6 Tricks for Better Software Onboarding
Software is the foundation for just about every business. Whether accounting, sales, operations, e-commerce, customer service, marketing or a specialized niche, business and most of life in general now flows through some sort of software package.
While businesses typically don’t change software solutions as often as consumers add new apps, there’s nonetheless a constant process of onboarding as old software require upgrades, new solutions bring competitive advantage, and business expansion demands additional software solutions.
For each change in software, employees need to be onboarded. This process of getting workers up to speed is critical because poor adoption breaks workflows, reduces staff efficiency and minimizes the impact of business software.
Poor onboarding also creates shadow IT when employees go around a company’s software solution in favor of something they find online or through an app store. The threat of shadow IT alone is reason enough to take software onboarding very seriously.
With that in mind, here are six tricks for improving the software onboarding efforts after your company.
1. Onboard Only What’s Most Important
The typical software package has plenty of features and capabilities. Not all of these features are equally important for the business, however. Even business processes around a given software solution are not equally important.
So a key trick for better onboarding is knowing what matters most and focusing on that. Onboarding everything might be ideal, but start with just the critical functionality and business processes so the onboarding process is digestible and doesn’t overwhelm employees.
“During the initial onboarding phases,” says David Dremann, director of IT services for BLM Technologies, “it’s easy to let every step, process or challenge feel like it carries equal weight. It does not. Determine which processes take the highest precedence and communicate them to your team.”
2. Make Onboarding Self-Serve
Rare is the employee who gets excited by the thought of mandatory company software training. Software training sessions have a bad rap for good reason: learning software is best done on an as-needed basis, not in a classroom setting where processes are covered all at once and divorced from actual usage.
“Today’s employees do not want to spend time going through training and documentation to start using software,” notes Prasad Ramakrishnan, chief information officer for customer service software firm Freshworks. “When you want to onboard them, think about self-service methods that’ll enable them to start using it right away versus a full-fledged onboarding.”
So a second tip is offering a quick jump-start training for basic familiarity, then leaving most of the onboarding help to a self-service training solution that employees can use whenever they get stuck or want to dive deeper into the software.
3. Create SOPs for Passive Guidance
Despite good onboarding, employees will forget some of what they learned. This is normal even for studious employees who take good notes.
That’s why a third trick for onboarding is defining key steps and best practices around the software at the onset and putting those guidelines into a standard operating procedure (SOP) document that employees can access at any time. SOPs help employees all follow the same best practices around the software, and they serve as a reference guide after training.
“Setting up a few usage rules can help act as a guide, letting people know why and how they should be using the software,” emphasizes Michael Hollauf, co-founder and CEO of workplace productivity software maker Meister Labs.
4. Include Employees in Software Selection
Buy-in is a critical part of software onboarding. You can teach an employee how to use a software solution, but they won’t retain what they’ve learned if they have mental resistance to the software or don’t understand why they need it.
One trick for creating this buy-in is involving employees in the selection process from the start so they understand the reason for the software and have a sense of ownership around it even before they learn how to use it.
“If possible, involve your team in the software selection process, letting them have input into the ‘what software for what purpose’ discussion,” says Hollauf. “We have found that adoption is a lot easier when people are onboard from the beginning.”
5. Focus on the Why
Even if involving employees in software selection is not an option, connecting the software to the bigger picture can help with the buy-in needed for software onboarding and adoption.
“Remind the team of the big picture. While learning new software is overwhelming, it can also be blinding,” notes Dremann. “The team forgets the ultimate objective of the new software. Was it brought on to create more efficiency, help the company grow, simplify processes? These are the big-picture objectives that help the teamwork through the challenges with a positive outcome in mind.”
When employees understand the reason and need for the new software, there’s a much greater chance they will work to make the software a success.
6. Be Visible and Available
A final tip for better software onboarding is making sure that someone is visibly available to help right after a new software solution has been rolled out. Employees will have questions while they put their software training into practice, and having a person clearly nominated and available to answer those questions goes a long way toward adoption.
“Make yourself available and visible during the initial stages of onboarding, particularly when the team may struggle,” notes Dremann. “Be the calm force that gives them an outlet and a source of help.”
Onboarding has gotten easier in the age of the cloud, as software makers have a greater incentive to get users relying on their offerings because much of it is now pay-as-you-go. Software makers have thus simplified the user experience. But there still is a learning curve, and each business will have its own business processes around a software solution. Onboarding still has its place — and these six tips will improve that essential process.
