In general, you should rollout InterAction to batches of users at a time. This ensures that you can do all the following:
- Provide training for users, as necessary.
- Troubleshoot any issues that occur as users begin accessing their user contact lists - address these issues in subsequent rollouts.
- Continually improve the quality and consistency of contact information in InterAction so the users in the groups implemented later can take advantage of higher quality data.
Use the following questions to help determine your rollout strategy:
- How will you rollout - by practice group/department, by geography, or a hybrid of these?
- How many users are in each rollout group?
- Which users should you roll out to first?
Determining How to Group Users for Rollout
When determining your user groups, consider which users should be the first to access InterAction. For example, candidates for early rollout may include all the following:
- A system where users previously accessed information they need on a regular basis has been replaced by InterAction
- Specific users that have a critical business need that can only be addressed by InterAction
- Users that have a lot of valuable relationship information to contribute to InterAction
- Professionals who are advocates of the system and who can act as champions going forward
- Groups that are supportive of new initiatives
After you have identified the group of users who first need access to InterAction, determine how to divide up the rest of the users. You may choose to divide users up according to any of the following criteria:
- Practice Group/Department - This option is often chosen because it works in conjunction with the integration with other business applications used only by a specific department or practice group. This option builds Relationship Intelligence information for contacts that are already shared by a particular group at your organization.
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Geography - This option is often chosen for organizations with multiple office locations and limited training resources. You may choose to train all secretaries at each office location at the same time. Additionally, your software deployment process may be based on geography, affecting the way you rollout InterAction to users.
This option works best when the offices work independently. It is less effective when practice areas cross offices and work closely together.
- Role/Level - This option is often chosen by organizations whose culture necessitates the rollout of new software to go to specific users first.
The way in which you choose to rollout users may be a combination of any of the above criteria. For example, practice groups or departments at your organization may span several offices, so you may choose to roll out to a single department at one location in each rollout group.
Determining the Size of a Rollout Group
The number of users in each rollout group depends on the size of your organization, the resources you have available to support them through the rollout, and your experience with the process. In general, you should start with groups of fewer users, then gradually rollout InterAction to larger groups.
The following recommendations are offered:
- Initial pilot rollout group of 20-30 users
- Subsequent rollout groups should include approximately 75-125 users in each group
You should initially start with a smaller group for all the following reasons:
- You can continue to focus your efforts on cleansing the contacts brought into InterAction from other sources, such as your accounting or time and billing system, where the overlap with user contacts may be greater. Having higher quality data in the firm list ensures that everyone benefits because there is a greater likelihood of better contact matches between the firm list and each user’s contact list.
- Starting with a smaller group makes it easier to identify and resolve any issues with the rollout process.
- Starting with smaller groups gives you the opportunity to make sure that the data is being added to the firm list as you expect it would. The data cleansing tasks associated with managing contacts added improperly can be overwhelming if you roll out to too large of a group initially.
- As more and more user contacts are added to the firm list, the data quality of contact information is affected. Later in the rollout, data should be more stable than it is with the first few groups.
- Training can test and refine its curriculum before presenting to larger groups of users.
- Starting with a smaller group lets word of mouth spread about InterAction and can help build momentum for the project.
When determining your rollout groups, consider your plans for training and communication for the project.
Determining the Time Frame for Each Rollout Group
The time you should allot for each user rollout varies depending on the quality of your contact information, the number of users in each rollout group, your organization’s resources for training users, the amount of issues to troubleshoot, and the number of contacts your users need to contribute.
Generally, your initial rollout groups should be in four to eight week increments. Planning for this amount of time initially ensures that data stewards have time to manage any data quality issues, and gives trainers and other people responsible for supporting users the time to fine-tune the training for users based on feedback.
Over time, you can reduce the timeframe allotted for each rollout group, based on your organization’s needs.
Determining When to Rollout InterAction to Users
The appropriate time at which you should roll out InterAction to professionals and other end users depends on your organization’s information and plans for data quality.
In most organizations, the process of rolling out InterAction occurs after you have loaded information from the organization-wide data sources and you have performed the initial cleansing of contact information. Depending on how you have chosen to proceed with the data cleansing effort, you may roll out at different times.
Rolling out InterAction When Cleaning Data Externally
If you are working with a third party to clean your contact data outside of InterAction, the consultants who help you with your data cleansing project provide further details on when it is best to perform the rollout of InterAction in your environment.
Rolling out InterAction When Cleaning Data in InterAction
If you are using InterAction to clean your contact information, you should begin performing your rollout to users after data cleansing has already been performed for your most important collections of contacts.
The cleansing performed on the contact information loaded from your organization-wide data sources, prior to the rollout, helps to minimize data quality issues that can occur when each user attempts to contribute his or her contacts to the firm list. When users add their contacts to the firm list, InterAction can generate data conflict tickets when a user has different information for a contact than what is in the firm list. This ensures that the quality of the data does not erode during rollout.
Make sure that the most important contacts are clean. Also communicate to users that the process is ongoing and that the important contacts’ information continuously improves over time.
Because you are typically rolling InterAction out to groups of users at a time while attempting to cleanse contact information, you should prepare the users in the first rollout groups for the experience of having lower quality data to begin with. As you move farther along in the process of cleansing and profiling contacts, the rollout groups have an easier time with InterAction because the contact data is of a much higher quality.
When Should InterAction Be Rolled Out to Hesitant Users?
Many features of InterAction have been designed specifically to help users who are hesitant to share their contact information or who do not have time to manage contact information.
When planning your rollout groups, include users who are champions of the system in the first rollout groups. These users are more likely to spend time reviewing contact information in InterAction and managing contact information. These users help improve the quality of contact information and provide additional information that could not have been found in your organization’s data sources.
In general, users who are hesitant to use InterAction should be in the last rollout group. These users can take advantage of the work done by users who first used InterAction through features like Smart Connect. Smart Connect can compare the contacts in a user’s contact list with the contacts in the firm list and automatically connect contacts without any user intervention. For details, see Configuring Smart Connect Rules.
Note, however, that you should work with a few hesitant users when planning your InterAction rollout for the following reasons:
- It is important to understand the reasons why these users are hesitant so you can operatively address the concerns when communicating with users about InterAction.
- Hesitant users can be the best people to identify weaknesses in your InterAction training, configuration, and implementation.
Determining Who Is Involved in the Process
The amount of resources and available training time are key factors in determining how you handle your initial rollout to users. If you have ample resources who are dedicated to the cleansing and maintaining of your firm contacts, and you have time to train all your users on InterAction, follow the process detailed in Process for the Initial Rollout to Users. However, if your resources are limited, you may want to follow a different approach.
When your resources and time are limited and you are planning your initial rollout, consider having your administrative assistants cleanse the professionals contacts in their personal information manager (PIM) prior to the rollout. This enables your organization to perform an important activity prior to your product rollout and InterAction training. Also, since the administrative assistants know their professionals contacts well and they are comfortable working within their PIM, this helps streamline the process. It also eliminates the number of people modifying the contacts during the process.
See How Do I Perform an Initial Rollout with Limited Data Cleansing Resources? for more information.