Adopting new software or ways of working can be a challenge for any size of team.
If your company is implementing new initiatives, strategies, software, or changes of any kind, you’re going to need a plan to help guide your team.
Are you the manager who has found a new platform that you want to use to improve operations? Or maybe you’ve built out your priority process in Process Street and now you’re ready to share it with the rest of your team?
We’ve pooled resources from our Customer Success Managers and Process Pros team, to share steps for success that we know help teams adopt new systems.
The information in this article (and the webinar above) will help you communicate the benefits of using this new tool to your team, help train them, and better still, adopt it for long-term success. These are the steps that you should consider taking.
Think about what brought you to Process Street in the first place. Why did you need it? How will it help you?
Here are some points you might want to consider pitching, on ways you can improve your current process problems:
“We could have created a traditional playbook in MS Word, but we wanted something more action-oriented. We want everyone to feel they are responsible for executing on something rather than just reading something”
Next, you need to think about who you’re pitching this to, which could be team members or anyone higher up in your business that you need to garner approval from before implementation.
First things first you’re going to present to the owner, your manager, or to other team leaders because their sign-off and support will make adoption much easier.
Think about the big picture, what is your manager going to be most interested in hearing about, or be most responsive to? For example, what does the return on investment (ROI) look like?
This tool will cost $XXX per year but we could save $XXX by adopting it in our business.
Present the pain points you’ve discovered from speaking with your colleagues so that your manager knows this affects a larger part of the (or indeed the whole) business, not just one or two employees.
It will improve team efficiency, decrease human error, utilize automations, which will also save us time.
Share and discuss your vision with your team if you haven’t done so already. State the reasons why you are going to be using Process Street and what the benefits are.
Better still, personalize the benefits to each department and employee, think about the individual changes they will see or how it will improve your way of working as a team.
One of the easiest ways to sell the benefits of using a new tool is to look at what are other users saying about it.
“Love this software! It really helps to prevent laborious time consuming mistakes. Documenting and editing processes is fantastic and moves my business forward in the best way!”
Take a look at more Process Street reviews on Capterra and G2.
Make sure you understand all the features that you’re using in your processes before you invite your teammates to work with you in the platform. They are bound to have questions!
Make a note of all the features that you’re currently using in your workflows, and brush up on your knowledge, from The 5 Stages of Process Building.
Remember, your processes will evolve over time, so you can always add (and learn) more features, as and when you need them.
You may come across a few challenges from your team when implementing a new tool, such as:
Think about who you need to work with in your Process Street organization and what they need to do in the platform.
If you have a company organizational chart, you can use that as the framework for the types of users you have in your Process Street organization. For example:
The different options outlined here will help you determine which user permissions to grant for each person or group.
When you’re ready to invite other users into your organization, you can add them to your organization members page.
Next think about who needs access to which folders, workflows, workflow runs, or tasks. Assign users or groups and set permissions on these accordingly.
Agreed and communicate a naming convention for folders, workflows, workflow runs or tasks so that anyone building workflows will follow the same conventions.
This will help when you create reports in your Reports dashboard and will also allow other users to find what they are looking for with ease.
Make a small number of people responsible for adding or editing key features and functions into your workflows. For example with features like Conditional Logic or when setting up Automations.
That way your workflows will follow the same principles and structure, and anyone hopping in to edit a workflow won’t be confused by another user’s way of working.
When it comes to training your team, you will have the best understanding of the new tool and therefore will be able to answer any questions that may arise.
If you’re happy that you’ve got this covered and can train your team yourself, then we have a few tips to help you get going:
In some cases, our team here at Process Street can help with onboarding your whole team. If you have a dedicated Customer Success Manager (CSM) or Sales contact, please reach out to them to discuss options.
When you sign up for a paid subscription, you’ll be invited to an onboarding call with one of our Process Pros. You are more than welcome to invite some of your colleagues to this call too.
Sign yourself or your team up for one of our monthly, or special topic Webinars.
You can find extra training materials in our knowledge base for your team. For Admins – Getting Started with Process Street | Using Process Street as a Member | Using Process Street as a Guest.
Your goals are going to be unique to your team and your business, but here are some examples to help get those cogs whirring:
Reward your team for their successes and for hitting your goals. Share the love and post these in your team chat channel too. Friendly competition creates positive involvement 🙂
Make sure you don’t shame anyone for not hitting their goals, instead find ways to help them. Consider extra one-to-one training for those who need it.
Ask team managers or department leads to set up a weekly stand-up meeting or one-to-one with colleagues so that they can ask questions, give feedback, or pass on any suggestions they might have.
Gather positive feedback and share it with your leadership team to reinforce the ongoing use of the tool.
^ Automate processes wherever you can to save time & reduce errors.
^ Gather feedback from your team about which processes to implement next.
^ Spread the word to other teams or departments, and share your success stories with them.
^ Identify future champions who can take over workflow editing roles, or who can be granted more responsibility in the platform.
Workflows