How to Prepare Your Team for a New IT System

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May 31, 2022 Business

78% of business owners feel that achieving a digital transformation will be important for their organization in the next few years, according to MIT. Although there’s urgency when it comes to adopting new technology, MIT found that 63% of owners felt that change happens too slowly.

Usually, hurdles appear due to poor internal training, a lack of compatibility with old systems, and general stubbornness. Some employees/employers want to avoid learning new IT skills.

How to Train Your Team to Adopt a New It System

Despite the hiccups you may face, there are ways you can implement a brand new IT system without rocking the boat. But, you can’t start installing your system before conducting an audit.

Start With an IT Solution Audit

Before making any final decisions about your IT infrastructure, you need to conduct an audit of existing systems. An audit will highlight any inefficiencies or issues that you’re not aware of.

If you live in Orlando, Florida, and you don’t have a dedicated IT department, you should partner with a specialist who can offer tailored IT consulting. An IT counselor can notice hidden security issues, locate areas of growth, and speak to your staff about their technology bottlenecks.

When performing an audit with an IT counselor, you’ll benefit from knowing:

The many ways new technology can help improve your business
Whether your IT applications or services are being optimized
How you can optimize your new IT system across your company
How much IT maintenance and solutions will cost every year
The risks involved with security breaches and data theft
How additional IT resources can create new business opportunities

Some It counseling services will have a department that handles your IT needs. If you can afford to shift that responsibility to a more qualified team, we recommend doing so to save time.

Assemble an In-House Team

Whether you have an outside team implementing your IT solution or not, you’ll still need an internal team that’s focused on championing the new technology. Sometimes an implementation effort will fail because the team underestimated the importance of overall preparedness.

When assembling a team, choose a leader that can delegate tasks in these categories:

Resource management (to afford the project)
Administration (to oversee the small details)
Conflict resolution (to ease employee fears)

Make sure you assign a project manager that helps to delegate tasks to each leader. If you have a chain of command, your employees that aren’t in the implementation team will take your new IT system more seriously. They’ll also be more willing to train and work on the new system.

Run a Pilot and Training Program

A pilot program is an experiment that tests if the new IT system is feasible. While you do have to convince your employees, you also have to consider top management. After all, if you can’t convince the higher-ups, then it won’t matter if your employees want to use the technology.

You’ll likely find a few kinks in its implementation, but that’s okay because you can spend this time ironing out the process. Once the program is complete, you can move on to training.

Remember that your new IT systems may not come easy to your staff. You’ll have to create an effective training session that includes interactive materials, tests, and a lot of patients.

Here’s how you can make the training process run more smoothly:

Explain that this technology will eventually make their life easier
State that this technology won’t replace them
Tailor training sessions to different learning styles and departments
Provide a wide range of options and learning materials
Make the training personal by explaining why the system is important
Show examples of how the system will positively affect their job
Ask for constructive feedback during each implementation stage

If you’re noticing some resistance, don’t punish your team members. It could mean that this technology isn’t the right solution for your team or that they need further training.

Launch Date and Fine-Tuning

Once everyone is trained and feels confident using your new IT system, you can launch it. However, it’s essential that you evaluate the IT system’s performance and adoption after implementation because issues may pop up that you didn’t notice in the previous stages.

Your IT system may need improvements after the fact, but that doesn’t mean you should throw out the whole system as long as you can tweak it in a way that works for your team.