The digital adoption solutions category changes the digital transformation game.
This category, introduced in a recent Gartner report, describes a new software category dubbed, “Digital Adoption Solutions.”
Digital adoption solutions are the very same digital adoption platforms (DAPs) we have described in detail on this site.
These platforms, pioneered by WalkMe, are software solutions that have become indispensable in today’s digital economy.
Let’s explore what these platforms are, why they matter, and how to get started.
Gartner Introduces a New Digital Adoption Solution
Gartner’s recent report, “Increase Sales Productivity With Digital Adoption Solutions,” introduced this software category.
The report was aimed at helping sales teams:
- Save time and money
- Increase usage and improve the user experience
- Incorporate continuous development for tenured sellers
The conclusion of the report: employers must employ digital adoption solutions to drive productivity.
But what exactly is a digital adoption solution?
The Digital Adoption Solutions Category: A Primer
Digital adoption solutions are platforms that help organizations adopt, integrate, and implement digital technology.
Here is how they work:
- The digital adoption solution acts as a layer on top of target software. This overlay remains invisible to users, which means it can track usage behavior, offer insights, and provide analytics.
- The platform walks user through actions, workflows, and processes. In-app training helps users learn as they go, through interactive tip balloons and step-by-step guidance. Critically, tools such as WalkMe can also follow users as they move between applications.
- Usage statistics are analyzed, offering insights into growth opportunities. AI can monitor key processes, analyze user behavior, and decrease wasted time. Session replays can offer even more insight, demonstrating exactly how users engage with software.
These tools have become critical in today’s complex workplace.
They solve several problems for employers and employees alike:
- Training – In-app guidance and tutorials teach employees how to perform tasks at exactly the right time. This allows workers to immediately apply what they’ve learned, increasing retention and engagement.
- Onboarding – New user onboarding, whether they are employees or customers, can improve user retention and decrease abandonment. When applied during onboarding, digital adoption solutions decrease the overall cost of acquisition.
- Automation – Automation is another feature offered by platforms such as WalkMe. By automating mundane tasks, employees can spend time on more valuable activities.
However, when examined in detail, the benefits of these features become more and more apparent.
The Benefits of Digital Adoption Solutions
How do digital adoption solutions generate ROI during digital transformation?
Among other things, they:
- Decrease learning curves and time-to-competency. Learning time can be dramatically reduced, because users learn only the most pertinent information – at exactly the right time.
- Boost productivity. Employees who learn more quickly can achieve their full productivity potential in a shorter time span.
- Reduce employee frustration. Change can create friction and resistance in employees, whose desks are already overloaded with work. Digital adoption solutions streamline productivity and decrease that friction.
- Cut costs. Shorter learning curves translates into lower overhead for training programs, organizational change projects, and onboarding.
- Create a consistent user experience. WalkMe’s platform creates a unified experience that provides consistency, even when layered across multiple tools and software.
Given these value-added benefits, it’s no surprise that Gartner recognized the necessity of such platforms in the modern organization.
How and When to Apply These Solutions
When should organizations use digital adoption solutions?
Here are some of the most common applications:
- Employee Training – Whether you are training new employees or upskilling existing ones, digital adoption solutions are ideal. They help users focus only on pertinent information, while freeing up your trainers for more important tasks.
- Digital Transformation – Digital transformation often involves digital adoption, software implementation, and organizational change. Digital adoption solutions help you streamline these processes, cut transformation costs, and enhance performance.
- Improving Productivity – Software is only valuable if it is utilized. If employees use only half of its features, then they are generating a fraction of its potential ROI. Digital adoption solutions help users get more out of the target software, improving output, productivity, and ROI.
- User Onboarding – For app users, customers, and employees, onboarding is a critical process. By streamlining the initial introduction and onboarding to a software program, companies can decrease abandonment rate, increase productivity, and improve user satisfaction.
Digital adoption solutions are especially useful for complex software programs, prevalent in the enterprise workplace.
WalkMe’s platform offers integration with many of the most popular platforms, such as:
- Workday
- SuccessFactors
- Salesforce
- ServiceNow
- Oracle CX Cloud
- NetSuite
- Jira
- cPanel
And much more.
For organizations that utilize such complex software – or pipelines that consist of multiple tools – a solution such as this is ideal.
Final Thoughts
The digital adoption solutions category is growing quickly.
In large part, this growth has been spurred by ongoing, global digital disruptions and transformations.
As digital change continues to transform the business world, we can expect to see more organizations test, adopt, and implement these solutions.
Given their return on investment, it is no surprise that they are scaling so rapidly.
