Why Digital Adoption is Critical to a Successful Digital Transformation

Almost every organization has seen the need and believes that digital transformation is a necessity; even Fortune 500 companies are top in the race to digitally transform their processes; what this means is that any organization that is not joining the race may lose relevance in the global market. This probably may be the reason the World Economic Forum, predicts that global spending on digital transformation will be over $100 trillion in 2025.

However, successful digital transformation cannot be approached with “kids gloves;” there are reports that some companies that embarked on digital transformation initiatives failed to meet their transformation targets; one of the reasons for this failure is the wrong approach to digital adoption. Digital transformation and digital adoption sound alike, and people tend to use them interchangeably; while the two terms seem to be closely related, there is a world of difference between them.

The best approach to distinguish between digital adoption and digital transformation is to define each of them.

The apt question to ask at this stage is, what is digital adoption? Digital adoption simply means having the ability to use digital tools as effectively and efficiently. 

Digital adoption will enable a brand-new user to become entirely self-sufficient and competent with digital tools in your organization; this means that a user learns the basic functions of any software and maximizes the potential of the software's advanced features to discover innovative ideas and processes. While software adoption is very important in today’s business processes, digital adoption is more than mere software adoption.

With digital adoption, you can:

1. Implementation and adopt new software or technology

2. Adopt digital workflows or processes

3. Adopt digital culture or mindset

4. Effectively implement organizational changes that occur as part of digital transformation

A successful digital adoption will positively impact your business and make your organization more relevant in the global market. While embarking on digital adoption, you must plan on how to handle the workplace friction that can ensue from this initiative.

Any organization that has been in operation must have ways and means to ensure its survival in the business world; at a certain point and based on competition, the need to improve customer experience, and to become more relevant in the market, may lead to seeking ways of upgrading services to customers. That is when you need digital transformation, which simply means an ongoing process that requires the replacement of legacy systems with advanced digital ones to enable greater efficiency, new capabilities, and customer satisfaction. Your goal with embarking on digital transformation is to attain digital maturity.

Digital transformation is not a “one fixes all” step; it is a continuous process, and cannot be concluded since technology is constantly evolving. Any organization that fails to deploy digital adoption into its digital transformation initiatives will fall prey to digital Darwinism.

Digital transformation represents a dramatic shift in the way an organization engages with technology to increase productivity and improve customer experience. In any digital transformation initiative, you will need to update and make the most of legacy apps and implement new software; employees that will use the systems you want to upgrade or implement need to go through some sort of training for efficiency and seamless workflows. 

It’s not enough to just have the top technology if employees and customers cannot operate apps and software systems; a well-thought-out digital adoption strategy solves the problem and is critical to your successful digital transformation project. What digital adoption does is help users embrace the new technology your organization needs for your digital transformation initiatives; it ensures a seamless user experience across all the digital contact points users will encounter.

The main objective for implementing digital adoption is to attain a level of excellence on a given platform, and this cannot be feasible if users don’t have a true engagement with apps and software beyond basic proficiency to attain excellence and achieve digital adoption. How to counter this problem is to ensure a high level of usability by ensuring that employees and customers maintain adequate levels of user engagement.

You will need the necessary tools to enhance the monitoring of the user journey to improve usability; these tools will give you a clear picture of how users engage with apps or software, where they find it difficult to adapt or completely feel at a loss, and where you can render assistance. 

For boosting usability, digital adoption will be invaluable to enhance contextual guidance and real-time navigational support. The user’s context (such as the current process, behavior, time on page, etc.) you may have derived from monitoring a user’s engagement enables you to dedicate appropriate tools that will proactively deploy tips and support that ensure a user can complete any process easily.

The business world has gone through a tremendous change; you may now need hundreds of SaaS apps to carry out just one normal process; the situation can be frustrating if users are not well-trained to handle the apps. A strong digital adoption strategy will help out with your organization’s digital transformation initiatives and enable you to attain technology innovative excellence with the attendant increase in ROI.