Microsoft

Rob Wilson, Business Unit Director – Application Solutions

We all know it is important to measure return on investment (ROI) when implementing a new solution. Solution ‘x’ saved ‘y’ dollars by requiring ‘z’ fewer hours from employees ‘a’ and ‘b.’ But what about those projects where the cost savings are less quantifiable? How do you measure the success of a project, for example, whose sole purpose is to streamline communication? Or what about a project aimed at improving customer satisfaction? When there is not a direct impact on the bottom line, how will you know if your project succeeded? You measure the outcomes.

Before you can measure the outcomes, you need to identify them, and determine the appropriate metrics to measure. A recent software adoption course I attended suggested using a format such as this to position your initiatives:

While I appreciate the spirit of this exercise, it would be better if it were more objective. Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup, suggests an approach that is based more on the scientific method. According to sciencebuddies.org, the steps of the scientific method are:

• Ask a question
• Do background research
• Construct a hypothesis
• Test your hypothesis by doing an experiment
• Analyze your data and draw a conclusion
• Communicate your results

A simpler, more scientific way of articulating your objectives and measuring their adoption may go like this:

We believe that our customers would appreciate a more convenient way to pay their bills.
We will test this by creating an online form for customers to pay their bills on our web site.
We will know we have succeeded if 25% or more of our customers have paid 3 bills online within a year of launching the feature.

How you come up with that final statement is a topic for another day. You will get better at analytics with experience. I will say that measuring adoption over time is key, so do not get too disappointed if early adoption is slow, or too elated if your early numbers are through the roof. Your metrics should have some factor of time involved when measuring adoption. This brings me to the next point: how do you present your findings? You should not need a degree in reading log files to measure adoption. A better approach would be to build your objectives and outcomes right into the application itself, and display them on an administrative dashboard. In this case, a chart showing the trending in online payments – particularly by repeat customers – would be most effective.

Let us consider another example. Suppose your objective is to improve communication of your company policies with your employees. Emailing a policy to your staff would be difficult to track. Emailing a link to a policy on your intranet would be a step up – if you do not mind parsing log files. Ideally, however, you would email a link to your policy where it sits on SharePoint or some other platform, and with a little custom code, SharePoint can log a list of everyone who has read each policy (even a particular version of a policy). Creating some quick views would allow you to view metrics and provide the tools you need to nudge holdouts on key policies.

In summary, if you want to measure the success of a software initiative, you should determine the desired outcome, decide how you will measure it, and agree upon which results will show you have succeeded. Restate your value hypothesis on a scorecard on an admin dashboard, and track the results over time. I trust you will find that a focus on adoption such as this will greatly improve your decision-making over time – including knowing what features are important to your audience and justifying what projects should be implemented. If you would like help getting started, contact us for a consultation on software adoption strategies.

Contact your Account Manager at Keller Schroeder for more information about our Applications Solutions Group  and how it might benefit your organization.

Carrie Rudolph, Systems Consultant

In January 2014, Microsoft announced the retirement of InfoPath forms and the 2013 version will be the last release. Although Microsoft will continue to support InfoPath until 2023 and they still recommend continuing to build forms with this tool, Keller Schroeder does not recommend building any forms with longevity or complexity in InfoPath. Microsoft has not laid out any migration plans, but they have promised more information on this topic in Q4 2014. The message we have received up to this point is that it is not likely there will be a smooth, automated migration path off of InfoPath, but it is probable that forms will need to be rebuilt in the new tool or technology of your choice. If your form is part of a long-term solution in your organization, there would be very little value in building it in InfoPath now and using a new tool later. Connecting to line of business systems or adding custom code in InfoPath forms requires a significant amount of knowledge and time. The investment to gain this proprietary knowledge will likely not be transferable to the other forms tools.

Microsoft’s announcement stated “Industry trends and feedback from our customers and partners make it clear that today’s businesses demand an intelligent, integrated forms experience that spans devices.” InfoPath does not fit this need, which is one of the reasons for its retirement. The following are features we feel are important considerations when evaluating modern form solutions:

• Easily integrates with line of business systems in order to bring together data and empower users
• Is accessible across multiple device types without cumbersome customization
• Has the ability to support on-premises and cloud-based solutions
• Produces browser-based forms with HTML 5 and modern browser support
• Is available to Information Workers in order to empower them to build forms and collect data in a timely and efficient manner

So what are the options for replacing InfoPath? Microsoft is working on a few new tool sets, but admitted at the 2014 SharePoint User Conference they do not have a clear road map of what the solutions will be. One of the new technologies being developed is called FoSL (Forms on top of SharePoint List). The target release date for FoSL is mid to late 2014 and a full list of features to be included has not been defined. FoSL is intended to be a no code forms solution that you configure within the SharePoint browser experience. However, based on communications from Microsoft on this topic, we do not get the feeling they are working toward a robust form solution, as Microsoft is also recommending third party tools to meet users’ form needs.

The front runners in the third party SharePoint forms arena have had form solutions that surpass InfoPath for some time now.

K2 Forms is a no code forms solution that supports easy to configure integration with line of business systems as well as modern browser support, making these forms accessible across multiple devices. It also integrates with K2’s workflow engine to complete the full K2 business application platform. K2 does integrate seamlessly with SharePoint but can also be utilized independently from SharePoint making it an enterprise-level solution.

Nintex Forms for SharePoint is a web-based designer that allows you to configure SharePoint forms from the browser. It integrates seamlessly with Nintex workflow for building robust automated business process solutions within SharePoint. Nintex is limited to SharePoint and cannot be used independently. Nintex does support both cloud and on-premises solutions as well as multiple device accessibility.

Formotus Forms is a cloud-based service for creating and managing your own custom mobile form-based business applications. This solution allows for offline interaction and submission of forms. It has SharePoint connectivity as well as integration with other line of business systems via web services. This is a subscription-based service that can be integrated with on-premises, cloud, or hybrid installations.

For more information on any of these options, please contact us.

Keller Schroeder is a K2 partner. For more details regarding K2 Forms, please attend Keller Schroeder’s upcoming webinar on Wednesday, June 11 at 10 AM CST, titled No InfoPath, No Problem with K2 and Keller Schroeder. Don’t wait! Register today!