Now that we have acquired knowledge on how to integrate Yammer into existing organizational platforms, the time has come to use Yammer to transform an organization digitally. In this chapter, we will learn how to make the best use of Yammer to digitally transform an organization. When we hear digital transformation, our mind leaps to words such as automation, DevOps, digital customer experience, mobile apps, big data, and Internet of Things (IoT) . There are also digital transformation courses offered by various management schools. Today, organizations are seriously focused on using digital technologies to become digitally transformed organizations so as to provide an excellent digital experience to the customer.
In the following part of the chapter, we will try to understand digital transformation in simple ways, and then we will immediately start focusing on the heart of the chapter to see how Yammer will help to digitally transform your organization so that your customers will have a rich digital experience.
What Is Digital Transformation?
To start, we will define digital transformation so that we are very clear at the point when we decide to use Yammer for a digital transformation journey. There are thousands of definitions and explanations available as a consequence of the several disruptions of technology taking place in a very short span of time; however, we will try to choose simple ones.
Employee of digitally transformed organization
The Global Center for Digital Business Transformation says that “organizational change is the foundation of digital business transformation.” This is correct because changing an organization means changing the mindset of each employee, the work culture, organization-wide processes, employee collaboration, and finally the strategies that the entire organization uses to function. During such a digital transformation, the organization will identify gaps that must be filled in order to make the business efficient, and, consequently, with focused strategies it will achieve its goal of being a digitally transformed organization so as to offer an enhanced customer experience.
Why Is Digital Transformation Important?
“Digital Transformation Demands Rapid IT Modernization found that 66% of companies doing digital transformation expect to generate more revenue from their operations, while 48% predict that more business will arrive through digital channels. Other reasons for doing it were to empower employees with digital tools (cited by 40%) and to reduce costs (cited by 39%). It’s clear that there’s no better time to embark on your own digital transformation journey if you want to reap the rewards down the line.”
—Gartner report, “Gartner’s IT Market Clocks for 2016”
Define Digital in Digital Transformation
Digital in digital transformation is linked to the technology used in different projects to bring about transformation. Businesses that become digitally transformed use analytics tools for business intelligence reports to help make decisions, performance management systems to improve production, tools like Yammer to encourage social collaboration, artificial intelligence to automate processes and eliminate waste, and other technologies. Therefore, digital refers to the various technologies adopted by businesses to increase profits by enhancing the customer experience.
Finding the Right Digital Transformation Strategy
There is no perfect digital strategy. It is in fact very challenging to build a digital transformation strategy because it affects people, business, and the finances of the organization. As per Deloitte’s 2015 report, “Strategy, not technology, drives digital transformation”. Technology changes and adapts over time and it’s likely that in a few years, the technology your business needs will change. However, it’s vital that the way you implement that technology is watertight to prevent any hiccups along the way.
Organizations also need to lessen the gap between online and offline worlds. For example, if a bank provides a mobile app for online mobile banking, then it needs to have a banking process in the offline world already in place to provide end-user satisfaction.
A Strategic Framework for Digital Transformation
A framework for digital transformation
Why Digitally Transform with Yammer?
To be aligned with global change of digitalization
To make your workplace the best place to work by putting people at the center
To make collaborating, connecting, and sharing between employees very easy
Make Gen Y feel super excited to be at workplace
Develop chains of social businesses
What to Transform with Yammer?
Transform your communication to be more social, i.e., more focused
Allow people from different departments to work collaboratively and not in silos
Change your existing organizational culture to culture of sharing and social
Build employee and leadership connections through Yammer
Encourage knowledge sharing within organization
How to Transform with Yammer?
Define business objectives and use Yammer to achieve them
Launch Yammer in your organization with some buzz
Build chain of Yammer community managers and Yammer champions
Involve leaders to create a difference
Execute business-focused campaigns on Yammer
Make Use of Yammer over Distribution List
In this section, we will see how emails have made us work in silos, become less productive, and held us back from becoming digitally transformed. Further, we will look at some effective techniques for reducing the exchange of emails in the workplace. Once we understand all of this, we will look at the Going Zero email story to get inspiration for using Yammer rather than a distribution list.
Zero-Email Strategy
Today, we are living in a globalized and connected world where information is available at our fingertips. Mobile technology has completely transformed the way we access information. Technology developments have become so common that we hear of a new technology almost every day. Due to this technology revolution, workplaces have become social, and people are able to access information when they need it, leading to less dependency on individuals. With such a large transformation, we must ponder this question: What is the position of email in relation to the latest communication technology we use today? Despite modern communication technologies, email still exists, and we do use it to access information.
