How Leaders Can Deploy New Software and Use Effective Team Training Methods

Do you plan to implement new software in your company? Do you find it a challenge? Well, let’s take a look at how you can avoid common mistakes when doing so.

Implementation of new software is a complex technological and organizational process that requires significant resources and time.

In practice, such projects are divided into separate independent stages, each of which provides the customer with a complete solution to one or more managerial tasks. This allows the company to get the first practical benefit from the introduction of new software and return on investment.

Where to Start?

To choose the right implementation tools, you need to understand user expectations. If most users are opponents of new solutions, management will need to convince them of the usefulness of the software.

If they’re waiting for the introduction of a new product and believe it will help solve their problems, the implementation team is lucky. 

To reduce resistance, you need to understand the reasons for user reluctance to use a new program. Usually, there are two reasons: fear of new software, and a lack of understanding of its importance.

Most often, these fears are associated with the following:

• Dismissal of employees because the implemented software will increase productivity.
• The need to work on old and new software simultaneously during transition time. This may lead to developing a new product after hours, which for many, is a sacrifice of their personal time.
• Activities of employees will become more transparent: if management sees that employees spend part of their time less productively, it may cause revising terms of payment or increasing expectations of performance indicators.
• Fear that mastering the new product will be complicated and energy-consuming.
• Decrease in the level of authority or importance of the employee after the implementation.

In addition to such fears, there is another aspect that does not allow employees to adepts new software. This would usually be their misunderstanding of:

• Changes to existing processes. If employees believe that the processes are built efficiently enough, then they would not understand why they need to be changed.
• Entering data in the software. Employees will not understand how their managers will use this data. Misunderstanding goals leads users to think about the futility of time-consuming data entry.

Communication is Key

To make changes more adaptable, you must implement them step by step. You can start with training in the form of oral presentations and various articles on the subject in your workspace, proving how other companies have successfully implemented similar changes and benefited from it. 

For example, if you work in the sports sector, or sports bets in particular, here’s a type of article you could give to your team,

You can then proceed to the harder part. Both groups of aforementioned fears and misunderstandings can be removed by giving necessary explanations to the team.

And you can point out the pros and cons of upcoming changes: 

• Setting clear goals for the implementation project related to increasing employee productivity, which will lead either to a reduction in staff or to an increase in sales and other indicators. Notification of the objectives of the project and an explanation of the benefits that it brings to the employees of the company.
• The use of ‘pilot’ units for parallel work in two programs or, in the case of a low probability of risk of performance loss due to errors in the new software, refusal to work in two systems, and the transition to work in a new system.
• Explaining to employees that increasing the transparency of their work is one of the goals of the company. Even if this is not the goal, then this is one of the requirements that must be met.
• User training on the new rules in the new program, which should be well planned and expertly conducted
• Using examples from similar projects, where users were afraid that they would not learn a new program, and now they laugh at their own fears.
• Explanation to employees that their value is not that they possess intimate knowledge, but that, thanks to the increase in knowledge and its dissemination, an employee becomes valuable to the company

Word of Advice

“The only way that we can live is if we grow. The only way that we can grow is if we change. The only way that we can change is if we learn…”.

Changes, although sometimes painful at the start, may bring you only benefits and comfort. Never be afraid of change. And remember those who stayed with you after them.

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How Can Leaders Successfully Deploy New Software?

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Zufana Asmara

Zufan is a freelance writer who likes to spend their days about business, politics, technology, and sports. She shares her thoughts on Parimatch International.