When an enterprise goes through a major IT migration project, or is trying to properly implement/keep pace with Evergreen IT initiatives, the IT department is really squeezed on all sides. With so much pressure on IT, it is easy to lose focus and forget who it is that IT is serving and who is being directly affected by the migration project — the users. Even though the users aren’t performing the migration, having them onboard and happy about the process is just as important for your organization’s success. That’s why getting their input and involvement is so valuable.
Involved Employees = Improved Outcomes
Before embarking on a major IT transformation project, such as an OS upgrade, the typical procedure has been to break your organization down into groups to better manage the process. A representative handful of users in each group would be chosen (from early adopters, power users, and the finance team to your average office worker) and those representatives would answer surveys, be the first to migrate, report any problems, and give any other relevant feedback.
The rest of their group would then be migrated without these interactions. Instead, they would be scheduled, usually via email, and then go through the update process without the opportunity to share their thoughts and experiences. This style of project management makes most employees feel uninvolved and unhappy, especially if something goes wrong after the update.
Give your employees a better feeling about the process by using our automation tools: Access Symphony and Access Sign-Off. Symphony manages the migration process, while Sign-Off allows you to easily send a survey to every employee both pre- and post-migration. The pre-migration survey can focus on discovering which apps are most important, what issues are currently troublesome, and what needs employees will have going forward.
The post-migration survey focuses on gleaning information about the apps:
- Are they working correctly?
- Can users find their way around them with their new settings, features, layout, etc.?
- How was the update process?
- and more.
Raise Tickets Automatically
These surveys are completely customizable, and every response is recorded for audit trail purposes. If there is an issue, screenshots are recorded and tickets can be raised automatically through an ITIL system, like ServiceNow, Remedy, etc. In fact, any ticket-based tool that can call a restful API or that can integrate via API can be used.
Raising tickets automatically through this connection saves countless hours of user time and frustration, as well as help desk resources. Another benefit of raising these tickets automatically is that they can pick up on repetitive issues where it is more effective to make a correction at the root/build level instead of a band-aid type fix.
Successful migrations are also recorded, showing that the user has performed all necessary tasks to demonstrate that apps and the OS are working properly.
Automated surveys not only make employees feel better about the process — they also allow issues to be alleviated early on in the process. Since all the survey results can be consolidated into reports, you can drill down into specific areas. For instance, if there are multiple positive responses from one survey group, those tactics can be implemented company-wide to improve the migration process for everyone.
However, if you see an issue occurring for multiple users, you can address it immediately so that subsequent users will never be affected by it. This saves time not only on the migration side, but also frees up the help desk since they will not be receiving thousands of tickets for the same issue. The fix for the issue can be built straight into Sign-Off so that it runs automatically, and a new survey can be generated and sent to users to make sure that the fix worked.
Since the user is stateful, when a change is made and they receive a new survey from Sign-Off, it will not ask them to repeat every question/process again. Instead, it will ask only the questions that received negative (failed) responses the first time around or, if the survey wasn’t completed, it will pick up where it left off. This ensures that the survey is complete and any issues that occurred have been taken care of.
Besides finding issues and positive trends, the survey can also be used to guide the user on training on the new system.
- Is there a new feature from the update that you want your employees to use?
- Are you using this migration as a way to implement new internal procedures?
- Are there apps you want to change/eliminate to save costs?
- Regarding such apps, do you first want to gauge their usability and performance, as well as any feelings (positive/negative) about them?
Conclusion
For every company, it is critical to keep apps and systems up to date — from the security updates which fix vulnerabilities and thereby reduce the chance of cybersecurity incidents, to the latest features which help you become more competitive and efficient and thereby increase ROI. While all of these goals are positive in themselves, if the focus is only on the technology or just getting through the migration, you risk alienating your users, which can lead to unhappy employees who are less engaged and less productive, resulting in a negative effect on your company’s output and bottom line. Using automated surveys before and after IT Transformation projects and/or Evergreen IT initiatives will increase user happiness and productivity, which ultimately will increase your organization’s success.
