From vision to reality: Implementing digital adoption strategies

There probably isn’t a business in the developed world that is following some sort of digital adoption strategy, even if it’s being carried out haphazardly and without conscious intent.

Even a Mom-and-Pop store in the sleepiest town you can imagine will now have a Facebook page at the very least. It’s not a huge step from an FB page to having a dedicated website. The next stage is converting that static website to an online shop with some sort of WordPress plugin or dedicated online store platform.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, large corporations are using AI to screen for initial hiring processes, Chatbots to communicate with customers and even AI to write their marketing content.

Regardless of what sort of businesses people run, each year at least, there’ll be some sort of change to the way they operate as a result of their technological environment; whether those changes are forced or welcome, they’ll still happen eventually.

In order to cope with all this Force Majeure of tech tribulations, regardless of a business’s size, there are some important rules to follow, which will help when companies use digital adoption platforms (DAPs) to help the overall process run more smoothly.

User centricity

Taking a user-centric approach to digital adoption is key. After all, the best technology in the world grinds to a halt if nobody within an organization wishes to use it, or worse, can’t understand how to do so.

Canvasing the opinions of the workforce is essential. In some ways, the smaller the business, the more important this is, because small teams of half a dozen people or so work so much better when they feel that they’ve been involved in drawing up the plan for their employer’s digital adoption strategy.

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Understanding the challenges, needs and preferences of employees who will be using the tech is paramount. And don’t forget that the people who do the job at the sharp end all day will be far more likely to know what works than an external consultant software developer. Treat your employees well and they’ll take to tech changes like ducks to water. If there are any adoption problems, DAPs are designed to help employees with unfamiliar processes by providing a ‘teaching layer’, which sits alongside the primary software.

The DAP’s AI learns the operator’s learning style and offers assistance only when it is required. It’s like each employee having a knowledgeable, experienced and friendly colleague sitting next to them, who only pops up when necessary.  In effect, using a DAP is simply helping employees with the training, support and resources required to do their jobs effectively.

The leader of the pack

Gaining support from senior management for digital adoption initiatives is as important as winning that support from the employees. Leadership assent and proactive involvement is crucial for setting priorities, allocating resources and driving cultural change within any organization. In short, even if employees like the new ways of doing things with computers, and an IT help team is perceived as being on-side, it all falls apart if board level people aren’t being seen to actively endorse the use of DAPs within the enterprise.

Accurate alignment

Ensuring that a company’s digital adoption policy aligns with the global goals and objectives of the organization is important to remember. It’s easy to lose sight of the wood for the trees – so common-sense checks on DAP progress should always be carried out. Just because something saves time and money, doesn’t mean it will necessarily be the optimal solution for the business’s customers.

Goals and Gantt charts

Defining clear objectives for any digital adoption policy and establishing measurable, achievable milestones is essential. Creating a Gantt chart and using AGILE development is a good way to ensure that DAPs are instigated and being used in accordance with timetables that have been pre-agreed via team leaders across the business.

Assigning tasks and creating champions

Clearly determining which technologies and processes will be covered by the policy should be transparently communicated to all relevant teams. Assigning named employees as project ‘champions’ instills a sense of ‘ownership’ by team leaders when projects are being executed. Above all, these champions should be ‘people people’ who are good at influencing those colleagues who are resistant to change. The carrot is always better than the stick, after all!

Never forget security

Ensuring that all updated digital tools and processes comply with current and future relevant data security and privacy regulations is a legal responsibility as well as a moral one. If any changes to the way in which a company processes data causes that data to become insecure, the policy is inherently flawed. Employing the services of ‘ethical hackers’ is often a good idea in this regard – they can find holes in the system that even the head of IT support may not have imagined.

(Image credit) Using DAPs and people to their full potential

As the DAP is designed to assist employees with digital adoption strategies, creating mentors to help newer or less able staff members is a good way of cementing team bonding whilst checking that a DAP is doing its work effectively. A computing platform can only ever be as good as the person who programs it. If a DAP is giving less than 100% efficient feedback, designated experienced team members who can mentor junior employees can also be used to monitor DAP output and feedback improvement suggestions to management.

In summary, continuously reviewing and refining an organization’s digital adoption policy should always be based on feedback from users and stakeholders; not least junior employees and end-user customers – these are the people who take the orders and pay for them. If digital adoption strategies are working well for them, the chances are that the procedures higher up the chain have created that success.

It really comes down to one thing – if a company’s digital adoption policy is keeping customers and employees happy, commensurate bottom-line profits and lower staff turnover are sure to follow suit.

Featured image credit: maniacvector/Freepik