Digital Adoption Platforms

Guide to Digital Adoption Platforms

Technology is fluid, and its ebb and flow is based upon human activity and need. As such, it never stops evolving. Any business knows that it must evolve and adapt alongside such technological updates to stay relevant, much less thrive. But, that’s not the end. Employees and customers must also be able to quickly, efficiently, and effectively adapt to and adopt these vital technology processes, too. Otherwise, there are serious negative consequences all the way around.

While many systems get blamed for errors, the system itself is only responsible for less than 10% of errors. The other errors are actually related to process, design, and the user.

Statistics like the above are case and point as to the importance of a business’s customers and employees being able to effectively, efficiently, and completely being able to use a system’s software. Otherwise, those serious consequences look like IT ROI failures, wasted time on support tickets, lost productivity, an endless cycle of employee training, reputation harm, lost customers, on- boarding difficulties, and so forth.

How does a business ensure they’re adequately engaging the technology adoption process? Meet DAP - Digital Adoption Platform. This is the ultimate guide to assisting customers and employees of today and tomorrow in seamlessly transitioning through the technology adoption process for a new tech.

What are Digital Adoption Platforms?

There’s an entire broad category specifically designed to address Digital Adoption Solutions (DAS.) Within that category, Digital Adoption Platforms (DAPs) exist to simplify new technology being integrated into a company’s processes. It’s a software tool that’s particularly relevant to enterprise application software.

What does DAP do? The adoption software overlays the new application to offer a formal supplement of guidance that can be used if needed and ignored if not needed. It acts as a step-by-step guide for users as they interact with the software’s basic processes. Think of it like simplified CliffsNotes laid over a complex book.

Digital adoption platforms are able to seamlessly integrate into the new technology as a guide, not a disrupter. The learner is able to take advantage of immediate supplemental guidance as they encounter usability snags or questions, which enables them to quickly learn and become proficient with new technologies or have a cheat sheet for lesser used processes. That’s a powerful asset in using any new technology.

The best DAPs are 1) highly adaptable guided walkthroughs and 2) applicable to both entry-level and advanced users.

As the user gets inside the enterprise software, the DAP offers simplified, yet detailed, steps for each action the user might need to take. In other words, the digital adoption platform doesn’t just cover the most common user paths. Everything from basic actions, such as changing and recovering a password or username, to more complex actions, such as sales lead logs, are covered by digital adoption platforms The user will simply see a separate pop-up of instructions for each step within a given task. Again, it’s up to the user to use the info or proceed without the extra help.

One of the biggest benefits to using DAP software is the boost to end-user adoption rates. Many users automatically hold a perception that new technologies and processes are difficult, even when they’re designed to streamline the user’s actions. Having the formal guidance of DAP serves as a safety net for the user. In feeling more confident, the user adopts the technology more completely and quickly.

How Do Digital Adoption Platforms Help A Business?

Digital Adoption Solutions is such a broad category because the breadth of what technology adoption entails amongst various industries and sectors is so vastly different. So “help” is relative. Digital Adoption Platforms aren’t a one-size-fits all approach to that help. It fits in where it’s needed.

DAPs have three main categories. Each category is relevant to a different type of help within technology adoption. Let’s look at each.

Built-In Knowledge Base

Once upon a time, it may have taken multiple separate sources of knowledge to learn or accomplish a task at hand. Technology has enabled vast knowledge bases to be condensed into a single, comprehensive source. That concept is at the heart of the self-help category of DAP. It offers a built-in knowledge base for the user’s ease of use.

Users can immediately find solutions to their usage and function questions without waiting around in limbo to consult an outside source of info. Think about the wasted time calling IT support, reading irrelevant manual info to finally arrive at the tiny section of relevant info, etc. Talk about a productivity leach.

DAP self-help integrates and organizes the entity’s existing knowledge base against new info. Info can be categorized by very microscopic topics so that only relevant info pops up/becomes accessible for the user at the most relevant times within the software. Managers can even prescribe what self-help is available to each user based on their role within the company.

Making easily accessible, relevant info, such as walkthroughs, videos, and knowledge-base articles, available to the user within a self-help menu is the ultimate support tool. No wasted time. No wasted energy. No delays. No frustration. No confusion in gathering unvetted outside info and assistance. And, that equals high user adoption rates with greater accounts of accuracy.

Guidance And Training For Existing And New Employees

All DAPs will have two key functions - guidance and training. The importance of these functions in adapting and adopting new technologies can’t be stressed enough.

Guided walkthroughs in DAP are triggered by the user’s end goal. So, a user needs to change a password. The trigger will prompt assistive learning and offer step-by-step directives as the user moves into each section and subsection of the action.

The end achievement goes beyond preventing the user’s frustration and failure to adopt the tech at-hand. One of the biggest keys to successfully integrating new tech into a company is making the user feel that it helps, not slows, them in their work.

In having the guidance and training immediately available, precious productivity time is saved. DAPs also help ensure the accuracy of data as it alerts users in-action if the entered data matches the accuracy of the pre-established criteria. If not, the digital adoption platform alerts the user and offers assistive guidance and direction on how to correct the data, inappropriate field lengths, and/or invalid formats.

