Digital transformation has become the first priority for most organizations; even the CIOs of most Fortune 500 organizations realize this. Digital transformation has pushed cybersecurity to the second place in terms of priorities notwithstanding, cybercrimes are still very potent sources of danger to organizations, and the race for survival has overridden the concern for the danger cybercrimes portend.

However, plunging into digital transformation because everyone is doing so can be an effort in futility; you need to plan out how to ensure that your digital transformation initiatives are successful. This is the only way your employees, customers, and the organization can derive any benefit from your foray into digital transformation; after all, when you fail to plan, you have already planned to fail.

One important factor that can enhance the success of your digital transformation initiative is a digital adoption platform.

What is a digital transformation platform (DAP)?

WalkMe defines a digital adoption platform as a software platform that has been designed to ensure unhindered software and app learning; it aids the success of digital transformation and increases your ROI on software investments. A DAP simplifies your user experience and ensures you are proficient with any software platform, website, or app with no coding skills.

It has been estimated that investments in digital transformation will hit $3.294 billion by 2025, growing at a CAGR of 22.7%g from 2019. However, a report says that 73% of organizations did not see any addition to their business value from their digital transformation initiatives. 

You can allude to quite a few reasons for this high volume of failures, but the most potent reason is resistance to change by people; people are just naturally afraid of change. This is the scenario if you do not deploy a digital adoption platform.

What do you do to eliminate resistance from employees?

Employees need guidance when working with new technology; it’s just as simple as that. The procedure that works perfectly in such a situation is to enable learning while working with the new technology. 

This is what DAP is all about. When you install the DAP software on your IT system, it ensures the relevant walkthroughs, the necessary in-app tips, and any other guidance your employees need. It does not end there, a Digital Adoption Platform (DAP) even goes all the way to enable personalized step-by-step instructions as well as all the necessary interactive guides that have been designed inside the app for those that will need to use it. 

You effectively eliminate resistance and save resources you would have needed to train employees since the digital adoption platform has taken care of this. This to a large extent simplifies employee training and even onboarding.

The benefits of digital adoption platform to digital transformation 

The digital adoption software is capable of gathering analytics such as user behavior by using artificial intelligence; with this, you can easily identify shortcomings in the way your employees make use of their IT software. You need this veritable insight to understand how to optimize software utilization and employees’ productivity. 

By integrating DAP, you have access to in-app support, which will greatly reduce your funding for IT support. Looking at the hybrid model of work, DAP can effectively help to train and onboard your employees who will not necessarily operate from a physical workspace. 

Since a digital adoption platform is powered by AI and machine learning, it becomes relatively easier for you to customize and resolve specific issues. With the contextual insight you gather from a DAP, you can ensure that each of your employees has real-time based tailored guidance even while working remotely.

1. Reducing onboarding time

One of the major problems your organization will face with any digital transformation initiative is onboarding time; when an employee has been offered employment, it will take some time for such an employee to grasp the workings of your organization and become productive. You may need to create sessions of rigorous training for such an employee. 

All the training consumes time and financial resources. If you are embarking on digital transformation, even you will have to follow the onboarding process you would have done for a new employee for the old ones. 

This is because the changes they go through make them equivalent to new employees. A digital adoption platform enables new and old employees to quickly grasp the knowledge due to the efficient way of tailored and personalized guidance.

2. Reduced burden on IT support

The buck of any digital transformation erroneously should stop with the IT; however, most digital transformation initiatives transcend departments; all hands must, therefore, be on the deck to ensure success. Digital transformation is not all about integrating new technologies; the organizational culture is a factor in ensuring the success of any digital transformation project; this breeds unnecessary resistance.

Since you can’t also talk of digital transformation without inputting new technologies, IT should render support to ensure quick adoption; this creates a lot of burden on IT. However, a digital adoption platform comes with software that can effectively guide an employee to become proficient without relying solely on IT support. 

A digital adoption platform ensures that IT can focus on more productive ventures that will yield better ROI for your organization.

3. Elimination of employees’ resistance to new software technology 

Employees tend to resist change based on the fear of what can happen if they quickly fail to grasp the new form of doing things. In certain instances, you cannot ignore the chances of employees being laid off due to redundancy. Digital adoption platform removes this sort of fear; there is no factor of the unknown since each employee will be guided to achieve the necessary training by the software; this creates increased user satisfaction among your employees, and also goes a long way to boost their morale and attitude towards your digital transformation project. 

A DAP can do these in the following ways:

• Facilitate the automatic onboarding of a customer or employee. 
• Enhance training and guidance of any in-app software employees need.
• Enable the gathering and analysis of usage data
• Readily enable support to resolve challenges any employee may encounter.

Conclusion

The overriding truth is that a digital adoption platform will cost less and is more productive when you compare it to ordinarily using other sources to attain the same thing. Your employees’ productivity rises, the training cost is reduced drastically, and it enhances software integration. 

DAP is based on artificial intelligence and machine learning; you can leverage these technologies to analytically identify shortcomings in your employees. Knowing your employees’ shortcomings and deploying DAP to resolve this will significantly increase customer experience and boost ROI.