Change is best received when disruption to daily activities is minimized, the benefits of the change are clearly communicated and productivity is optimized. This is especially true in legal organizations, where ongoing case work and frequent court-ordered deadlines result in resistance to change. Therefore, onboarding new technology must be managed carefully with buy-in from the user community most affected by the change.
This starts with forming a stakeholder group composed of a cross-segment of functional roles, including technical teams and end users. Stakeholders should be organizational leaders, must embrace new and innovative technology, act as agents and promoters of change, and have the skills to communicate with and on behalf of their constituents. These are the members who directly influence the success of technology onboarding.
And while the length of a technology onboarding project can vary from weeks to months, an effective onboarding program should, at minimum, be comprised of the following components:
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Project Management: A well-defined and easily understood project plan and schedule ensures that all parties are working toward the same end goal. The project manager must keep at the forefront of all activities the end goal of gaining the user community’s acceptance of the new technology.
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Communication Plan: A strong communication plan is key to keeping project team members and, just as importantly, senior management informed about project progress, status and any risks. The communication plan should include sessions, such as lunch-and-learns or brown-bag events, to evangelize the benefits of the new technology and ease the user community into the change.
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Implementation: Implementation is a pivotal phase of the project, as it determines when the software becomes available to the user community. A smooth implementation plan accounts for risks and includes time to address issues. Implementation starts with architecture scoping and sizing and culminates with software deployment and validation.
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Process Optimization: To ensure the user community is benefiting from the full capabilities of the new technology, the onboarding program should include a review of processes, workflows and best practices around optimum use of the software. The process optimization work must include a research phase where the user community’s business needs — goals, existing processes and technology pain points ― are reviewed and documented. Once the goals are clear, processes can be customized to best respond to the user community’s needs and requirements.
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Custom Education Program: Training courses should be tailored to the different user roles and varying levels of comfort with technology. Sessions should be delivered in short, focused sessions at the time users will begin to leverage the technology for maximum knowledge retention. Live training can be complemented with e-learning modules that are available as post-training reference materials, pretraining self-study or just-in-time training.
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Post-Training Assistance: Following training it is critical to surround the user community with experts who are dedicated to responding to questions, troubleshooting issues and generally easing the transition. This is also an opportunity to work directly with users who might be resisting change to understand their needs and concerns and to help address them through training, one-on-one support or modifying the training programs.
Taken together, these steps will ensure that the implementation of the new technology will be successful and the promised benefits more quickly realized. However, it is important to note that while the rollout of the new technology may have a specific end-date, a user community’s success is ongoing. Therefore, it is critical that organizations maintain the same proactive and collaborative spirit post-implementation to ensure that their teams continue to grow in both proficiency and confidence with the new technology.
