Change Management: Enhancing Employee Experience with Digital Platforms?

Driving change and digital transformation is one of the biggest challenges facing modern organizations today. With the rapid pace of technological innovation, companies must continuously adapt and implement new systems and processes. However, major change initiatives often face resistance from employees, lack of buy-in across departments, and difficulty driving adoption at scale.

According to research, the top challenges of digital transformation include overcoming legacy systems, changing company culture, upskilling employees, and more. To successfully manage change, organizations need solutions that make transformation seamless for every employee.

This is where digital adoption platforms (DAPs) come in. DAPs provide in-app guidance, training, and support to help employees smoothly transition to new technologies. By improving the employee experience, DAPs can enable organizations to drive change, boost adoption of new tools and systems, and realize the full benefits of digital transformation.

What is a Digital Adoption Platform?

A digital adoption platform (DAP) is software that integrates with other applications and systems to guide users through tasks and optimize user workflows. DAPs aim to simplify employee onboarding and training on new systems and processes. They provide in-application guidance, tips, and support to employees as they navigate workflows. Key capabilities of DAPs include:

• In-app walkthroughs and tutorials
• Tooltips and embedded assistance
• Smart search and microlearning
• Workflow automation and guidance
• Adoption analytics and insights

By integrating directly with an organization's tech stack, DAPs can provide personalized and contextual support. This helps employees learn faster and work more efficiently within new digital systems.

Benefits of DAPs for Employees

Digital adoption platforms provide significant advantages for employees during technology rollouts and process changes within an organization. One key benefit is improved onboarding and training. With DAPs, new employees can access in-app walkthroughs, tips, and guidance as they get started with new systems. This reduces the learning curve and allows them to ramp up faster. According to LumApps, DAPs create "More innovation in the workplace" by streamlining training.

DAPs also enable in-context support for employees when new software or updates are launched. Interactive in-app messaging provides guidance exactly when and where employees need it. Employees can easily get help with new features or workflows without leaving the application.  

Finally, DAPs improve the overall user experience which drives engagement. With features like smart tips and nudges, employees are supported at every step rather than frustrated.

Benefits of DAPs for Organizations

Organizations can reap significant benefits by implementing a digital adoption platform for change management initiatives. Some of the key organizational advantages include:

Faster adoption of new systems

DAPs accelerate adoption of new technologies and processes. Rather than learning through traditional training, employees can access in-context guidance within the applications through the DAP. This results in up to 5x faster adoption compared to conventional methods.

Increased productivity and ROI

By streamlining onboarding and training, DAPs boost employee productivity on new systems. Employees reach full productivity on apps much quicker. DAPs can improve productivity by over 35%. This results in higher ROI from technology investments.

Reduced training costs

DAPs significantly reduce the need for formal training resources. In-app guidance replaces classroom-based training and lengthy manuals. This can lower training costs by as much as 90% (GRAVITY). The platform also eliminates the need for ongoing refresher training.

The DAP Implementation Process

Implementing a digital adoption platform (DAP) requires careful planning and execution to ensure it meets an organization's specific needs. The key steps in implementing a DAP include:

Assessing Organizational Needs

The first step is to evaluate the organization's current processes, pain points, and goals. This involves identifying areas that need change management support, surveying employees on challenges faced, and determining what capabilities are required from the DAP. Organizational readiness for adoption should also be analyzed.

Configuring the Platform

Once needs are determined, the DAP is configured accordingly. This includes mapping out user journeys, setting up in-app guidance, integrating with existing apps and systems, and developing customized content and training materials. User roles and permissions need to be set up. It's crucial to ensure the DAP aligns smoothly with organizational workflows.

Developing a Change Management Plan

A change management plan helps drive DAP adoption across the organization. This involves getting buy-in from stakeholders, promoting awareness through marketing campaigns, providing training to administrators and end-users, and planning an incremental rollout. Ongoing support and feedback channels should be established. Analytics need to be implemented to track usage and fine-tune the DAP.

