Deciding Which EXP To Migrate To? Here Are 6 Things To Consider First

The employee experience platform (EXP) landscape is ever-evolving. The market has already gone from being dominated by static intranets to dynamic packaged solutions, and now key players are retiring their products.

You might be affected by this turn of events or simply feel it’s time to consider a change. In either case, making as informed a decision as possible about the tool you move to is key if you want to hit the ground running.

So, here are six areas to take into account at the start of your migration journey.

1. First and foremost, why you shouldn’t build your own

Our homegrown intranet didn’t go way over budget or take ages to deliver

– No CIO – literally none of them – ever

You might be tempted to move to an EXP that you build yourself. We could spend a long time listing all the reasons that’s a terrible idea – in fact, we’ve done so already – but to keep it brief: homegrown intranets are more expensive, resource-intensive, and unpredictable thank you think, while at the same time guaranteeing lower adoption, inclusivity, and scalability than a packaged solution.

2. Identifying your needs

Take the time to map out what you need from your EXP. Ask yourself – and your potential new partner – how the tool fares in these areas.

Worker types + accessibility

Are your employees primarily hybrid or remote? Do your teams work on the front line, behind a desk, or a combination of both? Whatever EXP you choose to migrate to should be proven in its ability to engage all types of workers, whether that’s through a strong mobile app, podcasts shift employees can listen back to in their own time, or other features.

Security

Whether you’re a financial services company or a medical institution, the information you store on your new EXP and the conversations it makes possible should be secure.

Customer support

How much help does the team behind the tool you’re considering offer? Can they tailor packages to your needs and share expert advice and additional consulting? Will they continue to guide you after your new platform has been built and launched? These are all important things to gauge before making your final decision. 

Did you know that Workvivo has a customer satisfaction score of 98%? Pretty impressive, if you want our totally unbiased opinion...

Budget

Have internal conversations so your team is aligned on budget. Make sure you ask prospective partners if there are hidden costs you should be aware of. It can be useful to consider how the right EXP will save you time and money in ways that aren’t obvious too, like automating processes that currently take members of your team hours to complete or replacing the need for physical signage in frontline locations.

Reviews

Do your research. Trusted review sites like G2, TrustRadius, and Gartner Peer Insights feature comments and scores for different apps from real users. You can learn a lot about how a tool truly functions and whether people actually like using it or not by reading them.

Personalization + features

The features you want in your new EXP will probably depend on a few things, like how and where your people work, the industry you’re in, the size of your team, how dispersed your organization is, and the kinds of communication you want to use it for. Consider these areas and how features – from activity feeds, private group spaces, and livestreaming to employee shoutouts and badges – align with your needs and priorities.

Integrations

Start thinking about the integrations you’ll need your new EXP to cater for. Review what you’re using in your current platform for guidance, and create a wishlist of what a new tool could open up for you. It can help to group them into categories so nothing gets missed – like productivity tools, payroll apps, PTO dashboards, and more.

Leveraging the right integrations through Workvivo has been transformative for Bus Éireann, with easy access to third-party apps making work more inclusive for its drivers and cutting down printing and postage costs for the company. Its Head of Internal Comms, Tanya Waldron, shared, “It has actually led to better information rather than less information.”

3. Internal communication and change management

Migrating to a new employee app might feel like an upheaval for some of your staff. Ultimately, they’ll be the end users of your new tool and it’s them you’re counting on not only to register for it, but to engage with it long-term – so it's important to keep them in the loop as much as possible.

Inform them of the upcoming change, be transparent and honest about what you do and don’t know, and make sure they know they can speak up and ask questions.

If you’re at a loss as to where to start, center your strategy around these core points:

• Why the change is necessary, including any problems with your existing system 
• What the new system will look like and the benefits it will have for employees
• When the change will be rolled out to all employees

Managing this change and communicating it effectively will also help you build excitement for your new EXP, painting the journey in the positive light it deserves.

4. Empowering internal champions

As part of your internal comms and change management strategy for the migration, consider nominating ‘internal champions’ or influencers to act as ambassadors for your migration project. 

At Kent, for example, internal advocates helped Director of Internal Communications Mandy McDermott run a listening campaign to guide the company's new culture roadmap. “The employee voice was absolutely the most important aspect of measuring and understanding what we needed to do next,” Mandy shared, and it meant that 10,000-plus colleagues were actively engaged in the decision-making process.

Employ people from a variety of teams, departments, and seniority levels across the organization to relay accurate information to their colleagues. It helps stop the rumor mill in its tracks, and creates a more open culture; people are often far more comfortable being open with their peers than a *member of leadership they don’t know.

(*Side note: the right EXP will change that!)

5. What your timeline looks like

There’s no one-size-fits-all, and that’s why finding the right partner is crucial. You should break down your project into phases – think along the lines of:

• Phase 1: Finalizing the vision and business objectives
• Phase 2: Reviewing your legacy system. What do you want to keep or leave behind?
• Phase 3: Score your prospects based on your priorities, and make the decision!
• Phase 4: Double down on internal communication, bringing your teams along for the journey
• Phase 5: Thinking beyond your new platform. After choosing your partner, you'll need to start thinking about the migration itself. How will you move your content over? What will you do to mark the launch of your new tool? Who will you make admins of the platform? How will you measure its success in both the short and long term? 

Of course, there will probably be curveballs along the way. Having a solid plan in place will make them far easier to deal with.

6. How you’ll migrate your content

Does the new platform you’re looking at offer robust migration methods and assistance? How you’ll get everything that exists on your current EXP to your new one will undoubtedly be the chunkiest part of the project.

At a high level, here’s what you’ll need to factor into your content migration strategy:

1. Run inventory on the content you have living on your current platform
2. Audit your content, deciding what to migrate and what to leave behind. Ask yourself questions like, is this content still relevant? Does this content still align with our values?
3. Envision how your content will sit on your new EXP. Take the migration as an opportunity to build a more user-friendly experience, setting out new agreed-upon categories, labels, and naming conventions as part of your new EXP governance guidelines.
4. When it’s time to actually migrate, set up a task force of people with a good eye for detail. Stick on Spotify, take it one section at a time, and meticulously log your progress so you don’t double up on content – or workloads! Make sure you proofread everything you move across, too.

Consider Workvivo for your new EXP

If we haven’t scared you off migrating to a new EXP, consider Workvivo as your partner in *crime!

*By which we really mean, delivering amazing employee experiences, of course...