By now, we all know that technically implementing a new application may not be the hardest part of the job. Change management, in the sense of getting users to accept it and use it productively, is very often the challenge. Vendors, as a rule, are not so good about helping with this. It’s really nice, therefore, to see Yammer making a real effort to put materials online that could really help.

I recommending checking out Yammer’s Customer Success Center. It’s not surprising that Yammer would need to do this. While the theoretical virtues of using collaboration software are not hard to explain, getting users to actually collaborate is the hard part. Getting enough users in an organization to make the transition to a new way of doing things is even harder. So the need has been there. It’s nice, therefore to see them addressing the need.

Yammer has a lot of great online materials. They have lists of things you can do with Yammer. They have concrete instructions for setting things up. They have recommended activities for getting people involved. They have inspirational videos you can post to help people see the benefits. They have checklists for users, so they will know how to participate. They have a huge number of instructional videos about different specific activities, part of a big Resources section.

Using Yammer to Implement Office 365

In addition, they have a nice blog, where, for example, they show how Yammer can be used as a way to teach users about other applications, such as Office 365. While we have our own collaboration for administrators, built around OneNote, we definitely see how users can be brought on board Office 365 using Yammer. The idea of an Office 365 Help Group using Yammer is really good, and Yammer groups, in general, can be used for the various parts of change management involving committees.

Using a required collaboration, such as a rollout, is a great way to get people to use collaboration software. This can be especially effective if the organizer of the group champions the use of the collaboration system. It can be doubly effective if this organizer is powerful enough in the organization to get people to do things the suggested way.

Yammer’s ideas about how to motivate people can be stolen and used for other project implementations, too. Every project can use a user checklist, for example, and a Help Group. So for those of us that are always looking for concrete materials for getting people trained and on board, Yammer is a very good example.