Digital Adoption vs. digital transformation

Why is it important to remember about users in digital transformation projects?

The reasons why companies are pursuing a digital transformation strategy seem quite obvious. For some companies that are not yet ready to change their habits and business models, the current situation may be the ultimate struggle to maintain their market position.

Let us take a closer look at the motivations of those companies that have given top priority to digital transformation projects. Apart from the measurable financial benefits coming from optimizing the company’s operating costs, building new ways of service and models of cooperation with customers, it also improves the quality of customer service. This is perfectly illustrated in detail by Forrester’s “Total Economic Impact™ WEBCON BPS” study, conducted on the example of a implementation of a BPM-class platform for a large organization in the financial sector.

There are a number of other benefits, not so easy to monetize, but also very important. The key value for the client, often appreciated after some time, turns out to be much better integrity and coherence of business data. It is mostly about linking together a lot of information so far dispersed in different applications or business processes. Connecting them together, often by using several implemented applications, gives a much better data context, a broader perspective and at the same time a more complete picture before making another business decision.

In the current Covid-19 pandemic, we are clearly experiencing an increase in decision making by customers who have so far postponed the start-up of the business process digitalization project.

The forgotten beneficiary of digital transformation changes

But where is the user in all this?

The Digital Poland Foundation together with PwC Poland recently released an interesting report: “13 facts about the digital transformation… That is all you would like to know about digitization, but were afraid to ask”[13 faktów o transformacji cyfrowej… czyli wszystko, co chciałbyś wiedzieć o cyfryzacji, ale bałeś się zapytać]. One aspect drew my attention: only 8% of the respondents’ answers indicated that the priority of the project, which should be the most important to focus on, are the users. This is quite wondering, especially since, according to Richard Branson’s thesis, we should “take care of our employees, and they will have time to take care of our customers”.

The digital transformation of our organization should not only contribute to a better experience of our clients, but also significantly improve and make our teams work efficiently. Digitalization of the organization has the greatest impact on the daily work of the users of the implemented systems and requires them to change their habits, as well as to adapt to the new way and work environment.

From our experience, we know that often during projects conducted for clients we underestimate an extremely important stage, which is the adaptation of users to the newly implemented system. It happened that during the acceptance tests with a selected group of users on the Client’s side, we realized that the necessary time and effort to introduce a new group of users at the stage of production start-up of the system will be a huge challenge. The situation became even more serious when the digitalization project concerned key business processes directly influencing the cooperation with the Clients.

This is often caused by the fact that the project schedule does not provide enough time for training for end-users, their adaptation to implemented changes. This directly affects the lack of full use of the potential resulting from the implementation of the new system and growing frustration of users. Even more, in the era of rapidly changing needs and expectations of the business, we must constantly adapt the system to the latest requirements. So, a continuous and uninterrupted adaptation of users to the changing business logic of processes or new system functionalities is extremely important.

What is the Digital Adoption Platform?

The Digital Adoption (DAP) platforms allow users to interact easier with applications. They are sometimes called “interactive software” to support users’ work and performance. Digital Adoption Platform is basically a software layer integrated with another application, which guides and supports users in performing tasks assigned to them in the system. It aims to help new users to quickly learn how to interact with the application, as well as to help returning users to adopt newly implemented functionalities to the System.

A well-configured and implemented Digital Adoption Platform improves and organizes the introduction of new users or existing employees to work with the System. The advantage of using DAP class platforms is that users do not have to remember what they learned during the training on the use of the newly implemented application, because Digital Adoption Platform will constantly support them in moving around the system and keeping track of the tasks that are assigned to them.

How to make digital transformation projects more successful?

The increase in the probability of success of a digital transformation project is absolutely influenced by many factors. One of them is planning activities related to the introduction of users at the stage of project scheduling. It will be a great idea to use the Digital Adoption Platform for this purpose. This is one of several important elements that will significantly improve the users’ experience and influence the positive assessment of the whole digital transformation project.

Did you find this article interesting?

If you are planning a digital transformation project in the near future or you are interested in the subject of Digital Adoption feel free to contact us.

GoNextStage supports and advises companies both in the development of strategies and the comprehensive implementation of digital tools. At GoNextStage, we combine knowledge in strategy, technology and consulting to help your businesses succeed.