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The Art of User Management
Which technologies should you deploy to monitor, judge, and improve user satisfaction levels? How to manage users who think they know more IT than you? We tell you based on inputs from CIOs of large enterprises having 1500+ users
Friday, February 01, 2008
Recently, while interacting with the CIOs of a large healthcare and a
manufacturing company, we came across an interesting fact. The healthcare CIO
stressed that the most demanding users in his organization were doctors. It was
nearly impossible to convince them to use technology. They were comfortable
writing their patient's prescriptions with pen and paper, and didn't want to
waste time doing the same on a computer or a tablet. Likewise, the CIO of the
manufacturing company pointed out that plant managers were the toughest to
convince on anything about IT. They were extremely finicky about their
production processes and schedules, and didn't want anything to disturb the
same. Looking at this trend, we decided to find out what other CIOs felt, and
therefore did a survey to find out who were the most demanding users in their
organization. Interestingly enough, their responses indicated a similar trend.
Business unit managers or mid-level managers were the most difficult to convince
according to them, and not without good reasons either. Take doctors in a
hospital for instance. They have to see so many patients in a day that they
don't really have time to type everything into a computer. The same logic goes
for a plant manager, or any other business unit manager for that matter. They're
so busy running their day to day businesses that it's extremely difficult to
convince them about using anything in IT.
| Strategies for managing the
most critical part of any IT infrastructure-the users |
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Our survey of course went far beyond that. Our actual objective was to find
out how CIOs manage the most critical part of their IT infrastructure-the users.
After all, no matter how great or expensive a technology you implement, it's
useless if your users are not able to use it. And they will use it only when
they're absolutely convinced. You might implement the best ERP solution in the
world, but if you've done it without involving your users, it will take a long
time to succeed, if it does at all. That's because doing things without getting
a buy-in from users results in resistance to change, thereby causing
de-motivation, lower productivity, and more calls to the helpdesk.
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Ultimately, users are the best judges for any technology, so it makes sense
for every CIO to ensure that they're convinced, happy, and satisfied. Only then
will they contribute their best, be more productive and keep the organization on
a strong growth path. But how do you do that? What measures should you take to
keep your users happy? And how do you measure user satisfaction levels? Are
there technologies available for effective user management? User management is a
crucial part of any CIOs job, and this story will provide insights into the
subject by answering these pressing questions and more. We'll look at
technologies for conducting user satisfaction/expectation audits, how to get a
buy-in from users, help desk management tips, and much more.
Remember, user management is a mix of technology and good HR skills. So the
CIO of any company has to be a good juggler of both.
Challenges in Gaining User acceptance
Success of any IT implementation in an enterprise is largely dependent on
user acceptance. When we asked CIOs how difficult it was to convince users to
accept a new technology, almost half of them said it's 'moderately difficult,'
while a few of them felt it was relatively easy. Typically, the most difficult
project is to get a buy-in for are those that cause a significant change in
business processes, such as an ERP deployment. That's what a majority of the
CIOs said in our survey. But then again, you never know where surprises will
spring up from. For all you know, your users might resist giving up their
standard desktops for thin clients, or resist the roll out of a timesheet
system. At that point, you just need to know how to handle the situation.
But before you even reach the mass roll out stage, it's better to do a pilot
and perform user acceptance testing. Many organizations perform user acceptance
testing when projects are nearing their end. While this is a sensible practice,
but if at this point a major change in application is required, most
organizations would tend to ignore it as by then developers would have already
packed their bags. And organizations are not willing to pay them again to
redesign the application! This has been the case with those organizations that
hire developers from outside just for customizing their applications. While this
always results in cost savings, a better option would be to outsource, if
development is not the core business of your enterprise. As one of the
respondents in our survey pointed out, 'more budget' always results in higher
user satisfaction.
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During user acceptance tests, usually a particular set of users test the
application and have developers or software testers to help them with the
application. Since users are using application for the first time, they
definitely require assistance, but with too much assistance at this point
everything appears easy for users. However, later on when the project goes live,
users tend to feel differently. While rolling out an enterprise wide project,
the best practice is to enroll it module by module.
How to get a buy-in from users?
So ultimately, how do you get a buy-in from users? From the survey results,
we discovered that there are mainly three tactics that should be followed. One
is to apply pressure, whereby the IT department takes the help of top management
to put pressure on users to start using the new application. The second is to
give awards and recognition for using new technology. And finally, the third and
most popular is to the explain benefits of a new technology in depth and show
the results through a pilot run or another implementation.
