Your organization won’t make it to the end of 2020.
Well, it might. But it’s unlikely to make it to 2025 without an up-to-date digital adoption strategy.
In fact, 86% of enterprise decision makers feel they have less than two years to get to grips with digital transformation. After that, the business will suffer financially or fall behind competitors.
“Digital transformation has been on the agenda of organizations for years and 2018-2020 is predicted to be a crucial time for leaders to plan for and implement it across industries.” Digital Marketing Institute
Digital transformation vs. digital adoption
You probably hear the term “digital transformation” all the time. It gets talked about a lot.
Digital adoption gets its fair share of air time too. But how exactly do they relate to each other?
Digital transformation is:
“the wholesale reimagining and reinvention of how businesses operate, enabled by today’s advanced technology.” Ginger Shimp in Digitalist Magazine
But digital transformation cannot be complete or successful without digital adoption. Whether that’s the digital adoption of employees or customers.
Digital adoption is about making the effective use of technology second nature to its users. It may look different for each company. But digital adoption is the universal end-goal for all digital transformation efforts.
To achieve that goal, you need clear direction and a route to success. In short, you need a digital adoption strategy.
So to recap: a comprehensive — and modern — digital adoption strategy is essential to your organization’s success.
Let’s put this on a t-shirt: Provide & Pray is NOT a Strategy. Did you know that according to @Mckinsey 70% of complex, large-scale change programs miss their stated goals?! https://t.co/AeK3x9Z89t #ITSM #CIO #digitaltransformation
— Joe The IT Guy (@Joe_the_IT_guy) October 17, 2018
Key considerations for your digital adoption strategy
The rapid movement of the digital world means future-proofing your business is impossible. But the following tips will ensure your digital adoption strategy is as future-proofed as possible.
1. Start with culture
It’s an interesting debate: when it comes to digital transformation, should you start with culture or technology?
You probably think they should happen in parallel. Oftentimes, businesses do try to do both at once. Most of the time, they fail.
Management advisor, Mark Raskino, says it’s less risky to start with changing organizational culture.
“If we invest in the technology base first, then the people in the company will start to…experiment with those tools, they could then ease into the needed culture change via bottom up learning.
If we invest in a big culture change program first, then people hungry to apply their new thinking and methods of doing business – will start to demand digital capability…
There is a risk that the new energy and excitement will be wasted if the technology investment follows on too slowly.” Which-50
2. Focus on increasing connectivity and engagement
One of the biggest challenges facing digital adoption is how to increase connectivity and engagement.
Boost customer engagement and you boost customer satisfaction, which increases business growth.
Boost employee engagement and you boost employee satisfaction. That will increase productivity, which increases business growth.
On-demand, contextual learning is a great way to get real engagement and accelerate digital adoption.
You can achieve this by using a Digital Adoption Platform (DAP). The DAP places a clever guidance layer over the top of existing digital systems to provide the right training to users, at the time of need.
Source: HelloSign
3. Train your own people
CIOs often state that they struggle to recruit employees with the right digital skills. So a smart digital adoption strategy should include a focus on training your own people.
This is easier to do than you think, given the right tools. With a DAP like WalkMe, all you do is create the WalkThrus, Launchers, and TeachMes; the DAP does the rest.
By learning specific user behavior, the DAP offers only relevant guidance. It doesn’t matter whether the user is CEO or Admin Assistant.
4. Ensure digital adoption is consistent across the board
Another huge challenge is how to achieve digital consistency across the organization. Especially when it’s multinational.
“To successfully maximize the efficiency of systems and processes, management must be committed to the technology’s implementation; users must accept it in their daily work.
“Adopting digital technology in the absence of a holistic enterprise-wide approach will not maximize the improvements in a firm’s productivity, nor will it have the best commercial impact.” Government of Canada
Traditional training methods are costly, labor intensive, and often ineffective. Delivering information to users in person might garner some decent results. But when your users are located all over the world, things get complicated.
This is another example of a conundrum the DAP would solve in a heartbeat.
In fact, if there was one ultimate tip for nailing your digital adoption strategy, it would be to use a DAP. There’s a reason organizational development consultants, CIOs, and change managers all over the world talk about it.