Despite the use of email, there are likely to be situations at work where we would prefer to use other communication platforms that meet needs beyond those met by email. Email does not allow us to communicate or collaborate as widely as a collaboration platform such as Yammer does. Further, email allows us to communicate in a hierarchical and not collaborative way. Email distribution lists have become very difficult to manage because of their limited reach in today’s globalized organizations. Email features such as CC and BCC are not much use today, as collaborative platforms are able to achieve a wider reach and such email features end up clogging people’s systems. People overloaded with emails lose productivity as they cannot respond to them all in a timely manner. People have discovered that collaborative platforms are more useful than traditional emails in the workplace.
It is well known that ATOS—a French IT services company—is using a smarter working technique with zero email using Bluekiwi, a social collaborative platform hosted in the cloud. The revolution of zero email at ATOS has resulted in minimum usage of email distribution lists and maximum usage of Bluekiwi for internal communication. They used a top-down implementation of Bluekiwi with maximum support from top management. With this zero-email strategy, ATOS found that people became more aware, agile, and collaborative when working on business-related matters. Besides, ATOS found productivity increased by 20 percent, time that had been used managing emails.
ATOS’s Going Zero strategy using Bluekiwi is an inspirational story as it shows we can make our global organization social, agile, and connected to better meet business requirements and deliver customer expectations. You can create massive cultural change through social collaboration platforms such as Bluekiwi or Yammer and can drive change to reduce email traffic, make employee communication more meaningful, and make your workplaces more social and collaborative.
Yammer Can Do What an Email or Distribution List Does
Comparing Yammer to Email or Distribution Lists
Sr. | Event | Yammer | Email or Email Distribution List |
|---|---|---|---|
1 | Work loudly | Tell what are you working on to get feedback or an idea | Distribution list will limit conversation asking for feedback to very few participants. |
2 | Share your expertise | Share your professional expertise, skills, languages, and competencies. Also, share your outside-of-work experience to build connections that may help you. | Distribution list does not hold your expertise information. |
3 | Share useful links | Share interesting articles, blogs, and videos available on internet or intranet. You can see thumbnail preview of URL. | Through distribution list, you can share infographics, articles, etc. with very limited participants. |
4 | Publish something exciting | Share non-business-related content to empower people outside of work. | Distribution lists in an organizational setup are not known for sharing funny things. |
5 | Share attachments | Upload documents without any size limitation. | You can attach documents but with size limitations, and there is no feature to get comments and feedback. |
6 | Edit documents while you work | Edit documents in realtime and work collaboratively. | With distribution lists, it is not possible. |
7 | Announce event or post meeting information | Make announcements about events or meetings to reach a wider audience. | Skype for Business invitations for an event or meeting can be sent to a distribution list. Again, the meeting or event is held with limited participants. |
8 | Use hash topics to tag relevant conversations | Use hash topics for people to follow and search for relevant conversations. | With distribution lists, it is not possible. |
9 | Publish poll | Publish poll to get consensus from Yammer users. | Email poll feature can be sent to a distribution list. Again, participation is very limited. |
10 | Publish an idea | An idea triggers solutions to problems. | Posting an idea through email will result in an exchange of email replies, which is very difficult to keep track of. |
11 | Ask challenging questions | Ask questions related to HR policy or organization restructuring to get some exciting responses. | You can ask questions by sending an email to a distribution list; however, answers to those questions will be spread over multiple email exchanges, which will fill people’s inboxes. |
12 | Post a query when you are unable to proceed | If you are unable to proceed, go to Yammer and post your issue. It might just be that a colleague sitting in another country has already worked on the same problem and can help. With email, this is not possible, as you would not have known to contact that particular person. | With distribution lists, you send emails to people you know, which is very limited. |
13 | Reply to conversations | To get a reply to your posts, you reply to conversations published by others. | With distribution list, this is not possible. |
14 | Say thank you | Help people increase their visibility by saying thanks to them publicly. | You can thank someone over an email by carbon copying their manager. |
15 | Praise other Yammer users | Recognize people for their contributions and assistance during critical times. | No praise feature is available in email. |
16 | “Like” messages | Show you are acknowledging a message by liking it | No “Like” feature is available in email. |
17 | Create a private group | Collaborate with a limited number of people. | No group feature is available in email. |
18 | Create public group | Collaborate, connect, and share with the entire organization. | No group feature is available in email. |
19 | Join groups of your interest | To know what is happening in your areas of interest, join expert groups on Yammer. | No group feature is available in email. |
20 | Contribute in an all-company group | Break silos and work in an open environment by participating in an all-company group. | No such feature is available in email. |
