Once a new system has been created, the next challenge is to make people – employees, customers – use it. In the past, back-office systems such as billing, accounting and payroll were easy to implement. The users were clerks who could be put through a few hours or days of training and told to use the system; they had no choice. Today’s system users may be less pliable and may refuse to go along or protest in such a way that you have to change the system, or even abandon it. As an example, Internet customers may “vote with their feet,” i.e., go to another website that provides the same service or goods at a better price or more easily.
Another example of how things can go wrong was recently provided by a large hospital organization that had created at great expense a system for physicians and surgeons. It was based on portable devices that the physician would carry around and on expensive stationary equipment at the patients’ bedsides and in nursing stations. Three months after the launch, it became apparent that practically all the physicians refused to use the system, and it had to be uninstalled, at the cost of tens of millions of dollars.
The issue of user adoption will be covered in more detail in Information systems methodologies, System Implementation.
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