Digital Transformation is moving at warp speed; every industry is transforming and adopting new technology to adapt to this ever-changing landscape. Businesses are realigning goals, metrics, and processes through this digital transformation. A couple of weeks ago, we released a blog focusing on Digital Transformation, Building a Strategy, ROI, and Human Touch. Next, we want to dive in deeper and talk about User Adoption.
User adoption is how users adapt current technologies to fill a specific need. They have transferred from an old system and adopted a new system that better fits the current needs of the business.
Adoption is one of the essential business transformation metrics. A high digital adoption rate is one of the key indicators of a successful digital transformation. For example, if 85% of users are utilizing the software, you can assume that the software adoption is successful; under 50%, you face poor technology adoption.
“Enterprise executives will spend big on digital transformation this year, which will help drive overall global information technology spending by 8.4%, to $4.1 trillion, by the end of 2021.” – Gartner Inc.
To Have a successful user adoption rate, you need to think of it in a multi-faceted approach that requires solid tech and solid communication to ensure that you reach a goal of 85% (or more!) adoption rate.
Before going forward, you need to think of why you’re adopting this new technology?
Depending on your answer, be mindful of this opportunity to go through and implement new technology, products, or service. “This is a great time to make changes within your organization, becoming the natural inflection point to drive efficiencies within processes,” says Greg Symons, President and Founder of Blueprint Advisory.
1) Engage Key Stakeholders Early and Often
Key Stakeholders need to be involved in the digital transformation strategy. They have a vested interest in the success of the business. Include not just C-level executives but also sales, marketing, IT, & technology personnel. Get them involved early and often, giving them a sense of ownership in the program’s overall success. Each has a unique understanding of the operating environment that they work in, and it provides valuable insight into the transformation.
We often see companies not producing their desired results because the right people at the table were not included initially. As a result, you will have missed requirements and people who feel entitled to give their opinion about the overall program (they can make your life easy or really hard).
2) Find the Right Partner
Finding a partner who can listen to the business and the various stakeholders who feel the pain driving the transformation. Partners are experts in implementing the tools and processes that you are looking to adopt. Allow them to be your guide in implementation and capturing requirements by doing it in a way that is building a product that should be a no-brainer when it’s launched.
Allowing your partner to engage key stakeholders through the process will allow for a wider user adoption rate because the product has been designed and thought of very intentionally with the right personas in mind. Implementation by a partner who knows what they are doing and has the foresight to think of training and change management as a workstream in their overall project plan will create a happy transition.
Both of these key points revolve around surrounding yourself with the right people, be they the Key Stakeholders who have a vested interest in the success of your program or the partners who help you develop your ideas and get you to where you need to be.
Once you’ve gathered the right people and built a technology that your team can be proud of, you can start thinking about going live! When you do though, you need to think about how you’re going to track and measure the success of your project. You can start monitoring your user adoption rate through various metrics. Salesforce recommends tracking the following metrics for user adoption.
We are looking for things like who logged in, who is not logging in, login rate over the last seven days, and opportunities and activities created during the previous 30 days. This information makes it easy to see if our staff understands how to use Salesforce and the processes that we have put in place. If we are not seeing the progress that you want, then we look into more training or individual training to ensure the success of our employees and business.
By keeping communication open and transparent during the process, you can hopefully receive some good feedback from your employees on how the transition is going, allowing you to meet the needs of your business more quickly and adapt your digital transition as required.