A digital adoption platform (DAP) is a type of software designed to make the adoption of new technology easier and quicker.
Today’s business landscape is a digital landscape that’s largely dependent on how proficient a business is in navigating its challenges. It’s an area where businesses can stand out from the competition if they play their cards right—or use the right tools. In this case, leveraging the multitude of available digital solutions and smart technologies can mean the difference between future-proofing your business and watching it disintegrate due to failure to innovate.
Executives believe that digital is the way to go, and the pandemic has only served to re-ignite this notion. The pandemic-driven disruption has convinced 64% of business executives that they need to build new digital businesses or invest more on digital initiatives to remain economically viable through 2023.
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With digital playing a vital role in today’s businesses, digital adoption seems mandatory to ensure the success of digital transformation efforts. A rethinking of an organization’s approach to digital is required because, more than the implementation of new technologies, digital adoption is a change in mindset and culture. Without it, the flaws resulting from lack of digital know-how and gaps in digital systems will only be exacerbated instead of addressed.
Unfortunately, there’s a need to expand business IT capabilities to support new requirements, including data privacy and compliance, cybersecurity, and customer experience. It’s also expected that data analytics, risk management, and modernization of legacy systems will drive the most IT investment in 2022. Bridging the digital skills gap should be one of the main goals of strategizing and resource planning so organizations can leverage their strengths and complement their weaknesses with digital solutions.
Successful business transformation requires prioritization of and investment in the strategic implementation of digital adoption in every stage of the transition. Below are a few steps you can take to get the most impact from your digital business strategy.
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Use a Digital Adoption Platform
A digital adoption platform (DAP) is a type of software designed to make the adoption of new technology easier and quicker. It streamlines processes involved in digital transformation to minimize disruption and difficulty in mastering new digital tools. A DAP is helpful because it helps address common challenges with adoption, which, if not properly addressed, can lead to dissatisfaction and loss of productivity.
The data gathered from properly implemented digital adoption platforms can help organizations identify pain points and certain aspects of the platform that are common causes of difficulty. As such, it can help craft effective training programs while also providing the metrics from which these programs can be measured. It also makes relevant information accessible to users through interactive walkthroughs, step-by-step tutorials, and other types of guidance content.
A digital adoption platform is a personalized solution that can be implemented in such a way to complement specific business needs. It allows you to choose the methods in which to deliver guidance and at what pace your users learn, helping boost morale and improving productivity. It’s also easily customized to fit the learning needs of individual teams or individuals within an organization.
Provide In-app Training
The best way to ease users into new methods and tools is to minimize friction as much as possible. Putting relevant information about applications or systems in front of their intended user can be done through in-app training.
Interactive walkthroughs found within the application itself are more direct and let users learn while they are using the app, increasing recall and helping increase usage. Interactive learning while using the application also boosts morale and helps users become more proficient in a shorter period.
Traditional training and onboarding methods are less effective because they are distanced from the application itself. Users may learn steps and processes through training modules, but there’s greater recall when the learning process is simultaneous with usage. In-app training makes learning feel natural to users because the interactive walkthroughs become a native feature of the application itself. It becomes a resource that can be pulled up when needed without leaving the application.
Craft a Strategic Change Management Plan
Initiatives aimed at improving business performance entails change, and change always comes with an adjustment period. Before you can reach a stage where members of your organization are able to leverage the full potential of your digital tools and assets, you must be prepared to address the needed changes and manage employees’ reactions and expectations by creating a change management plan.
First and foremost, you should create a digital adoption charter that clearly states the specific goals of your business and the strategies with which you hope to achieve them. This includes a deadline for stated initiatives and contingency plans in case of unforeseen circumstances. Stakeholders and decision-makers should also be identified so you can really your teams with the help of these influential members of the organization.
To learn about the challenges and solutions during the transition period, you should also keep a detailed changelog so you can monitor risks and learn how to foresee and properly address them in the future. Monitor all processes and systems and take note of what works and what doesn’t so you can modify your strategy as needed.
Finally, getting buy-in from members of the organization is key. Hosting change management seminars and workshops will help you disseminate information effectively while also getting feedback from different teams.
Track User Progress
A large part of digital adoption is finding a way to track user progress. This is vital because it helps determine the pace of your digital transformation initiatives, which can be a challenge for larger organizations with thousands of digital users.
A technology roadmap will help you provide clarity to what you want to achieve digitally and help track user progress as a whole. Using data analytics in conjunction with this will provide valuable insights on what users like and understand about your business applications and what aspects they find challenging or need more information on.
Having this data will help you boost user engagement by identifying and addressing common challenges. This improves the overall effectiveness of your training programs and digital adoption platforms. Since progress is tracked in real-time, trainers and digital champions can understand what motivates users and find ways to personalize their methods depending on the data they gather.
The Digital Success Platform
Thanks in no small part to digital adoption platforms, business owners are now equipped to open doors they weren’t able to before. Startup founders and new entrepreneurs now also have the chance to be competitive in a constantly changing and extremely demanding landscape where those who are slow to adapt find themselves struggling to stay afloat.
Smaller—and newer—companies are fortunate because they are more agile by virtue of their size, and they can leverage this to gain a competitive advantage. All that’s needed are the right digital adoption strategy, the right digital solutions, and the right mindset.
[To share your insights with us, please write to sghosh@martechseries.com]