With the new year, it's time to start a new series. Every month we'll be publishing some tips and tricks on how you can get your Igloo off the ground. If you've just signed on, or signed up to try one out, we'll provide a few things you can do to ensure you get the most out of your digital workplace right from the start. 

There are a few key decisions that need to be made right at the start. often they happen during the sales process, but it's always worth clarifying them after the fact. These are going to determine the focus of your digital workplace, and help direct where to best spend time and energy. The clearer your vision is, the easier it will be to realize, and the more productive any time spent with our implementation teams will be. 

Outcomes

What are the initial outcomes you're looking for?  Make a list of the outcomes you're looking for, and start to prioritize it in order to make the best use of your time. Here's a quick list of things we've seen clients do in the past: 

• Use Spaces and Solutions to create sets of intensely collaborative workspaces.
• Focus on governance by unifying policies and creating an easy place for people to access them. 
• Create a central communications hub where people can easily find out what's happening and where projects stand. 
• Create a nuanced digital workplace that serves diverse stakeholders, like partners, customers, and employees all at once. 

We have clients in every stage of their digital transformation, some focused on a single team or office, while others are pushing to shift all of their workflows into the cloud.

Scope

Once you've decided on your outcomes, and determined what needs to be achieved first, you're in a position to look at when those goals need to be met. What business challenges do you need to address, and by when? It takes time to shift work and people to a new platform, and to the cloud, so it's worth making those goals time sensitive. How will you know when the outcomes have been achieved, and how will you use analytics to measure them? 

Ownership

Most importantly, your digital workplace needs owners. Who are your Workplace Administrators and what are their responsibilities? The platform is focused on empowering your members, letting you set up owners of individual Spaces or projects, and provide additional powers to non-administrators. The owners of your digital workplace will be the people who need the deepest understanding of your needs and use cases, and will not only require support and resources, but will need to provide support and resources to other members as they adjust to the platform. Clear ownership means that when members aren't sure, they know exactly who to go to. 

Having a clear plan of what, who, and when is the key to getting started with your digital workplace. It will guide which Solutions you need, and help you through your entire implementation. The plan may change, but it's easier to change a plan than make a new one. 

Over the next few months, this series will look at how to get started with content strategy, notifications, access, and much more. In the meantime, if you have questions about the Igloo platform, workflows, or best practices, you can leave a comment here, or ask a question in the Community area.