Get power users to help your people to cross the chasm to cloud
The arguments for adopting cloud services have never been so persuasive. At a time when capital expenditure is under scrutiny, when security threats have become harder to police and opportunities to disrupt markets are so many, the deployment speed, adaptability and low-admin cloud model is a great fit for businesses today. But for end-users, switching to a cloud-oriented world involves unsettling the status quo and managing that change process will be critical to making a successful, widely used service.
In the cloud, the browser becomes your most useful application and you have to get used to the fact that the data won’t sit on the hard drive or LAN. That can spook some users but once they become used to it, they see the benefits and enjoy the ubiquity of access from any device or location, and the usefulness of the service. Users will begin to click on the browser icon before email and then explore more at folder, file and feature levels. CIOs and others can educate, inform and cajole but getting ‘power users’ to blaze a trail might be their ace card.
The business writer Geoffrey Moore famously called the process of reaching mass adoption ‘Crossing the Chasm’ and noted that very often it’s the case that those users who want to lead will sign up first to the Proof of Concept and become office gurus who drag along others in their wake. You will always have the laggards: the reluctant late-adopters who say ‘This legacy application might be clunky but I know how to use it and I’ve always done things this way…’ But power users are the dynamic, highly engaged trailblazers that set a train of action in motion.
There are four stages through which users can help to build momentum.
Awareness: Talk about outcomes, not tools or tech. Not everybody can fit that ‘power user’ profile and there will always be users who need gentle persuasion. One approach that works with this category of individual is painting a picture of positive outcomes to encourage excitement and an affirmative point of view. A case study: when Virgin Trains wanted to improve collaboration and knowledge sharing, it attacked the issue with a whole new workspace rather than just one new tool. Rather than issuing a diktat (‘learn this tool!)’ users were sold on a new productivity model: that is, the ability to improve work/life balance by working from home or other locations and from any device. The result was acceptance and enthusiasm rather than the sense of another task being set.
Understanding: Before, during and after, don’t stop communicating. Bringing power users to the fore and creating a positive future vision are critical but they should be supported by an attitude of ‘keep communicating’. An example here is a not-for-profit organisation which not only leveraged power users as advocates but even set up a regional Box Champion Community using geolocation tools after deploying the service across 90 countries. The move helps to enhance language support and work out where best to allocate resources. In Scotland, the University of Stirling has also created a champion network.
Acceptance: Make power users your proxy leaders. Often in cloud (or any other environment that calls for people to adapt) change is a viral phenomenon. On the supply-side one of the precepts of the cloud business model is the notion of ‘land and expand’: being able to get some seats into enterprises and then growing in presence as other users and departments buy into the service and make more use of features, thereby creating a groundswell of demand. AstraZeneca formally created a network of power users and champions together in order to effect this change. Doing so helped the pharmaceuticals giant in deploying Box across almost 75,000 users — the entirety of the company — and extending its use out to the company’s partners.
Evangelism: Help users to become advocates. Power users are like squadrons of leaders who inspire by their actions and begin the process by which services become essential and de facto standards within groups and organisations. They set off a network effect where adoption makes the services more valuable and virtuous continuum occurs. If power users adopt and others follow, the service becomes more heavily used and therefore more valuable. So, do everything to encourage your power users, creating the time for them to experiment and become leaders and word-of-mouth educators.
By taking these four steps, and unleashing the power of users as leaders, you stand the best possible chance of making your cloud service popular and intensively consumed.
