Why Implementing the Tech is Not Enough

By Adam Seaton 

I was in my car with my Mother-in-law recently. For the record, my Mother-in-law is wonderful and witty. She is also a technophobe. A luddite. She said my car was cold, so I put the seat heater on for her.

"Oh," she said. "I found out last week that my car has seat heaters too".

"Haven't you had that car for two years, mum?" I challenged.

"Oh yes, but we only found the button last week. Well, we were looking for the window de-mist button and pressed the seat heater by mistake. Two minutes later the window was still steamed up, but my bottom was very toastie!”

I will stick up for my Mother-in-law here. I wondered if the button was part of the dealer handover. I wondered which part of the 267-page 'Owner Manual' mentions it.

I work in technology every day. More specifically, ERP systems, CRM systems, HR systems, and general back-office administration. This conversation with my Mother-in-law drove home a frustration that has built with me for years. We simply don’t invest enough in our users. In particular, we don’t invest beyond deployment projects. And in a cloud world, with evergreen systems constantly updated by vendors, technology continues to get the spotlight, while people and processes get second and third billing, if at all. We deploy these multi-million-pound systems and then ponder why they don’t quite change the game as we thought they might. We ponder why our support tickets have gone through the roof. We ponder why the vision and promised land of new technology adoption is still only glinting on the horizon. The answer is that you implemented it, but you did not adopt it.

I asked my Mother-in-law how she felt about this heated seat revelation, and what happened next.

“First, I turned off the seat heater and turned on the de-mist! Then I spent the next half hour investigating every button on the console. Then the next half hour investigating every menu option in the digital display, looking for new toys that I didn’t know were there. I managed to connect my phone on Bluetooth for the first time too, and discovered we had DAB radio, which is way better than Radio 2 on FM”.

Hallelujah.

It turns out that my mother-in-law is not a technophobe, or a luddite. She just needed the motivation, the environment, and the tools to learn. And look at the step change when the catalyst came.

Stop talking about cool new tech and let us instead look at how we can create an environment and a learning culture that helps our users at the coal face deal with the technology that is already in front of them. Imagine how far we could shift the ROI needle, the productivity needle, the user satisfaction needle, and the retention needle. Imagine how many closet technology evangelists you have hiding in your ranks; the change would be off the scale.

Unfortunately, the conversation is not happening. 'Next-wave' technology stole the show, and the budget, again (AI anyone?).

Can we help you? If this resonates, and you are implementing Microsoft Dynamics 365 ERP, please get in touch at nic.garrett@teamjoe.co.uk or adam.seaton@teamjoe.co.uk.