them?
Understand before being understood
Seemingly simple things might not be as simple to them
Video:
The origins of the Help Desk

28. Cost of “training” users the traditional way
Approx. $300 / user (not counting the time off from work)
for an average 1 day training
Size of Organization
Total cost of 1 day training for
end users
500
$150,000
1,000
$300,000
2,000
$600,000
5,000
$1,500,000
10,000
$3,000,000

29. After three days of training, people
remember
A Bold statement coming up…
10% of what they read
20% of what they hear
30% of what they see
Copyright 1999 Open-Book Management Inc.
A thorough end users Training on SharePoint is a waste
of time - Theirs and Yours
Instead…
• Provide kick off/intro training, then frequent awareness sessions,
and periodic lunch and learns
• Provide on-demand quick help - tip sheets, video tutorials and/or
reference documents when users need them
• Provide a reference Knowledge Portal

30. Building no-code solutions
Building on top of the SharePoint platform

31. What can SharePoint do?
Collaboration
Document management
Internal Social Network
Forms
Process Automation (Workflows)
Business Intelligence
Reporting
Search
Metadata Management
…
Super secret
The next version will even make
coffee!

32. Creating Solutions
Recommended sequence when creating Your solutions:
1.
2.
3.
Browser based only
Use no-code tools
Use code tools
OR
3rd party products

33. Why go „no-code‟?
Possibilities of what you can do are Enormous!
Quick learning curve
Easier ongoing management of solution
Delegate responsibility easily

34. Question
What are some of the no-code products
in the SharePoint space?

35. No-code tools to build solutions

36. SharePoint Designer 2010
Workflows
Conditional Formatting

37. InfoPath 2010 & 2013
Library form
List form

38. Excel 2013 and browser
Use PowerView to better visualize and present your data dashboard

39. Access 2013 and browser
Build Access web apps and launch to SharePoint Online

40. How do I practice my ideas and
concepts?
Watch free videos at:
http://sharepoint-videos.com/video-categories/allfree-videos/
Get a free CloudShare environment for 14 days to play
around with:
http://tinyurl.com/asifcloudshare
40

41. Recipe for failure – the Don‟ts
Hire the local SharePoint “experts” to come and “do SharePoint”
without consultation with business leads
Start full force on many SharePoint projects all at once
Treat SharePoint like a regular intranet where IT pushes out the content
and manages pages. Knowledge workers just consume the information

42. Empowering the Help Desk

43. Technology Help Desk
Big companies: an internal Help Desk is responsible to deal with All end
user technical issues
Small to Medium size companies: sometimes the Help Desk is
outsourced
Small companies: It’s Joe or Sarah who is The Help Desk
Are you ‘Joe’ or ‘Sarah’ in your company?

44. Help Desk resource need
1 full time support person every 5,000 people
assuming they generate about 25 to 30 problem tickets
per week (small to pretty big issues)

45. Providing Help to the Help Desk
Formal training on SharePoint at the Power User level – browser and
no-code
Ability to tap into available knowledge base as needed
Wiki pages and documentation
Video tutorials
Established connections with department/team evangelists
Online resources
Remote consultation with SharePoint experts

46. Keeping it Fresh!

47. Sense of Accountability
SharePoint doesn’t drive culture change, People do! Empower them!
Place owner info on every page
provides accountability
creates End Users 'comfort' - someone is out there who can help

48. Food related events
SharePointOberfest (Oktoberfest)
CollaBOOration (Halloween)
SharePointgiving (Thanksgiving)
30 for 30 – give us 30 mins and we’ll teach you 30 things (Lunch & Learn)

49. Mini launch and re-launch events
Currently our Intranet is like
But a new one is on the horizon!

50. Question
What useful widgets do users find
helpful?

51. Useful Widgets on home page
Weather
Traffic
Thought of the day

52. Call to Action
Make sure to have Executive sponsorship first!
Thank You!
@asifrehmani
SharePoint-Videos.com
Focus on what your business needs are and not what SharePoint can do
Plan to support your end users and help desk
Practice building no-code solutions in a sandbox/play environment
Always keep things Fresh