Learning the new system becomes manageable on both the user’s end and from an oversight position. Many DAPs feature micro-learning plans. Each plan features a series of small individual tasks within a broader lesson. This may include multiple videos or text steps within the plan, each of which are listed in a lesson taskbar. The system checks off the user once the tasks are completed. Managers can then systematically track any user’s learning progress.

For any change to be productive and beneficial, it must be both communicated and monitored. Digital adoption platforms allow for both. Managers can create alerts with guidance info targeted to all or specific users of changes and new features within the technology they use.

All of these features are designed with user adoption in mind. If the process is transparent and features ease of access to the guidance and training they may need in the moment, then the user has the best chance at quickly, comfortably, and completely utilizing the new processes necessary to their goals.

Do keep in mind that a Digital Adoption Platform isn’t just designed for existing employees. It will also be instrumental in on-boarding new employees and transfer positions into their new roles seamlessly so that they can reach peak productivity quickly.

Analytics For Management

No tool is complete without a method to determine its ROI and effectiveness. This is the analytics category of Digital Adoption Platforms. It assists in continually determining what is and isn’t working so that the DAP content can be adjusted where and how it's needed at any given time.

What areas of the newly implemented software are being utilized most often by employees and/or customers? Are any areas rarely to never being used? Tracking actions like how many times a specific help aspect has been utilized and successful vs unsuccessful keyword searches offer insight on dead space that can be shortened, popular subjects to be expanded, and missing info that should be added. Of course, DAP also enables for direct feedback collection from users, such as a survey, which adds context to the numeric analytic data.

DAP allows for customization and modification of a company’s training and guidance features to best serve the user. User-specific insight is a pivotal element in training and on-boarding going smoothly. Knowing the preferred content and learning patterns of users allows for granular changes to and creation within the DAP for best-use engagement. That’s a key adoption caveat that can’t be overlooked.

As this recent pandemic has proven, tech-solutions must also be able to pivot and adjust to sudden shifts in fundamental practices. Questions never before asked and problems never before faced become sudden hot topics in need of quick guidance and training. DAP analytics can quickly bring those areas to light for management. As an overlay, DAP can then enable the supplement guides and walkthroughs to exist on the same scene as the questions and problems.

No matter what the issue at-hand, DAP’s analytics provides a solution to continually improve the use and adoption of the tech employees and customers use within a company.

Leveraging DAP To Bolster Software Adoption

Whether it’s adoption of technology internally or by customers, DAP overreaches to help leverage the technology investments made by a company. How?

Using DAP Internally

It’s simple. If an employee doesn’t fundamentally understand a new technology, then they’re likely to avoid using it. This avoidance can mean extra effort or shortcuts that hurt a company’s productivity and even reputation.

Take sales reps as an example. Less than half use CRM tools, and the ones that do rarely take full advantage of all the features. Why? The biggest complaint is that these tools are simply overwhelmingly difficult and time-consuming in learning the how-to of using them. At best, it means that a company’s ROI on that tech is far less than its potential.

How can a company bolster technology adoption? Perception. It’s all about how the user views the tech. If they SEE that it's supportive, user-friendly, and positive to work flow, then they will adapt and adopt.

How do they see this? They’re not left to aimlessly explore and learn the software without an immediate, comprehensive help feature. Instead, they have DAP prompting and guiding their learning.

Task lists are excellent guidance points. Managers assign specific tasks to the user based on their role within the company. Progress can be tracked to ensure these new and existing employees are gathering the info they need to successfully utilize the software features available to them.

Speaking of new employees, DAP’s walkthroughs allow on-boarding to become a much faster process. The info physically exists alongside the technology itself versus being an independent learning program that makes a new employee learn X here, memorize it, and then apply it elsewhere.

Self-help features mean that anyone using the software can gather answers to their questions in a fraction of the time it would take to stop and consult an outside source of knowledge. DAP enables the learning process to constantly flow forward, not pause or cease. Such disruptions lower productivity, raise frustrations, and offer a negative perception of the technology.

Using DAP With Customers

Within the first year of enterprise application software, customer adoption rates typically aren’t above 40%. That’s not good news for any business, especially those with extensive competition. Why? Lack of utilization shows customer frustration, and frustrated customers look for easier and more friendly alternatives.

DAP offers the guidance and training to help the customer slide down whatever funnel they’re in smoothly. They’re at ease because they understand what’s being asked of them, how to answer appropriately, and how to get as much out of the interaction as possible. The result? Fewer errors and less frustration for the customer and less customer support tickets for the business.

Of course, even the best laid plans have flaws. That’s why DAP provides a survey feature. With direct customer feedback, managers are able to isolate problem areas and meaningfully adjust the informational text that’s available.

Adopt DAP As The Solution

Adopting DAP puts a powerful tool in the back pocket of the business. Ease how existing and new customers and employees use the new tech that’s been a big investment for the business.

Customizable and adaptable features mean that DAP is suitable for almost any niche of business and type of new software integration. Make DAP the key to seeing those high adoption rates that make for a solid ROI on expensive technology investments.