In the latest edition of its ‘Worldwide Digital Transformation Spending Guide’, IDC stated that the global spending on digital transformation (or digital experience) initiatives spanning business practices, products, and organizations is estimated to hit $1.8 trillion in 2022 (up by 17.6% compared to 2021).
Despite heavy investment, about 73% of companies were met with failure in their digital transformation efforts as they were unable to derive business value through their initiatives, reveals a study by Everest Group. In the past few years, most businesses have adopted digital strategies and implemented smart technologies in their business. Yet, companies witness low or no ROI after investing trillions into their digital adoption efforts.
Why do most digital adoption strategies fail? Here are 5 reasons:
1. Employees resist change, typically viewing new technologies as a “necessary evil.
According to Kristin Moyer from Gartner’s CEO and Digital Business Leader practice, the lack of a transformational mindset is often the primary cause for digital adoption to regress, underperform, or fail.
People naturally tend to resist change. As such, most employees would be averse to new technologies that disrupt their ordinary course of work, and as a result, digital adoption fails.
CEOs can play a crucial part in softening their employees’ rigid mindsets by:
- Modeling transformational behavior to set the tone for change
- Having an open communication to explain the need for change and how employees can benefit from it
- Activating digital tools, including digital adoption platforms (DAPs) and knowledge management systems, that can better prepare the users for change
Business leaders who don’t just execute but also educate are more likely to achieve their digital adoption goals.
2. Insufficient training while onboarding users leads to a poor understanding of the tools.
Digital tools, whatever business function or industry they are for, can be complex and are usually rich in features and use cases. Traditional training methods often fall short of onboarding new users as these materials only cover a shallow layer of information.
It is impossible to transfer in-depth knowledge through training sessions alone, as employees may be overwhelmed and find it hard to retain all the information. Further, hunting through a vast knowledge base for case-specific instructions may cause delays in urgent tasks.
To effectively onboard a user, companies need to provide contextual training support that can be accessed anytime and anywhere. With contextual onboarding, the platform identifies the user’s roles and responsibilities, and then suggests appropriate materials that can guide them in real-time in formats like videos, pop-ups, and tooltips. DAPs offer a level of personalization and pacing that traditional classroom training and learning management systems cannot match.
By learning on the job, employees can automatically improve their efficiency. By offering a better onboarding experience, companies can improve their digital adoption rates.
3. Digital adoption is regarded as a one-time training requirement with no need for support post-deployment.
According to IDC, 53% of users lack proper support outside their usual business hours—while 61% stated that they would prefer to have support.
Many companies that have experienced digital transformation failure have treated their adoption initiatives as a one-time project requiring training only during onboarding. As a result of such short-sightedness, employees cannot keep up with the tools when there are software upgrades, additional APIs and integrations, role changes, turnover, or mergers.
Another indicator of wasted investment during digital adoption is the volume of tickets requesting support to use the tools, which could increase hidden costs. DAPs can help companies divert their IT resources to more pressing issues by providing guided walk-throughs of the tools and assisting employees in checking off their task lists. Organizations that have implemented DAPs will notice a drop in ticket volumes and support costs.
4. Training large teams can be difficult, especially when the workforce is spread across the geography.
Training employees for complex enterprise software is typically conducted either through targeted sessions over a period of time or online training platforms. Both these options can cause strain on costs and time when training bigger teams.
Targeted sessions are effective only if (a) everybody is available at a specific time and place and (b) if everyone attends the training. And online training requires putting several hours into creating teaching materials.
DAPs enable scalable training as they can be programmed to personalize content according to each employee’s roles, levels, and learning pace. Companies can conduct training more efficiently by making the most relevant content readily available. These platforms also help create training materials in various formats with no coding.
5. Lack of sufficient insight into user adoption statistics leaves companies blindsided about areas of process improvement.
By tracking user adoption data, companies can identify the gaps in training and make the necessary process changes to improve the adoption success rate. While some organizations track log-in rates and average session times, without in-depth behavioral data, they would be unable to understand which features users are facing trouble with.
DAPs allow you to monitor your digital adoption processes right from the beginning, from tracking query types and search terms to task completion and user segments. Measuring employee progress and providing relevant training content can help employees understand the tools better and contribute to the success of digital adoption.
The Bottomline
Digital transformation has become more crucial than ever, creating new opportunities to build a more skilled and modernized workforce. Minimizing process errors and smoothing out new software introduction across the organization is essential for the success of digital adoption. DAPs offer several benefits, including faster onboarding, fewer support calls, increased employee productivity and satisfaction, and improved morale. Therefore, companies must invest in digital adoption technologies to help their employees welcome transformation.
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