Long term guide to success when moving to the Cloud

CollabPoint’s guide to long-term success on your MS Cloud Journey

If you stumbled across this blog, you’re likely either thinking about moving to the Cloud, or you’ve already made the move.

If you haven’t done the migration yet, this is a good time to do as much research as possible to ensure the migration itself goes smoothly, but also to start thinking about what happens after the migration.

If you’ve already migrated and haven’t thought too much about what happens after the move, you might be finding that user adoption isn’t quite what you expected. And you may not be experiencing all the benefits that come with being on the Cloud.

Regardless of your situation, you’ve come to the right place.

Moving to the Cloud is More Than Just the Migration

The thing about moving to the Cloud is that organizations often overlook what happens after. They don’t focus on the big picture and think about what long-term success looks like with the Cloud. Cloud migration doesn’t stop the day you launch; there needs to be a plan or strategy in place post-migration so that your team can experience the full ROI. Often, we see user adoption dip due to a lack of user management and training. This can negatively impact your return on the technology you’ve invested in, and overall make your move to the Cloud fall flat.

 But we promise it’s not all doom and gloom. In fact, it’s actually quite solvable! To fully experience the true value of the Cloud, you need to be set up for long-term success.

 In this blog, we’ll guide you to long-term success on your MS Cloud journey.

Put Your Users First

Success begins with your users. If they don’t embrace the Cloud, you risk having the benefits remain untapped. Above all else, a high rate of user adoption is key to long term success… because if they don’t use it, then there is no point. The old adage, “if you build it, they will come” isn’t always true. It’s sometimes not enough to just build it, you have to guide people there. So, in this case, you need to bring your users on the journey to the Cloud along with you to ensure they use it.

 One of the main reasons a lot of tech isn’t highly adopted by end users is because they don’t receive the proper training. When left to their own devices to try to learn a new tool, it often becomes too time consuming and cumbersome to do it themselves, so they simply don’t use it.

 And quite frankly, the IT teams usually tasked with migrating an organization to the Cloud are too busy with their normal day-to-day job tasks to provide additional training to employees or come up with a comprehensive long-term success plan to ensure adoption.

 So, what can you do?

1) Define clear goals

Prior to making the move to the Cloud, it’s important to make sure there are clear goals outlined you’d like to achieve with this rollout. If you’ve already made the move, it’s not too late to do this step. Make sure the goals are clearly communicated across all the teams that will be using this tech to ensure high user adoption, alignment and transparency. It’ll also make measuring the ROI of moving to the Cloud much easier when it comes time to track any progress or key results.

2) Provide employee training

As an organization, it’s imperative to ensure your employees are fully trained on any new tech that’s being rolled out. If you’re planning on migrating to the Cloud, make sure you provide your team with ample notice. Hold training sessions before the migration, and more importantly after. Continue to hold ongoing training or monthly feedback sessions so you can understand what your users are experiencing and help push towards higher user adoption rates.

3) Choose the right Cloud strategist

Another key to setting up for long term success is selecting and working with a Cloud strategist that can help guide your Cloud migration journey. Finding the right Cloud strategist for you will ensure you are supported every step of the migration process with robust and proven strategies.

Take the Journey with CollabPoint

CollabPoint offers end-to-end support from the rollout to long after. We’re here to help you with every step of the way to set you up for long-term success as your Cloud service partner.

We recently published a blog all about mapping your journey to the Cloud and how we work with your organization to provide our expertise, careful planning and guidance to deliver your Cloud journey with confidence. We create a customized approach tailored to your organization’s specific and unique needs to build a solution that sets you up for long-term success. Our goal is to create a framework that works hard for you to achieve your Cloud goals.

Our approach to your journey map follows these 8 stages:

  • Getting to know you and reviewing your goals
  • Mapping your custom journey
  • Beginning the journey to implementation
  • Collaborating in monthly advisory sessions with your dedicated CollabPoint advisor
  • Ongoing progress tracking and support

For a more detailed breakdown of CollabPoint’s comprehensive journey mapping, check out our blog Why Map Your Journey to the Cloud. We’d love to help guide you on your journey to the Cloud, get in touch today to find out more.