Planning a Global/Multi-Team QorusDocs Rollout

QorusDocs can radically enhance your business operations, improve productivity, and provide transparency through more accurate data. Implementation can be really exciting, but it can also be really stressful if you're rolling out the solution to multiple teams and/or across multiple regions. With the right steps and communication, you can help ensure a seamless transition to QorusDocs, minimizing potential business disruptions, and reassuring employees with training and support.

8 Steps to a Successful Rollout

1.  Assign a project manager

Planning and ensuring things stay on course will require time and effort, and upkeep of a carefully crafted project plan. We would advise appointing a Project Manager (PM) to partner with the QorusDocs PM, to ensure both teams stay on course throughout the implementation process. 

2.  Define your user stories

This is the most important step you will take in this process. In order to start a rollout plan, you have to understand who will be using QorusDocs, how they'll be engaging with the software and what their specific outcomes and expectations will be. You'll also need to define what resources the users need and how they will get support while using QorusDocs.  

The best way to document your users' requirements is to use a User Story Template. Here's a User Story Excel template that you can download and use to capture your user stories. This will be an incredibly valuable exercise to complete, and will help you identify your key use cases and user groups. Involve a key person from each group to validate and challenge your use cases to ensure you don't miss anything. 

3.  Prioritize the groups for rollout

Now that you have a list of your user groups and their use cases, prioritize them in order of rollout.

To start, pick 1 group of users that you feel would be good. Which one you pick will be dependent on many factors, and differ from customer to customer. (You may also want to only pick 1 use case. I.e. not all the use cases for the group. This is up to you, but our advice is to start simple, and iterate quickly.)

Here are some considerations, when choosing the right group to kick-off with:

• Pick a group that is likely to give honest and candid feedback early on. This will help iterate on the solution quickly. 
• You may want to start locally, if you have global teams. You don't need the added frustration of time zone challenges, when trying to collect feedback. 
• If your selected use case(s) requires good content, consider the effort involved in getting the content ready. If there's another team or use case with better content or templates that are updated, that may be a better place to start. 
• Pick a team that is excited about the product and the outcomes it will yield. You don't want detractors kicking back on the change, disguised as negative feedback. This initial group will also likely become champions and QorusDocs power users going forward, so they'll need to be positive and disciplined around sticking to the plan. 
• Pick a group that will use the product at a velocity that allows them weekly feedback. Don't pick a team that would only use QorusDocs once a month; this won't allow for quick iterations and feedback. 

Next, decide on the remaining groups' order of rollout. End off with the group that's least likely to provide feedback and/or adopt the solution quickly. (You can denote the order in column B of the User Story Excel template.)

Once you've documented this, the PMs can use it to create a plan with dates, around the rollout. These user stories can then also be used as test cases in the acceptance-testing sign-off.

Each user in the groups should receive a copy of their use cases, and they will use those to test out the solution over a pre-defined timeframe. 

Document all feedback and discuss this with your QorusDocs Customer Success Manager and Implementation Specialist. 

4.  Plan for time needed to refresh content

Any software like QorusDocs relies on the quality of content and templates. Time has to be planned for, by content owners, to refresh content, remove customer/prospect data and split it out from past RFPs and proposals. So, plan for time to refresh content that doesn't clash with other competing priorities, personal time off, major holidays, month/quarter/year ends or seasons where volumes of RFPs/proposals are high. You also want to consider these factors when picking a go-live date!

5.  Get IT ownership and support of QorusDocs

QorusDocs is designed to fit easily and seamlessly into your Microsoft 365 (M365) environment, with SharePoint Online (SPO) being configured as the “source” for content. If this is something you want to take advantage of, you'll need support from your IT department.

Lack of IT ownership and accountability is a key challenge that we've seen at QorusDocs that impacts rollout and ongoing success. You'll need backing and support of your IT department, preferably named individuals tasked with responding to queries around the associated systems that QorusDocs interacts with. 