With careful planning and change management, organizations can ensure a successful DAP implementation that maximizes value.

Key Features of Gravity Global's DAP

Gravity Global's digital adoption platform stands out for its intelligent guidance capabilities tailored to each employee's needs and role. Some key features include:

Personalized guidance for each user - Employees receive training and support specifically relevant to their job function and workflow.

Lifecycle approach from onboarding to mastery - Guidance adapts as employees gain experience, ensuring they reach full productivity.

Seamless cross-application experience - Consistent tips and workflows across multiple enterprise applications for a unified experience.

Gravity Global notes that its DAP provides personalized walkthroughs, nudge communications, and productivity-enhancing workflows across applications". This intelligent approach boosts employee adoption and productivity with new systems.

Analytics and Insights

A key capability of Gravity Global's DAP is providing analytics and insights to track usage and optimize processes. The platform includes robust analytics to identify adoption challenges and opportunities.

Usage tracking allows organizations to see which features employees use frequently vs rarely. This reveals where they may be struggling or avoiding certain workflows. The data enables training teams to target knowledge gaps.

Analytics also showcase which in-app guidance is viewed often by users. This indicates where they need the most support. Teams can respond by creating more tips or tutorials on those features.

By gathering employee usage data over time, Gravity Global's DAP provides insights to optimize processes. Leaders can see where workflows with low adoption create bottlenecks. This allows them to simplify or automate these processes for a smoother user experience.

In summary, analytics transform adoption platforms from just driving one-time implementation to enabling continuous optimization. Usage metrics let organizations improve their systems and employee experiences over the long-term.

Driving Long-Term Change

Implementing new technologies or processes is just the first step in organizational change. The bigger challenge is ensuring these changes stick over the long run as technologies and business needs evolve. This requires ongoing reinforcement and support for employees as they encounter new workflows.

DAPs are uniquely equipped to drive long-term adoption by providing contextual guidance that adapts as processes mature. For example, tips and training can be updated in real-time to match new feature releases. Automated workflows also evolve along with technology.

With a DAP, organizations can avoid the pitfall of one-time training that fails to stick. Employees have an embedded system guiding them through changes over months and years. As processes mature, the DAP matures as well.

Analytics provide visibility into where employees still need more support. DAPs can then target knowledge gaps with more training. This continual cycle of guidance, adoption measurement, and reinforcement is critical for sticking the landing on transformation initiatives.

Sources:

• Deloitte.com - Manage change with digital adoption platforms
• Public digital, Dr. Pramod K. Varma - Sustaining change

The Future of Change Management

The future of change management is going digital. Organizations are increasingly turning to technology solutions like digital adoption platforms (DAPs) to enable and support change initiatives.

As per Prosci's 2024 outlook, "Artificial intelligence, virtual reality and digital adoption platforms are making training and reinforcement available on-demand to support change adoption."1 DAPs are emerging as critical tools for leading digital transformation and managing change in modern organizations.

KPMG predicts, "Change management will become more evidence-based and technology-enabled."2 Features like in-app guidance, training reinforcement, and adoption analytics allow DAPs to drive usage and behavior change at scale.

The future of change management will be defined by digital tools and platforms that enable organizations to implement transformations smoothly and drive rapid adoption at scale. DAPs will be critical to managing change initiatives successfully in the coming years.

Conclusion

In summary, digital adoption platforms are powerful and innovative tools for managing organizational change and digital transformation. DAPs provide in-context guidance and support to users, driving faster adoption of new systems and processes. Key benefits for employees include simplified onboarding, reduced training time, and improved user experience. For organizations, DAPs deliver better ROI on technology investments, increased productivity, and ongoing optimization as workflows evolve.

As a leader in the space, Gravity Global offers an intelligent DAP approach focused on the entire employee lifecycle. With tailored guidance for each user role, seamless cross-application experience, and robust analytics, Gravity Global is at the forefront of enabling successful transformation in modern enterprises. Organizations that leverage Gravity Global's DAP can empower their workforce, accelerate change initiatives, and build a culture of agility.