This past year has been one of the busiest of my professional life.

In previous years, leaders at some organizations that purchased new collaboration tools thought they couldn’t afford to include adoption services as well. But now, with employees largely working from home, many organizations are discovering that they can’t afford not to invest in an initiative that helps users leverage new solutions in ways that will enable them to overcome fragmented communications and work together effectively — no matter where in the world they happen to be.

Here’s why 2020 was the year when many business and IT leaders discovered just how essential adoption services are — and why these services will continue to be in demand in 2021 and beyond.

When I begin working with an organization on its collaboration efforts, I often find that the company already supports a number of tools. Some have different solutions for different functions, such as calling, messaging, file sharing and video meetings. And others run multiple platforms that essentially do the same things.

It’s sometimes necessary, of course, for organizations to adopt and support multiple collaboration solutions. But there really can be such a thing as too much when it comes to these tools. It’s not just that the cost of purchasing and supporting more solutions will naturally be higher than the cost of purchasing and supporting fewer platforms. There’s also the danger of employees becoming confused about the differences among the various tools — and, therefore, using them less (or less effectively).

An unwieldly, sprawling collaboration environment can lead to an organization paying more for less productivity. Here are some steps we take to help business and IT leaders find the right mix of collaboration tools for their organizations.

Almost no company would roll out a new flagship product to its customers without engaging in extensive market research, aggressive advertising, robust public relations and careful analysis of the product’s performance. It’s puzzling, then, that many organizations roll out new IT solutions to their internal users with little more than a handful of training sessions — if that.

When a business replaces familiar tools and workflows with new technologies, the change requires a culture shift. I’m always surprised when an organization spends millions of dollars on a new tool for their employees but then skips out on adoption services. Sure, an organization may still get basic functionality from its IT with this approach, but it won’t attain the actual goal of rolling out a new solution: to build value for the business.

Here are five steps that every organization should take during a significant IT deployment.

The public cloud hasn’t yet become the most popular place to host a customer engagement center — but it will. The shift is inevitable, as the benefits of migrating a customer engagement center to the public cloud are simply too powerful to ignore.

The move can bring many of the same benefits as other cloud migrations, including increased scalability and flexibility as well as the ability to shift from a capital expense (CAPEX) financing model to an operating expense (OPEX) model. Perhaps even more important, a cloud customer engagement center allows organizations to rapidly adopt new services, which get pushed out automatically as vendors update their products. The ability to roll these out as they become available is extremely valuable.

Still, moving to a cloud customer engagement center isn’t a matter of a simple lift and shift. Here are four steps organizations should take to successfully migrate their customer engagement centers to the public cloud.

Microsoft isn’t retiring its Skype for Business Online solution until the summer of 2021, but we’re already seeing a growing number of organizations transitioning to Microsoft Teams. Businesses are finding that their employees really respond to an environment that ties together collaboration tools such as chat, file sharing, calendar, voice and video.

While it’s exciting to see users adopting a powerful tool on their own, it’s also important for organizations to be strategic in how they roll out and support Teams. Here are three ways to ensure your Teams deployment improves operations and helps your organization achieve its business goals.

Recently, I helped set up a demonstration of a video collaboration huddle space at an East Coast law firm. My partner and I expected the lawyers to use the equipment for a couple of minutes to test it out with their colleagues in another office, but two minutes stretched into five, and five stretched into 25. As the call went on, steady voices rose to angry shouts. However, when the legal team emerged from the room, one of the managing partners looked at us and said, “Please move forward with the project.” Then he walked away.