The Top 6 Ways to Guarantee a Successful Enterprise Software Pilot

Whether you call it a pilot or a Proof of Concept (POC for
short), Pilots may be 'tricky' but there are 6 crucial steps to take to
optimize your chances for success

• Your software vendor
  partner can be your best friend. Software
  vendors love pilots. This is because they
  believe that once the software is in, it isn't coming back out again. Plus the vendor will have their people on
  site for the term of the pilot, ideally lobbying on behalf of flipping the
  pilot into an ongoing license. The
  upside of this is that most software companies are not in the pilot business'.they're
  in the annual license business. This
  means they'll be working hard to help you make the pilot a success.

This might be your
first pilot of software of this type, but your software partner has gone through
many pilots. They have accumulated a
number of best practices they can share.
They have the benefit of hindsight where they have seen the pitfalls where
other clients have mis-stepped. They can
monitor the progress of your pilot and provide ongoing practical guidance to
keep your pilot on track. Of course
everyone needs to agree on what that course is, hence the fact you should have
a measurable goal for the pilot.

• The most important attribute of a successful
  pilot is to have a measurable goal.
  That might seem obvious but so many neglect to attach one to the
  event. I have heard of lots of pilots of
  enterprise social networks where there is no defined goal.

You can't just throw it out there, see who uses it and hope
for the best. Because if you do, you'll
get some early adopter types (those who enjoy using new technologies) to
embrace it and no one else. And even
those early users will stop using it after a while if they don't see others
jumping in or if they don't see results.
And senior team members won't touch the software at all. They're afraid of it to begin with; are not
anxious to learn something new, or for that matter to share anything, anyway.

When you do define the goals of the project, consider asking
everyone on the team for input. Establish
the success criteria for the pilot, with input from all stakeholders. Your chances for success are increased if not
only do you achieve your goals with the pilot, but that everyone who
participated in the process agrees those goals were meaningful and important.

A measurable goal lets you monitor the progress of the
pilot and if you're not hitting the mark, adjust your strategies to get on
track. It might be something as simple
as measuring Adoption Rates(how many people are using it) or Engagement (the number
of Contributions). You can measure both activity
and results. Here are some examples of measurable results:

But measure something.
Because when the pilot is over you want to be able to answer the question: 'Was
the pilot successful'? with statistical results.

• You should get the right crowd involved in
  your pilot. I think we all can
  identify those 'usual suspects' when we think about who would embrace new
  technologies. There are always 'early
  adopters' you can rely on to try out the software. If you're clever you can make certain these
  early adopters are spread throughout the organization into various geographies,
  departments and disciplines. They can
  act as ambassadors to other users. If
  the early adopters are advocates, you can exponentially grow your user
  community.

Advocates or ambassadors can serve as
support, trainers and cheerleaders. Equally they can provide feedback from the
troops back to those responsible for managing the process.

Plus the users during the pilot can be your biggest
supporters during roll out.

You should probably not limit your pilot to just a small
number of users in one department (the usual inclination). You want to optimize your chance for
success. This is a situation where
rewards outweigh risks. Frequently champions for software want to limit the
exposure of the pilot to their own department so if the pilot fails, the exposure
will be minimal. But this can be a case of when a preconceived
notion of failure might better be supplanted by a
manifest destiny approach for success.
You want a positive outcome; why not take every measure you can to
ensure success.

• You should
  constantly market to end users and management. This means training,
  newsletters, email updates (with call to action links taking users into the
  system). Management and users should
  hear good news and about successes.

You should not only collect usage
data, as well as the output of the software, but also the feedback from the
user community about how to improve the software for eventual roll out. Simple items like 'I wish this link or item
was on this screen' or 'It would be easier to use if'' can inform the success
of the actual and eventual roll out.

• The time frame is
  critical. You should keep it short, perhaps thirty to
  sixty days. People will operate more effectively
  with a deadline. Six months is way too
  long, long enough to have user interest ebb without the payoff of additional
  data accumulated. Plus this helps
  subscribe to the notion of 'fail fast'.
  If the pilot is a mis step, then get it over quickly so you spend the
  minimum amount of money on it. Similarly
  don't allow 'scope creep'. You'll get
  lots of suggestions from the user community which you absolutely should collect
  for consideration before roll out, but don't let it slow down the pilot effort
  nor more importantly steer you away from achieving those measurable
  goals.

Along with timeline and goals you should also add other
rules. Think about what you want to achieve with the pilot and keep everyone
within those parameters.

• The next most
  important attribute of a successful pilot is senior management support. Of course you need a champion. This is someone on your team who is a 'believer',
  who understand that using this software will improve your organization. This
  might be you! But if that champion is not senior enough, then you need a 'higher-up'
  to buy in.

How important is this step? Let's put it this way, the very best pilot
kick off speech I ever heard was when a Vice President at a Fortune 100 company
got all the potential users in a room (some of the virtually) and merely said, 'OK,
thanks for coming. I want you all to use
this new software. Dependent on the
success of this project, my job is on the line, and that means yours is
too. Login, ask for help, start using
the software and make this a success.'
Everyone got the message, there was a flurry of activity immediately and
the project was a huge success.

Conclusion:

1. Make sure you have your user community, your
   management and your software vendor involved in the project so they feel and
   act like partners.
2. Solicit and gain consensus
   so you have a well publicized, measurable goal.
3. Carry out the pilot within a short, defined
   time frame.
4. Keep the lines of
   communication open to receive user feedback, to encourage adoption, and to publicize
   successes.

Ron Shulkin blogs researches and writes about enterprise
technology focused on social media, innovation, voice of the customer,
marketing automation and enterprise feedback management. Ron Shulkin is Vice President of the Americas
for CogniStreamer', an innovation ecosystem. CogniStreamer serves as a
Knowledge Management System, Idea Management System and Social Network for
Innovation. You can learn more about CogniStreamer here http://bit.ly/ac3x60 .
Ron manages The Idea Management Group on LinkedIn (Join Here). You can follow him Twitter. You can follow his blogs at this Facebook
group. You can connect with Ron on LinkedIn.