21 | Build following relationships | Build relationships by building following relationships. | No such feature is available in email. |
22 | Know your colleague’s name | Discover new colleagues along with names and expertise on Yammer. | It is difficult to find names unless you know some part of the name with which to search in your mailbox. |
23 | Post your introduction | Introduce yourself on Yammer to make yourself visible. People may say when they meet you, “I’ve noticed you on Yammer!” | Introducing yourself is possible by sending an email to a limited number of people via their direct email address or a distribution list. |
24 | Connect with like-minded people as part of various projects | With Yammer, it has become possible to connect with like-minded people in different parts of your company. | You can connect in the background through some other medium and then communicate via email. |
25 | Learn from others | Learning from the Yammer expert community is always a great experience. | Proactive learning is not possible through email. |
26 | Use private messages | One-to-one or one-to-few Yammer private messages help you. | You can use one-to-one email communication. |
27 | Minimize email usage | Minimize the use of distribution lists and standard emails that contain URLs or help guidelines. Try using emails for confidential matters only. | Alternatives to stopping email are to use Yammer, make a phone call, or organize a conference call. |
28 | Share updates | Yammer is the best place to share updates with the entire organization and also to get feedback on them. | You can give updates over email to those participants you know. |
29 | Participate in groups | Participate in different groups to share your views and opinions. If you cannot help, then share the conversation with a relevant group. | This is not possible with email. |
30 | Publish a newsletter instead of forwarding through email | Share the URL of a newsletter on Yammer to get maximum exposure rather than forwarding them through email. | You need to forward in an email. |
31 | Discover files quickly | Discover files through the dedicated Files tab available in Yammer groups or through search. | It is not easy to find attachments. |
32 | Follow documents uploaded | Get alerts related to document edits or comments. | This is not possible with email. |
33 | @mention users | @mention users to call for their attention. | This is not possible with email. |
34 | Publish PowerPoint deck created by you | Get feedback and opinions on a client presentation you are building to make it more effective. | This is possible with email. But you will receive multiple emails. |
35 | Share team photos | Share your photos from team events, customer visits, and town halls. | This is possible with email. But size could be issue. |
36 | Share links to videos or animations | Share links to videos or animations with people who do not like to read much text. | This is not possible with email. You need to share the URL in an email. |
37 | Publish meeting notes | Publish your meeting notes. Get feedback from people who were passive during meeting and ideas from those who were active. | Notes can be shared with limited participants but cannot be liked in email. |
Use Yammer to Create a Digital Workplace
After going through Digital Transformation introduction and details, time has come to see how we can use of Yammer to make our organization digitally transformed. Let’s look at a sample project team journey in two ways: first with a desktop/laptop approach, and then using Yammer.
Project Team Journey with Desktop/laptop Approach
Journey without Yammer in preceding pictures is not very straight, and team has to rely upon email communication to collaborate and share stuff
Allan and Janet both write ideas on whiteboard.
Vince takes a picture of the whiteboard and captures minutes of the meeting afterward.
Vince shares the minutes of the meeting by email.
Vince starts editing a version of a document and sends by email to Jane and Vincent.
Janet modifies a few elements and sends it to Allan and Vince in a new document version.
Documents are stored online, but co-edition is technically not possible (conflicting versions).
Vince uploads deliverables on the KM platform and tags them so his colleagues can find them easily.
However, Vince, Janet, and Allan are still asked to send their deliverables by email to some of their colleagues.
Allan writes down tasks in a PowerPoint presentation or Excel spreadsheet.
Allan needs to ask his team to report their activity.
Janet and Vince update their task status manually on a weekly basis.
Allan emails deliverable to clients.
When documents are too big, Allan sends them via FTS (usually used to share files with large size).
The client asks for some modifications.
Allan transfers them to Vince and Janet.
Another version of the deliverables is sent to the client for validation .
Project Team Journey with Yammer
Journey with Yammer in this image is very straight forward as Yammer is now available for team to collaborate and connect faster
Allan, Janet, and Vince write ideas on an interactive whiteboard.
Output of brainstorm is instantly shared in the Yammer group with picture of sketch on whiteboard.
Vince and Janet co-edit deliverables and notify Allan when work is done.
Allan modifies a few elements and notifies Vince and Janet.
The client is invited to check deliverables as they are produced, or they receive a link to check them when finalized.
The client can directly comment on deliverables through Yammer.
Allan writes down tasks on Yammer directly.
Vince and Janet instantly report their progress as project goes on.
Vince uses a videomaking tool available in Yammer apps directly or as shared by another user on Yammer.
Janet creates an interactive dashboard for the client with a tool available in the Yammer apps directory or shared by another user on Yammer.
Deliverables are automatically uploaded on Yammer as soon as the client validates them with the right tags.
Use Yammer for Office 365 Adoption
Use the following framework to utilize Yammer for increasing Office 365 adoption.
