Google Apps for Work User Manual
Page 25
Change Management Guide
25
Phase 1: Core IT
Profile your user community | Best practices (continued)
•
Identify accessibility needs. Do you have any blind, low-vision, or
deaf workers? Disabled users often have highly specialized software
and hardware and may need targeted training and documentation.
Se
for more information.
•
Connect with your user community. What percentage of your
Sales team relies heavily on mobile devices? Which offices require
training in the local language? If you don’t know this data, that
might impact your budget and your schedule. Be sure to confirm
those assumptions with others in your organization so your user
community summary is accurate.
•
Consider how users will access Google Apps. Remember, your
average user accesses email primarily in the office, but you probably
have other user groups that rely on mobile devices to access email.
They need specific training for switching those devices to Google
Apps. You might also have people who use a shared workstation or
primarily access email from home.
•
Watch for too many groups. You shouldn’t have 50 different user
groups. Keep things simple. Identify a specific user group only if you
think they might have unique communication or training needs
during your Google Apps deployment. Is the Engineering Department
special? Absolutely! But they won’t require any special change
management. They’d simply be grouped with the average users.
“It’s important to have focused
communications depending on each
user group; not all users are the same.”
—Jorge Sanchez, Online Services
Coordinator, KIO Networks
KIO Networks is a Google Apps Enterprise
Your VIPs aren’t always in the corner office
Learning from Solarmora, a fictionalized company
Andy received an unhappy phone call from Chester
DeChief, Solarmora’s CEO. His executive assistant
had revealed to him that she and many other
administrative assistants were apprehensive about
the switch to Google Apps after the announcement
on the company’s intranet.
All the administrative assistants were preparing for
the worst case scenario—in a previous IT project, no
one asked about their requirements, and this
resulted in havoc for their (and their managers’)
calendars.
Oops! Andy forgot that administrative assistants
needed special attention. Andy met with the CEO’s
assistant to discuss the project and ask for
suggestions about how to help the company’s
assistants with the change.
Together they put a plan that included specialized
communications and encouraged involvement with
the Google Apps administrative assistant
community site. The close-knit group was now
engaged with helping each other make the
transition.