This is part 5 of 5 in our change management research series. Data presented here was collected via a commissioned market research survey of 320 global IT leaders.
Organizations struggle to properly communicate with users during new software implementation, according to our recent research survey on change management.
The survey results showed that 35% of IT leaders identify effective communication with users as a challenge of software implementations. Twenty-six percent of IT personnel in large companies (5,000 or more employees) said the internal communications strategies undertaken in their organizations have been flat-out ineffective—the least effective change management strategy of them all, in fact.
Why is IT finding it so difficult to communicate to their users? The problem could lie in the approach. With nearly two-thirds of our survey respondents citing “multiple user groups with varying needs” as a key challenge of software rollouts, it’s possible—likely, even—that IT teams aren’t addressing these different groups with tailored communications.
Think about it: a finance employee would have different use cases, pain points, and concerns than a user in marketing. Organizations should seize the opportunity to create segmented messages for these groups to address:
- Reasons relevant to that group explaining why the new software is being implemented
- How the employees can expect to be impacted
- The desired business outcome of the rollout
Taking the time to customize communications for the various user groups in the organization can really help get adoption and usage off on the right foot. Sending key messages to users early and often will help them to feel like they’ve been considered in the decision to implement the new tool, rather than having simply been handed a mandate.
