Think back to the last iPad you bought or your latest smart phone. Did either come with a manual? The fact is that they did, but chances are you barely remember the glossy brochures or warranty slips: the instructions stayed in the box because the whole point of these gadgets is that they’re intuitive. The devices themselves walk you through their set-up, and from there mastery comes with just a few hours of playing around.
Playing is the keyword, though, and it’s one of the biggest challenges faced by B2B software (and hardware) makers. Businesses want their employees to use workplace technology to the fullest, but getting them to do so isn't quite as easy as handing over an iPhone and asking them to manipulate the camera settings or download a new map app.
This isn't just a buyer’s problem. Any good technology provider’s job goes beyond providing a product; it also needs to explain that product to the client which is to say, they must reach the ordinary, occasionally tech-friendly, occasionally tech-phobic employees and not just the head of IT. The approaches to this have varied from intensive initial training courses, to individual hand-holding, to the development of ongoing relationships between staff and trainers, whether through frequent site visits or instant-messaging sessions.
But the optimal route might be to avoid the problem altogether, by thinking like a consumer-technology company during the design phase — and creating a product that functions intuitively.
“Companies like Salesforce.com, SAP , they’re going to need to get their products closer to the pleasure of private technology,” said Torsten Raak, Senior Vice President of Corporate Marketing at Unify. “There’s a whole generation of workers out there who say, ‘if there’s a manual, I’m not interested.’ ”
Some experts urge IT departments not to worry too much about getting their non-IT colleagues to embrace the bells and whistles of a new technology, pointing out that the vast majority of work done in a system usually requires just a handful of tools. Instead, they say:
1. Roll out those basic functions first. If most of your workers can set up and join meetings online, it doesn’t matter that only a few of them know how to automatically add the meetings to their colleagues’ calendars, or use polling software while in the meetings. And in fact, those extra tools might never prove core to your business’s smooth functioning — which is why you shouldn’t fret if they’re not being used.
2. Make sure everyone feels comfortable using the basic functions. Put your training resources into making sure the core elements of your technology are either intuitive or very well explained — to everyone from the summer intern to the C-Suite. That way, you avoid communication mishaps – like someone waiting on a silent conference call while everyone else is in the online waiting room.
3. Introduce the extra tools slowly, perhaps to tech-savvy and tech-enthusiastic employees first. It’s human nature to be more interested in what’s on your office mate’s computer screen than in the slide-show presentation being shown at 4pm in the ground-floor conference room. Rather than dragging colleagues into endless presentations and tutorials, create technology ambassadors whose enthusiasm for any truly useful technology will likely prove infectious.
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