Document these individuals along with their roles and responsibilities as they pertain to QorusDocs, which can include:

• Technical partnership with QorusDocs to resolve issues that span across your organization's M365 applications. 
• Troubleshooting add-in accessibility and installation.
• Providing access to QorusDocs implementation and support resources timeously, where necessary. 
• Providing support around access/permissions to content.
• Management of associated Active Directory groups, if applicable.
• Assignment of product licenses (e.g. Power Bi, Microsoft Office, etc.) where applicable. 
• Assisting with organizational application consents on initial implementation steps, where appropriate. 

6. Pick an escalation contact

Identify an overarching escalation contact, for QorusDocs, with whom we can engage if we feel things are falling off-track. Sometimes champions leave or projects get deprioritized and it can be difficult to get things back on track. To ensure that you maximize your investment in QorusDocs, and meet your desired outcomes, we want to support your organization as much as we can through implementation, raising red flags when we see them. 

Beyond the core team, allocate a single contact that we can reach out to on the rare occasion that things don't go according to plan. This should be a decision maker, or the budget holder of the QorusDocs initiative, and they should not be involved in the implementation.

7.  Communicate the objective with all employees affected, before you rollout

Now it's time to share the business' objective. Your teams must understand why QorusDocs has been selected and what the outcomes you're trying to achieve are, as a business. If everyone understands the Why, they are more likely to buy into the solution. 

Then, find a way to communicate this effectively. If you're implementing QorusDocs across multiple teams, regions or departments, you'll need the leaders' buy-in first and then an agreement on where in the process QorusDocs will be used, holding each leader accountable for their teams to jointly ensure adoption of the product. 

Here are some tactics:

• Ask your QorusDocs Account Executive for a recorded demo of the product, geared toward your goals and objectives. Plan the demo so that it includes points that will resonate with the teams.
• Spend time with each team in a feedback session after the demo. Record their objections or challenges and take this back to your QorusDocs Account Executive. We have an arsenal of resources to help position the software carefully, in the face of all type of objections. 
• Find a champion in each team to help with adoption, and give them responsibility. Incentivize them, if you can, to drive usage of the product.
• Include IT in this process! This is why it's critical.

8.  Training & resources should be easily accessible and relevant

Create a place for training resources, instructions, onboarding/offboarding processes, etc. The QorusDocs Academy and Help Center are two key resources for all users, but you may want to incorporate demos and recordings of your own environment. 

We've seen great success with customers who start an internal "Wiki" page of FAQs or a Teams channel where QorusDocs end users can post questions or start discussions. This creates a sense of community and can be powerful to drive adoption. 

We've also seen great success with customers who select a few key power users internally to act as a 1st line of support, for all end users. (Via a Teams group, or email, etc.) In this case, this group will receive all requests in the initial days of go-live, and this will slowly dial down as users become more proficient in the use of the software. We find that most of the questions in the early days are around business process, access to content, explanations of new templates, etc. These are not always questions that the QorusDocs support team will be able to answer, so it's helpful to have resources on hand, who can. 

In Summary

Here's a quick checklist that summarizes the above:

• Assign a project manager.
• Define your user stories using the User Story Excel template.
• Prioritize the order in which you want to rollout the groups. 
• Create versions of the User Story Excel template for each group to share with them. (Get their feedback on these use cases, to ensure you've captured the right things.)
• Plan for time to refresh content and pick a good go-live date that makes sense!
• Confirm an individual who will be accountable for QorusDocs, from IT.
• Decide on an escalation contact for QorusDocs. This should be the decision maker/budget holder. (Someone who's not involved in the implementation.)
• Craft a communication plan & demo the solution to all the relevant groups. 
• Implement a centralized resource location and a 1st line of support team, for the initial days.

We hope this helps to provide a high-level guide on what to think about when planning a multi-team or global rollout. There is no single plan that works for everyone; it will vary from business to business. But, there certainly are pitfalls, best practices and advice that QorusDocs can share with you, based on our experience supporting hundreds of rollouts of this nature.