Speaker : Dux Raymond Sy

Warning, this post is absolutely not neutral, as @meetdux is one of my favorite speaker, and once again, I was not disappointed.

Before starting his presentation, he invited the attendees to vote via twitter and to see the result of the poll live on the screen.

When a use comes to you on Monday and tells you “SharePoint sucks???, just answer “SharePoint does not suck. You suck !???. The e-mail is still the most used collaboration tool in the companies. Don’t be misled by the word “Social???. It is not FaceBook and telling what you ate at lunch, but for companies, it is collaboration and working together, but does not give any preferred tools. It does not mean that a wiki or newsfeed has to be used. Wiki or blogs will not solve the collaboration issues that companies are facing. If business says “we need a wiki???, just ask “why ? For what ????.

Social fails because of a lack of Executive support and ownership. Social should be understood as a way to deliver business value and not as a tool.

1 step : Gain Executive Engagement. It means commitment from the executives. Not a one shot, but on the long run. It has to have financial gains, but not only. It has to promote innovation and engagement of the people to work together.

Step 2 : Develop Relevant Use Cases. Stop pushing tools and features and talk about solutions. Social communication is different from people to people (HR, IT, Marketing, etc). Get the pain points of the users and identify quick wins, using the tools people are used to use or familiar with. Don’t try to get people leave Excel. To support his explanation, he does a demo of an Excel table synchronized with SharePoint 2013, and browsing with a Mac. Another problem with IT is that the speech is not targeting the users and should stop talking about SharePoint, CRM, SAP and so on, and rather talk with the users’ language.

Step 3 : Establish Social Roadmap. Or Enterprise Social Journey. Help people and give them the power. Once users are empowered, they have to engage with each others. But it takes time and intention “Nothing happens by accident or overnight???. Everything can’t be done at the same time, therefore, prioritizing is key. He shows an example of a list of pain points and puts them in front of SharePoint Out-of-the-box features. Then, for each features he puts the priority coming from the people, with an effort to implement the feature and the impact on the business. Also, a rating for the reusability is set. From these values, he can extract the business value for each feature. But, don’t forget to set also the IT impact, in terms of training, support and cost. Don’t forget to make the business pay for the feature. Because it is not free, they will engage more as well.

Step 4 : Identify and Groom Champions. IT or developers can’t answer all the questions. Here comes the need for SharePoint Analysts.

Step 5 : Deliver Sustainable Adoption. Does not mean only training. It is a constant process. Training does not make people experts. People have to practice and work on the solutions. In every implementation, people should be able to help themselves, by having a location where help can be provided or videos published. First raise the awareness of your Champions. Then, get a bigger buy-in beyond the Champions in other departments or group of people. Don’t forget to put a timeline and budget along with the adoption plan. In all the companies, there is a budget line for SAP stuff (training, licenses, etc) whereas SharePoint is only a little line in the Microsoft stuff. Big problem, as it is then impossible to leverage the platform.

Off course, the session finished by a Gangnam style dance session : http://youtu.be/pU-ABZ1AZi4