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Dealing with difficult or demanding users
Each organization has its own set of 'difficult users', and handling them is
an important skill for CIOs. As we said earlier, our survey indicated that
'middle managers/business unit heads.' were the most difficult to handle. They
were the most demanding. There are several reasons for this. Some felt it's
because they prefer using conventional methods and refuse to consider IT as an
integral part of business. So, even if a new process is going to make their work
easy, middle managers resist change. Others feared the transparency that IT
could bring to their way of working. A few CIOs felt that middle managers expect
too much from IT and want everything to work, without much effort. And when
results are not achieved, they are quick to blame IT. The best solution for such
kinds of problems is the same solution that solves most user related problems,
i.e. through consistent interaction and more discussions with the middle
management.
Coping with users who feel they know more
Similar is the case with users who always claim to know more than the IT
department; whether they do or not is a different story, but this is a set of
users that can be vexing at times.
| Ensuring smooth user
experience with IT |
| There are many
things that would make a user happy-applications that are easy to learn, use
and access so that they cause minimum disruption to work; working machines
so that your users are always productive; fast Internet and network access
for obvious reasons; negligible security threats like spam and viruses; and
of course, excellent and quick support.
If you can read between lines,
you'll realize that all these things come under IT management. So user
satisfaction is directly linked to a well managed IT setup. And there are
several things you can do to ensure that your IT setup is well-managed.
Let's look at a few of them.
Automate: As your IT
infrastructure becomes more complex, it becomes more difficult to manage.
This is more so, because you have more management tasks to do in lesser
time. Since the time to manage doesn't increase with the number of tasks,
you have to find ways and means of automating as many tasks as possible. It
is a little difficult at first, but once done, it really makes life easier.
One way to automate is by using scripts.
Every operating system, be it
Windows at the desktop or server, Linux or Unix can perform many functions
automatically with the help of scripts. In Windows for instance, you can
easily create VB scripts for automating a number of tasks, right from
retrieving system information to scripts for monitoring operations of an
Active Directory.
In fact, Microsoft has a huge
script repository of sample scripts. You'll find it at
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/scriptcenter/scripts/default.mspx?mfr=true.
Here, you'll find tons of sample scripts that you can immediately pick up
and start using.
Keep those replacements
ready: The worst thing to happen to any user is a prolonged machine
downtime. The IT department takes away the machine for what seems like
eternity. You must keep some hot spares handy for such situa -tions, and by
that, we don't just mean the hardware. After all, what good is hardware if
it doesn't have applications requi- red by the user? Apart from spare
machines, you must also keep a few spare software licen- ses of the
applications that are most commonly used in your organization, so that a
user's work doesn't get disrupted.
Reduce calls to helpdesk:
There are many ways of doing this. One is to empower the users with enough
information to fix small problems themselves. For this, it's important to
compile a knowledge base of the most common problems faced by your users and
their solutions. Keep these handy on your intranet for users to access.
The second point to remember
is that prevention is better than cure. Keep a set of guidelines always
handy, which users should follow while using the IT infrastructure. Stuff
like how to distinguish a spam mail from a genuine one, the currently going
security threats and their symptoms, Internet access policy, etc. are all
things that can prevent security threats from entering your network. Provide
a list of dos and don'ts for your users. You must find a way to ensure that
users read all this information; otherwise it will be of no use. So maybe
you could put it as a 'tip of the day' on your intranet's home page. Or you
could put up some lively notices on the notice board. The key is to catch
the users' attention.
Reduce management
overheads: There are numerous ways of doing this. One is to reduce the
number of physical trips your support staff has to make to users' machines.
For this, consider remote desktop access and management solutions. A user
doesn't have to wait forever for somebody to come and fix a problem.
Instead, everything gets taken care of remotely.
Use the right set of
tools: Compile and keep the right set of tools and utilities handy for a
variety of management tasks. Since there's a plethora of tools available for
just about every task, it's a matter of personal preference of what you want
to keep. Ideally, keep a good mix of tools handy, which can be used for
emergencies. Get notebooks for your support staff and install these tools on
them. Carry the notebooks around whenever you need to do any
troubleshooting.
Live CDs can be of great help
in such cases. You just have to boot from them, and you have an Operating
System with the right set of tools up and running in no time. For instance,
there are network security and auditing CDs which contain tools for
vulnerability assessment, forensics, etc. There are CDs for disaster
recovery, which have data recovery tools. There are firewalls, clustering,
and a whole range of other distros that can be used. |
Sometimes new employees also fall in this category as they always compare the
present enterprise to their old organizations and take a while to get used to
new rules, policies and environment. When we asked CIOs how they tackle such
users, we got some spirited replies. Apparently CIOs take feedback from such
users and see how they can improve themselves. At the time of deploying a new
project, such users are the first choice of CIOs as team leaders within their
departments. However, if such users prove to be pointless, then CIOs don't shy
away from telling them-leave it to the experts.
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