Manage Change With Digital Adoption Platforms | Deloitte US has been saved
Authored by Lee Merovitz, Nancy Vosburgh, and Paige Parent
The path to digital adoption
How do we support the reimagined workforce of the future coupled with an ever-expanding technology landscape? How do we keep our people motivated and engaged with their work when the systems that support them are continuously changing? Is it possible to remove obstacles and provide a clear path forward to achieve fully realized digital adoption?
To be successful at a time when both the workforce and technologies are in constant evolution, organizations must strategically and intentionally enable their people with tools that guide them at the point of need. Enter the digital adoption platform.
A digital adoption platform is a tool to engage employees directly within an application through onscreen guidance. Digital adoption platforms can provide interfaces like step-by-step walkthroughs for a new feature or a popup that welcomes you to a new dashboard and provides a tour. By layering on top of web-based applications, digital adoption platforms seamlessly enable learning within the flow of work. A digital adoption platform is a component of a well-balanced learning program and change strategy that focuses on technological changes, allowing traditional training to reach broader audiences focused on nontechnological changes that are organizational, cultural, and process oriented.
With a diverse set of features, digital adoption platforms have the power to improve the employee experience for newly launched or significantly changing applications, driving increased engagement and proficiency in the system.
An evolving landscape
The 2020s have ushered in an era when we operate with a vastly changing workforce and a continuously evolving technology stack. Globally, “89% of large corporations have a digital and artificial intelligence transformation underway” and yet “have only captured 31% of the expected revenue lift from the effort.”1 Realizing the benefits of modern technology is difficult to achieve and can put enormous strain on employees.
Meeting the needs of today’s workforce is at the forefront of leaders’ minds. “In the United States, more than 40% of workers are now employed in 'alternative work arrangements,' such as contingent, part-time, or gig work", forcing employers to find new ways to onboard, train, and support their people.2 This trend is expected to continue as younger generations “don’t necessarily see themselves working full time over the long term for a single organization.”3 Change must be managed deliberately as the alternative workforce becomes the future of work. Enabling consistent support and learning opportunities within the flow of work is essential to ensure all workers are upskilled in the areas they need to be successful and efficient in their work—no matter their role or the technology they are using.
Technology has become so prevalent in our lives and in the workforce that we often have multiple, competing technological solutions within an organization, and we expect people to engage with all of them in the ways they are intended to. Every new communication tool, resource management application, or customer relationship management application adds up, with each one competing for our engagement. Existing technologies release new features and versions at unpredictable rates. Over time this translates to “workforce exhaustion, plateaus in productivity, and team dysfunction.”3 With technological upgrades and innovations occurring regularly, organizations must prepare to deal with change continuously—with digital adoption at the forefront of their technology strategy.
Sustain adoption to improve return on investment
Digital adoption is the state in which end users leverage the full extent of technology proficiently on a continuous basis. As organizations transition to modern technologies, they need to plan for an approach that enables them to achieve sustained digital adoption by their workforce. Why should you spend the effort to create a strategy that drives digital adoption? Two reasons are the most pressing:
- Maximize your return on investment.
- Improve your employee and customer experience.
Large enterprises can spend on average more than “$104 million on digital transformation.”4 Despite this significant investment, organizations struggle to enable their employees and serve their customers. The value from digital investments can be captured only if users accurately and effectively use the systems in front of them, not when reverting to manual processes or lengthy workarounds.
With strong digital adoption, end users can seamlessly perform transactions in the system without error, increasing their overall satisfaction within the application. Employees experience increased productivity, spending more time on day-to-day activities and less time searching for resources or contacting the information technology (IT) help desk for system support. Customers are more likely to complete a purchase, revisit the site, and ultimately become a repeat buyer. Positive user experience results in employee efficiency gains and increased customer sales.
A strong digital adoption strategy involves a set of targeted interventions to support end users as they experience constant change, including but not limited to ongoing training, communications, analysis of adoption metrics, and guided learning with a digital adoption platform. On-demand learning is vital to creating a positive employee experience in an environment of continuous transformation.
Manage change with digital adoption platforms
Digital adoption platforms help enable a learning and adoption strategy in a way that is consistent across applications and accessible anytime, anywhere, and on any application. Digital adoption platforms are part of a strategic blended learning approach in which learning departments can focus on developing their people’s culture and careers within a firm without having to consider the clicks within their ever-changing suite of technologies.
As an example, we worked with a client who was undergoing a broad modernization effort across multiple technology platforms. After experiencing low adoption with the first rollout, the client became concerned with their change management approach and engaged Deloitte Consulting to support subsequent go-lives. As part of the new digital adoption strategy, Deloitte used a digital adoption platform to facilitate and enable a seamless learning experience for all end users.
Working in concert with traditional change management activities, the digital adoption platform was integrated into training sessions in real time, providing employees guidance as they practiced process completion ahead of go-live. The exercise trained users how to use the new technology and how to access in-application support in production. For employees who accessed the system intermittently rather than attending traditional training sessions, the digital adoption platform provided real-time learning and guidance directly in the application. As additional system features were deployed throughout the transformation, digital adoption platform guidance supported upskilling employees on new system functionality without requiring additional system training. While the transformation continued to roll out features regionally, the team evaluated the digital adoption platform’s analytics to inform continued development or enhancement of in-application guidance. With insights into user behaviors, leadership had a clear sense of where their people were struggling and could identify change management solutions or interventions to help drive improvements.
Digital adoption platforms have the capabilities to help employees “learn new behaviors, correct old behaviors, and sharpen skills” at the point of need and on demand.3 Interventions within the flow of work are unique to digital adoption platforms and are an important tool to enable successful digital adoption over time. Through strategic interventions, digital adoption platforms can guide and nudge users toward the correct behaviors within applications through:
- Initiating step-by-step guidance directly in the application.
- Automating nonintuitive steps or tasks to allow an employee time to complete more complex work.
- Reinforcing behaviors or compliance through announcements outlining procedures, policies, and deadlines.
- Streamlining employee onboarding with a checklist of learning activities.
Digital adoption platforms put the user first, giving people the tools they need to effectively perform their jobs. Without the right approach, executives will find it challenging to meet their objectives, but leveraging a digital adoption platform provides an option that is both fit for purpose and keeps up with the pace of rapid digital transformation.
Authors:
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Endnotes:
1 Eric Lamarre et al., “The value of digital transformation,” Harvard Business Review, July 31, 2023.
2 Gaurav Lahiri and Jeff Schwartz, “The workforce ecosystem: Managing beyond the enterprise,” Deloitte Insights, March 28, 2018.
3 Sue cantrell al, "2023 Global Human Capital Trends," Deloitte Insights, 2023.
4 WalkMe, The state of digital adoption 2022–2023, 2022.
