Phase one – Envision
In the first phase of the Adoption Framework, you identify and prioritize scenarios while learning about available resources as you plan for rollout. This stage is critical to your journey because you're setting business goals to measure success.
The key steps in the Envision phase are:
- Assemble your team
- Define business strategy
- Determine readiness
Select this link to download a PDF version of the Dynamics 365 Adoption guide.
Assemble your team
You need to determine who should be involved in your adoption effort. Transforming to this new way of working requires buy-in and support from across the business. We have identified four key groups that will bridge technology and business outcomes that matter to your organization.
Each group has a specific role in implementation and should be engaged early and often. This section outlines the specific roles played by these team members:
- Executive sponsors
- Success owner
- Early Adopters
- Champions
How executive sponsors drive project success
Executive sponsors should:
- Help the project team identify and prioritize their top business needs.
- Play a role in communicating the vision to leaders across the organization.
- Actively participate in and use the Dynamics 365 capabilities to help drive and reinforce adoption.
- Promote the adoption process. Studies show that 87 percent of successful transformation projects had visible engagement by executive sponsors.
Ensure the executive sponsors understand the ABCs:
- Active and visible participation.
- Building a coalition with their executive peers.
- Communicating directly with employees.
Success owners and why are they important
Success owners ensure business goals are realized by helping people use and get value from the new Dynamics 365 solution.
Success owners should:
- Identify and engage the right stakeholders.
- Translate the organization's set business goals into Dynamics 365 scenarios.
- Create an adoption plan to drive usage and realize value from Dynamics 365.
- Ensure communications and training are successfully implemented.
Who are Early Adopters?
Selecting the right participants for the Early Adopter Program is key to gain valuable insights and inform the organization-wide launch.
This list describes the types of employee to include in your program:
- Users from different lines of business and departments, preferably those who work together on a project or business process.
- Likely champions or leaders who will become advocates during the broad launch to the entire organization.
- Users who typically struggle with technology. It's important to understand and address their needs during launch.
- IT and help desk team members who will support users during launch.
Important
Leave out the CEO and upper management. While it can be tempting to ask for the CEO’s involvement, keeping them out of the Early Adopter Program provides an opportunity to smooth out any issues before they are exposed during the rollout.
Who are champions?
Champions evangelize and help train their teams on the new ways of working. They build awareness, understanding, and engagement throughout the community.
Champions will:
- Create the surge of enthusiasm that grows adoption.
- Build a circle of influence among their teams.
- Bring the new ways of working to life across teams.
- Identify business challenges and possible solutions.
- Provide feedback to the project team and sponsors.
- Reduce strain on the core project team through active, ongoing engagement.
Other team members to include
Many people throughout your organization will have important responsibilities during the launch of a new technology. The table below provides a summary of those roles. We have created a template so you can identify and document your team in the Adoption Planning Workbook.
| Focus | Network facilitation | Department |
|---|---|---|
| Executive sponsor | Communicate high-level vision and values of Dynamics 365 to the company | Executive leadership |
| Success owner | Ensure the business goals are realized from your Dynamics 365 rollout | Any department |
| Program manager | Oversee the entire Dynamics 365 launch execution and rollout process | IT |
| Champions | Help evangelize Dynamics 365 and manage objection handling | Multiple departments |
| Training lead | Manage and communicate training content about Dynamics 365 | IT or other |
| Department leads (stakeholders) | Identify how specific departments will use Dynamics 365 and encourage engagement | Any department (management) |
| IT specialists | Oversee all technical aspects of the rollout, including integrations | IT |
| Communication lead | Oversee company-wide communications about Dynamics 365 | Corp communications, IT or other |
Note
Though we recommend having each of these roles fulfilled throughout your rollout, you may find that you don’t require them all to get started with your identified solutions. The companion Adoption team member role details has complete descriptions.
Define solution strategy
In this step, you will partner with your core team to refine your objectives, identify the important business objectives and challenges, and start to recognize areas of opportunity to improve work processes. You'll want to host a workshop to delve deeper into current challenges, strategies, and goals. This workshop should include department leads, lines of business, IT, and other stakeholders who can help brainstorm how Dynamics 365 can be used in your organization.
Consider these questions to drive the conversation:
- How does the solution relate to the organization’s broader strategy, goals, and objectives?
- How does it impact the experience and work delivered by the stakeholders?
- How is it inclusive of the broader holistic processes, product or customer lifecycle?
Identify your scenarios
Scenarios cover the ways your people will use Dynamics 365 to address business challenges and achieve organizational, cultural, tangible, or individual adoption outcomes.
Why are scenarios important?
- They allow teams to understand how Dynamics 365 can help them achieve more.
- They act as input and validation of Dynamics 365 awareness messaging.
- They support awareness and readiness activities by putting products in context; people will know when and how to use them.
Note
The Dynamics 365 Content Library is a collection of recommended use cases to showcase ideas on how to use the products to your best advantage in a way that’s relevant to you. Access the free webinars, e-books, analyst reports, and more in our content library to learn how Dynamics 365 can optimize your company. Get started: explore.dynamics.com
Create scenarios for multiple teams and departments
You can use the image below to help you document business scenarios for specific departments and then capture your scenarios in the Adoption Planning Workbook.
Define your success criteria
Champions evangelize and help train their teams on the new ways of working. They build awareness, understanding, and engagement throughout the community. Champions will:
- Identify key performance indicators (KPIs) that should improve based on adopting various business scenarios.
- Establish KPI benchmarks and users’ Dynamics 365 knowledge.
- Choose criteria to help you show your organization's leadership the impact your Dynamics 365 solution is having.
- After rollout, use the end-user surveys to measure satisfaction and progress against your benchmark.
View sample KPIs in the Adoption Planning Workbook.
Establish KPI Benchmarks
Choose criteria to demonstrate the impact of your Dynamics 365 implementation against each success measure. We have provided ideas below and scorecard templates in the Adoption Planning Workbook for you to effectively track and report success.
| Success measure | Method | Example goal |
|---|---|---|
| Cross-sell & upsell Capture & share cross-sell opportunities for related products with cross-department sales teams, customer 360 with AI-based recommendations. |
Quantitative Dynamics 365 Sales
|
New revenue from existing customers increasing from 15% to 20%. |
| Cost to serve Increase efficiency of agents serving customers with a more productive user experience, using lower-cost channels such as bots and increased self-service. |
Quantitative Dynamics 365 Customer Service
|
60% of customer cases resolved in (first) one call. |
| Increase production capacity Increase production output with preemptive issue avoidance and increased visibility and insight to feed improved capacity planning. |
Quantitative Dynamics 365 Finance
|
Increase gross margin from 50% to 60% by increasing output with existing production facilities. |
Determine readiness
Readiness is the willingness and preparedness of your users and your organization to move to Dynamics 365.
Why are scenarios important here?
- Every organization approaches change differently, depending on region, work style, professional profile, and other elements of the organization.
- Determine how receptive (or not) your users are likely to be to changing the way they work and adopting new technology.
- You will need to create a rollout plan that reflects the readiness of your organization.
Resistance is normal. Anticipate and plan ahead!
Readiness factors
These are key factors that will help you understand how prepared your organization is for the transition to Dynamics 365:
- Clear vision for the company shift.
- Clear vision for the individual shift.
- Amount of overall change required.
- Executive alignment.
Use the Adoption Planning Workbook to assess your organization.