This article has been put together for Warp It Administrators, to help you pilot the Warp It programme.

The optimal stage to run a pilot is once you’ve set yourself up on the system, got to grips with the settings and customisable features, and have some insights about what the first major milestones you wish to deliver are.

What do we mean by a ‘mini pilot’?

A mini pilot is when we deliver the project to a fixed number of colleagues in order to test the system before it officially launches. There are three main benefits to a mini pilot:

1. You get to introduce the system to handpicked people who are involved in the reuse process. You get to introduce it to them first and win their buy-in through exclusivity and empowerment.
2. You get excellent feedback from users in your organisation, helping you shape the system in a way that works for everybody.
3. You create some drama or word-of-mouth buzz around the estate about your system. As soon as other stakeholders hear that there is an exclusive trial going on, they’re going to want to know more. ‘What is this about then?’. You can use this word of mouth to get pre-subscribers and early buy-in.

Who should be in your mini pilot?

This is completely your call, but we do have some good advice for you. You should include the main actors of reuse. You’ll want someone from procurement, someone from logistics, someone from facilities management, someone from waste, someone from sustainability, someone from space or estates management, someone involved in decanting stuff, and someone who is part of the decommissions process. You should definitely have someone from finance to see the savings potential, and you should try and get a couple of building managers and the estate’s biggest buyers there too.

A trick for extra results!

We’ve been told by some of our customers that when they run their mini pilot they limit the number of participants to around 20 so that there aren’t too many cooks to spoil the broth. They invite people that you might call influencers, those who are mutually connected to everybody, who carry a lot of respect. These people have a huge word-of-mouth potential.

The blanket email technique

Instead of cherrypicking who you want on your mini pilot, you can build a larger list of who might make a good user. Then you send them all the same email to say that you only have 20 places on the pilot and you want them to be in there. This creates desire and exclusivity and will make people want to take part. Another bonus of this is that the surplus people beyond those initial 20 will all be so keen to use the system when it launches fully, that you can use them to help spread the word.

How do you run your mini pilot?

You can send this email template to your defined set of stakeholders and see who responds. Once the stakeholders get the email, it has instructions about what Warp It is, why you are doing it, and what you need to do next.

So, next, you get them to sign up to the system. They then receive a prompt to add or claim an item. The stakeholders should then provide feedback to the administrator about any tweaks or changes that could be made to the system before it goes live. This can all be done over email. Or…

You can hold mini pilot meetings

You only need a couple. One at the start, and one at the end. Send out an email about the times, dates, and locations of the meetings, and be sure to follow it up with a nudge for anyone who doesn’t reply. After the second meeting, get all of the feedback together and make those changes to the system.

Good news!

Now, you are ready to launch.

Did you miss it in the article above?

Here's your FREE email template

for the first staff send out