Traditional organizations use email, posters, or roadshows to encourage the adoption of new products. However, these methods can be used only for a limited period. Digitally transformed organizations use Yammer for the adoption of new products. In this section, we will learn how Yammer can be used for Office 365 adoption to make your organization digitally transformed.
Yammer on Office 365
Yammer is a default service available on Office 365 and, with the minimum license, is accessible for all users. Yammer holds a good place in the Microsoft Office 365 Product Roadmap as most of the Office 365 services, such as SharePoint, Sway, TEAMS, and Office 365 Videos, are seamlessly integrated with Yammer. This means one can share content from these services in Yammer.
Yammer can be used to roll out Office 365 services in your organization, and the framework in Figure 8-5 can help you do so. Once you have defined your business goals and strategy for Office 365, you can proceed with the rollout. The most important thing when doing an Office 365 rollout using Yammer is that you are continuously communicating and interacting with end users, and other platforms will not allow such flexibility. Changing from one IT technology to another, such as Office 365, can be a challenging task, and the potential exists to create a large degree of disruption and uncertainty throughout the organization. This calls for change management. Using a community-based approach on your Yammer network, with peer-to-peer learning, will help your organization adopt new technologies alongside the change.
The following ideas come from customers who have successfully used Yammer to communicate during an Office 365 rollout. Many customers have voiced the need to plan and decide what role Yammer should play before, during, and after completing the rollout. The following sections contain some of their best practices for an Office 365 rollout using Yammer.
Communities of Practices
Create a group for specific audiences related to the deployment. For example, create a group for the pilot users, the project team, and the testing team. Use these groups for communication about deadlines, requirements, and updates to information concerning the change.
Use Yammer for Q&A by creating a New to Office 365 group. This will encourage users to help each other as they transition to Office 365. Recruit your super users to help monitor this group. Share #how-to-tips.
Collect feedback through a group called Feedback on Office 365 or use a topic hashtag like #Office365 in related conversations. Something not working like you thought? Have an idea? Collect it all in a central place so everyone can benefit from the feedback and build on these ideas .
Communicate the Change
Share the plan. Plans change. The timelines shift. Something goes well, something breaks. Communicate this openly on Yammer and allow for the community to engage and be involved. Lessen the surprise by increasing the transparency.
Host a YamJam about the change, migration, and transition. Invite the senior leaders and stakeholders to be involved in the YamJam to support deployment. Prepare some questions just in case, but give priority to questions from users. Examples of good questions to start with are as follows: Why are we upgrading? What are the benefits? Who else has done this before? What is the impact to our business?
Social Support or Social Helpdesk
During the adoption phase of different Office 365 services, people will have queries on how to use it, how to log in to the service, whether their UPN (unique principle name) is configured in the Yammer network, how to access their home Yammer network, how to install Yammer webpart in SharePoint, and so forth. A dedicated support group on Yammer will connect Office 365 admins and experts and the user community to address such problems.
The Office 365 Product Roadmap has multiple releases planned for each of its services. Yammer can be used to announce these new releases and assist new users if they are facing any issues post-release.
Leadership teams that are part of the Office 365 rollout can participate in dedicated social support groups to interact with end users and work toward major rollout achievements.
Involve Champions
With your user communities, involve the champions and equip them with tools to help with the change. This could include their know-how of specific product needs and changes to the process that people need to be aware of due to the switch.
Provide short training options that are specific to people’s needs around the change. Help provide the content for these trainings, if necessary, along with success stories from across the organization.
Host a lunch session to discuss best practices to improve productivity and highlight local wins and success stories.
Education
Office 365 is a family of dynamic products or services that undergo changes on a regular basis. Yammer can be used to educate users as to why such a change is required and how it will improve the end-user experience.
Office 365 products have a lot of common features between them. Yammer can be used to educate users on the purpose of each product and feature created to improve user productivity. For example, Microsoft TEAMS can be used to collaborate within your team or project, whereas Yammer can be used for company-wide collaboration.
Yammer can be used to educate new users, assist users to help them measure business value, and build premier support contacts to get Microsoft assistance for issues.
From these ideas we have learned how we can use Yammer to deploy Office 365 products by creating Office 365 communities of practices and using it as a social helpdesk, for user education, and for communication-related Office 365 matters . Using Yammer champions to deploy Office is a plus. There are several organizations that have used and are using Yammer for Office 365 adoption.
Summary
In this chapter we have learned the concept of digital transformation, a framework by which to use Yammer for such a digital transformation, and how to use Yammer for the actual digital transformation. Further, we have seen different scenarios where Yammer can help you do your job more effectively than if you used email or distribution lists. Finally, we looked at how Yammer can be used to create a digital workforce and to assist with Office 365 adoption to make your organization digitally transformed.
In the next chapter, we will learn all of the techniques needed to collaborate, connect, and share with your clients, suppliers, and partners.