According to a leading industry source, more than 50 percent of enterprise-sized IT infrastructures are running mixed Microsoft Office end-user environments. Half the knowledge workers are running 2003; the rest are getting to know 2007 and the Ribbon.
When half your knowledge workers are using one version and the rest another, that’s a whole lot of lost functionality — and wasted time.
The recession and Office 2007’s immense learning curve are partly to blame, but, ultimately, it’s you, the IT leader, who must take responsibility for diminished return on investment. There’s still time to finish your migration; here are six reasons why you should:
1. ROI: You purchased X number of licenses and only have migrated half. You do the math: You purchased the upgrade for a reason — to take advantage of new and easier to find productivity features.
2. The dreaded Office 2007 learning curve: As evident in the hundreds of expletive-laced Tweets about Office 2007, the new user interface is a downright shock to many knowledge workers. Where’s the file menu? How do you save a document? What is this Ribbon? If you finish your migration, you will not have to face these questions again when you decide to upgrade to the next version (which also has a Ribbon interface).
3. New features: As stated in Reason No. 1, you purchased the upgrade for a reason — to increase worker productivity from the new and improved features (for example, Excel 2007 includes new formulas such as IFERROR, and more columns and rows).
4. The Ribbon is here to stay: Despite the existence of third-party add-ins that make 2007 look and act like 2003, installing them is counterproductive. The beta version of Office 2010 includes the Ribbon interface, and I suspect future versions will too. Embrace it.
5. Document compatibility: When you save 2007 documents in earlier formats, they lose some functionality. When half your knowledge workers are using one version and the rest another, that’s a whole lot of lost functionality — and wasted time.
6. User frustration: See Reasons 2-5.
Time to finish what you started.♦
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So, how dc you propose to deal with user frustration? I had Office 2007 when it first came out for 3 days and had it removed from my computer because there was no training available. Also, the protect document feature was broken and no correction was available. Microsoft really dropped a bomb on this one and I’ve not heard about any attempt to help users recover.
Thanks for your comment, Cindy, and I know how immensely frustrating Office 2007 can be without training and support. If it was installed on your work PC, and your company provided no training or assistance, then I suspect your CIO is either clueless or just cheap. Upgrading employees without any sort of assistance is shortsighted.
For home PC users, that’s another story. The redesign is jarring, to say the least. As one commenter put it: It’s as if Office was an automobile, and the manufacturer put the steering wheel in the trunk and the gas and brake pedals on the ceiling. Microsoft has published a few marginally useful guides to 2007, and some of the tech publications have issued so-called “cheat sheets” for most commonly asked questions. Here are a few links:
Computerworld: Office 2007 Cheat Sheets
Office 2007 for Dummies
Microsoft’s Official Office 2007 Guide
Here’s the thing, Cindy: Microsoft’s intent was to make the user interface more intuitive. Whether they accomplished that goal is up for debate. However, a look at the Office 2010 beta version reveals that the Ribbon is here to stay, so sticking with 2003 will only lengthen the learning curve. In my opinion, you have a few options:
If Office 2007 is installed (or was installed) at work without support, talk to your manager about its detrimental effect on your productivity. Let him know that you need training and support to at least get back up to speed.
If you were talking about home use, you can either embrace the new interface, or install an open source alternative (although I heard grumblings about OpenOffice moving toward a Ribbon-style design as well).
Feel free to ask me any questions in the meantime. I’m always reachable by e-mail: jen.darr@pchelps.com.
Regards,
Jen