We’ve spoken before at length about how technology is only useful if it solves problems that users actually experience. On Monday, our co-CEO, Steve Flavell, was invited to join a panel discussion at ITExpo, Las Vegas, dealing with this very subject: collaboration and adoption (or lack thereof!) of various technology solutions.
This panel discussion, entitled “Productive Collaboration: Using the Right Tools for Process Improvement,” brought together a great group of representatives from other companies giving their diverse thoughts on this issue. Steve was joined on the panel by Vishal Brown from Yorktel, Louis Richardson from IBM, Muthusamy Selvaraj from Polycom, and moderator David Stein of Stein Technology Consulting Group, who played devil’s advocate at many junctures.
Companies invest a lot of time and money in choosing and implementing new collaboration technologies, but often find that user uptake of these solutions is lower than expected. Barriers to adoption include ease of use, confusing features, lack of integration, and any other number of reasons. The panel discussion explored these obstacles to adoption, and suggested how to choose collaboration technologies to fit in with company needs, objectives and infrastructure.
It was interesting to hear the panelists’ views on this topic, coming from their varied industry experience and outlook. Steve has previously shared his views on these topics in posts on why people dislike conference calls, why video conferencing has an adoption problem, and why there is so much confusion around Unified Communications. In essence, we believe that many technologies aren’t used because they don’t solve problems that users actually face, and they are often too focused on features at the cost of simplicity of use. Indeed, to paraphrase Brian Ferguson from his talk on Unified Communications deployments later at the conference, the rationale for slow UC collaboration adoption is that people won’t use technology unless it truly solves a problem. Behaviour should drive technology, and not the other way round.
We remain fascinated by the interplay between user problems, technology and adoption, and look forward to continuing this discussion during the rest of ITExpo and beyond. What do you think the biggest barrier to technology adoption is? Tweet us @LoopUp.
