Did you know that 3 out of 4 SaaS leaders spend up to half their week dealing with user adoption initiatives? That’s a lot of time that leaders across various industries are using to ramp up new technology when they could be focused on building their teams, growing revenue, and other strategic efforts.
Now, don’t get us wrong. User adoption, or the level that users embrace and apply a system that solves a specific need, and the effort it takes to support a business in using a new solution is no small feat. It absolutely deserves a leader’s attention! But we’re thinking that over half of the week dedicated to these initiatives is a little much. Mostly because we believe that with the right user adoption strategy, leaders and their teams can more efficiently and successfully implement new solutions and improve their organizations.
Tips to keep in mind for successful user adoption
In our guide, How to Successfully Launch New Technology and Increase User Adoption, we pulled together some eye-opening stats related to user adoption and laid out a few best practices to help your team make the most of your new solution and succeed together.
These are some of our favorite tips to help get you started on implementing new technology and increasing your organization’s user adoption.
1) Make the launch a splash
User adoption strategies involve things like training programs, communication plans, and timelines (we’ll get to these in just a second) that often involve a few different departments. It’s an exciting effort and the results should save the company time and bring in more business. That’s something to celebrate!
Make the launch of a new solution and the user adoption strategy an event to look forward to by planning a happy hour or a kick-off party and invite anyone who will be involved in supporting the new solution. Order some food, turn up some music, and start the new project on a fun, collaborative note.
2) Get cozy with automation
As we mentioned, a user adoption strategy involves a few moving components. Project timelines and communication plans must be created to ensure the company stays updated on progress and hits important milestones. Self-guided and team training opportunities must be developed to give team members the knowledge and expertise needed to use the new technology properly.
All these things are human-led efforts. But many of them can be made better with the help of automation at your side. Imagine using automation to set up self-guided training modules that include email reminders and a tracker that notifies users of their progress. Or automated dashboards that track and measure success metrics throughout the process. Automation is key to helping leaders reduce the time they’re spending on user adoption without sacrificing quality and progress.
3) Embrace the user adoption success spectrum
Everyone should create a user adoption strategy with success in mind. But it’s important to set realistic, attainable goals. Determining which metrics you want to track and measure in the early planning stages of implementation and starting to set up dashboards to view and share those metrics early are the cornerstones of organizational readiness.
As amazing as 100% user adoption sounds — the idea that your entire team understands the need for the new solution, supports it, and has committed to the necessary training and utilization of the technology — it’s rare. And so is the dreaded 0% adoption scenario where there’s no understanding or interaction with the new solution. The truth is user adoption strategies come with a few challenges and big wins. The important thing is to establish what those will be for your unique needs.
4) Secure executive buy-in from the very beginning
We saved one of the most important tips for last. While any big, new solution will require executive agreement, what most people don’t realize is that mere agreement may secure the new technology, but if that’s where executive buy-in ends, user adoption will fall short.
Instead, find an executive advocate or two and invite them to things like the launch party, and ask them to take part in the communication plans and make company-wide announcements about the progress and updates related to the user adoption strategy.
We love to talk new technology, and implementations and user adoption strategies are a couple of things we do best. Reach out today and ask us about how we can help your organization get ready for your new solution.
