Open Access

Chiara Renna

• During the last years, an increasing number of organisations has tended to favour the utilisation of collaboration software to support organisational processes and their employees in their daily work. Even though most of the software products are sold in a standardised manner, they offer a great variety in terms of their functionalities. Consequently, a company is likely to find a software solution which suits its distinct requirements which themselves originate from technological, market and social changes and prevailing VUCA conditions. Hence, a company is forced to regularly adapt its internal processes and structures to maintain competitive in the business as well as the labour market. Utilising a collaboration software represents a promising opportunity for a company to introduce solutions for real time communication, social networks or shared information bases which are already used commonly in people’s private lives to the professional environment as well. Thereby they allow associates to transcend geographical and temporal distances while facilitating fast interaction, increasing productivity and providing for new opportunities for collaboration in both, regular work routines and exceptional situations. The corporate implementation of such a software can be realised by building on formal project planning principles. This project management-driven approach tends to concentrate on preparing the steps required to ensure a successful deployment from a technical perspective. The effectiveness of the implementation, however, is mainly determined by employees’ reaction to the new software: Their level of acceptance and the incorporation of the software’s functionalities into their daily business routines finally influences to which degree an organisation can exploit and experience the desired benefits. Aiming towards positively shaping users’ perceptions and the software’s usage, the critical success factors for software implementations are reviewed. Given that most of them are directly related to the people affected by the implementation, underlines the importance of interpreting the implementation of a collaboration software as an organisational change. By analysing the change process in theory and considering the employees’ behaviours for the subsequent conceptualisation of an implementation strategy, a user-centred approach can be further promoted. The theoretical insights obtained from the scientific research on collaboration software implementations and the related organisational change process are then applied to a business case which deals with the implementation of the collaboration software product Office 365 at TTS Tooltechnic Systems AG & Co. KG. After presenting the derived implementation structure, it can be concluded that so far, the identified critical success factors were verified by the case study. Moreover, the user-centred approach which focusses on guiding employees through the change process and ensuring a smooth transition in general produced positive results. Nevertheless, it can be observed that an adequate project planning and timing remains indispensable. The final evaluation of the implementation’s success cannot be performed yet, since the implementation at the company has just recently started, but it becomes clear that it will likely be influenced much by the ongoing required cultural change within the company.