Executing a Digital Adoption Plan that Succeeds

When it comes to creating and putting a proper digital adoption plan into motion, it’s vital for companies to know exactly what they want, what their goals are, and most of all, how they’re going to meet those goals. Since achieving full digital adoption is a highly sought after goal that often falls short , the way a digital adoption plan is executed can mean the difference between success and failure.

Any good plan has a few parts and several steps. Creating a digital adoption strategy to carry out those plans can seem simple. But when it comes time to roll out the plan, it can be easy for companies to get bogged down wrestling with the technical details. However, any digital adoption strategy can become simple when broken into two sides.

In this case, “simple” means that a plan is straightforward. If a few steps are followed to build a digital adoption plan, and both sides of the plan are addressed at every step, then it becomes easier to achieve true digital adoption. With the right approach and with attention given to what matters, putting forth a digital adoption plan that really works is possible.

The two sides of executing an adoption strategy

All good digital adoption processes have a few main steps in place to streamline them. Company leaders should know, first of all, what their organization truly needs and what its goals are before laying out the rest of a plan. After that, taking a look at company culture is a must, in order to see how its people will handle change. Then, creating teams to train the rest of a company usually comes after that, and at last, training is created and given to a company.

There are two sides to executing such a plan, however.

“ Soft skills ,” which are “people skills,” are one side of setting a plan into motion, and makeup half of the battle. Employers must be able to communicate well with their workers and department heads when it comes time to adopt new technology. They should be able to handle feedback when it comes to creating and editing the right training, and they need to be able to reinforce learned material. Most importantly, company leaders need to keep all departments aligned to the same goal.

Then, there is the technical side of making any digital adoption plan work. This side includes the creation of training and the execution of that same training. This can include things such as creating walkthroughs, building wikis and search databases, and the production of new training videos. Online courses designed for user onboarding also fall under this side of any digital adoption plan.

Company leaders also must be able to identify skills gaps as training progresses, and address those accordingly. Processes are also likely to change in response to employee feedback, and company leaders must be able to communicate those changes in a short amount of time.

Soft skills are important during times of company change. But the technical side of rolling out the right training can make or break both sides of any digital adoption plan. It can be easy for company leaders and trainers to overthink the technical details while ignoring the larger plan for digital transformation.

The digital adoption detail trap

One major sticking point when it comes to executing adoption plans lies in the technical details. When it comes to creating and delivering training for managers and employees, too much attention to technical details can lead to failure. This is especially true when rolling out training to remote workers or a variety of departments that have different work processes.

Since there are many different digital tools and apps that employees and company leaders use daily, it’s easy for trainers to focus too much on the smaller details of training and not enough on a company’s larger plan. Trainers and leaders might hyper-focus on organizing wikis and search databases or editing training clips or presentations. The details can become confusing as managers try to accommodate many different departments, apps, and locations at once.

This leads to frustration from company leaders to employees. Companies can find themselves not using their soft skills enough to listen to employee feedback when they are so focused on the technical details of digital adoption and digital enablement . This leads to a poor employee experience when it comes to receiving and retaining new learning material. If one side of the digital adoption plan fails, then the other side is likely to as well.

Getting bogged down in content production and training creation leads to other problems as well. When so much attention is given to details, it is also easy to lose sight of a company’s main goals. Too much focus might be given to one or two departments, which fails to align everyone to the same digital adoption planning.

Technical details can also pose issues when it comes to executing the training that has been created. As training rolls out to various departments, retention of learned material, employee questions, and context switching all become issues. Such issues will take time to resolve as leaders try to reinforce learned material and IT struggles with support tickets. Employees will need to take time in order to find answers as well.

However, company leaders who want to succeed can find a simple solution that can eliminate the complicated process of employee training. This same solution can also help when it comes to the soft skills side of execution.

Simplifying the details

In order to avoid getting stuck in the details of creating and executing the right type of training, company leaders need the right digital adoption solution . The use of lightweight, learning software can eliminate getting stuck on the tedious details of training each department. This frees up company leaders to focus on their soft skills: keeping teams organized, accepting feedback, changing processes, and more.

Such lightweight, contextual learning software, which goes beyond traditional training, allows leaders and trainers to insert training directly into the workflow of employees, and that training will appear in-app, right where employees are working in software applications. It is also easy to edit such real-time training when needed, as change is a frequent thing in the digital era.

Department heads also have the freedom to contribute to and edit training, which is valuable as managers will know best which type of training their employees will need, and when. Each department can easily create and insert contextual training directly in-app, across a variety of apps. This allows each department to make the management of training simple while aligning with the larger goals of their company.

The need for extensive wikis, long webinars, and other tedious training methods can be eliminated in this way. Each department can focus on supplying only the learning needed for their employees to do their jobs well, in easily digestible bites. Company leaders will find that they have more free time to focus on the rest of a digital adoption plan.

Company leaders also have the ability to quickly and easily communicate changes to each department. This means that there is no need to call a time-consuming meeting to make sure every department has received the news. This ability also reduces employee mistakes, questions, and frustration.

Employees will also see benefits from such a simple, flexible approach. The normal resistance that employees feel to change can drop when the right learning tech simplifies training. Managers and trainers will then experience a greatly reduced learning curve, which reduces the need for reinforcement meetings, help tickets, and other details that can take time and energy away from the other parts of the digital adoption strategy.

Pairing soft skills with technology

When company leaders and trainers no longer have to get stuck in the details of training creation and reinforcement, they can focus more on an overall digital adoption plan and the soft skills that are needed to make it work. Lightweight, contextual learning makes what could be a complicated training plan simple, powerful, and flexible. The same tech also allows a company to embrace change quickly and easily reinforce what employees and department heads have learned.

Once a new plan has been created to adopt new technology to the fullest extent, the ease of the right training software can overcome a culture of resistance. Leaders can show employees and departments how easy learning a new process or program can be with training that appears in-app and reinforces learned material.

Company leaders can also give each department some control over the training process while keeping them aligned with the bigger picture. Updates and changes can be added and communicated to everyone at once, cutting the need to get every detail of the training right in what is often a giant game of telephone. This allows leaders to focus on organizing their teams instead of organizing the training itself.

Lastly, the creation of training can be so flexible with such lightweight learning software that leaders can easily take in and use employee feedback about the training process. Given the capabilities of modern digital adoption platforms and learning solutions, each department can play a meaningful role in successful digital transformation.

Setting your digital adoption strategy in motion

In order to succeed in the digital era, it is vital to avoid falling into the detail trap. Such a trap can cause a myopic view of training creation and execution, causing company leaders to lose sight of their greater goals. But with the right contextual learning software and the flexibility it provides, company leaders can free themselves from the trap and focus more on what will make their plans work: the people who make up the organization. To get started, chat with us today.