Digital adoption solutions (DAS) are pieces of software designed to increase application adoption rates among enterprise customers or employees. DAS walk users through the application, guiding them step by step through each feature to help them learn to use the application to its fullest extent.
In 2019, Gartner officially recognised digital adoption solutions as a new category of software for businesses. Gartner’s report, titled Increase Sales Productivity with Digital Adoption Solutions, rated DAS as highly beneficial for increasing technology adoption.
Digital adoption solutions overlay the existing application to provide a consistent experience. Unlike external training methods, with a DAS, users can learn by doing. The DAS offers in-app guidance so the learner can practice using the application as they train. This helps decrease time to adoption because there is no gap between receiving training and using the new technology.
Digital adoption solutions are the key to increasing adoption rates in your company and ensuring that your employees or customers are using applications to their full extent.
In order to maximise ROI for new technology, digital adoption rates need to be high. In a recent survey, Whatfix found that 90% of businesses agree that increased adoption of customer relationship management (CRM) technology would boost productivity and reduce sales-cycle length. Yet more than half of respondents said they had adoption rates of 90% or lower.
More than 35% of surveyed sales reps cited the need for more training as a reason for low adoption rates. With DAS, training is built right into the app. Users have access to step-by-step guidance and self-help materials so they can quickly answer any questions they have without having to leave the application or wait for a response from customer support.
The most prominent benefit of digital adoption solutions is increased end-user adoption rates. DAS help your company realise the full potential of new technology by enabling ongoing training and ensuring that users can use each feature of the application.
Other benefits of DAS include:
According to Gartner, one of the primary functions of digital adoption solutions is sales enablement. CRM systems are commonly purchased by businesses to help sales teams manage leads and customer relationships, but a third of CRM implementations fail, often because of low adoption. Companies leverage DAS alongside a CRM platform to prevent or counteract low adoption among sales reps.
However, digital adoption solutions have many use cases outside of sales. A few of these functions include:
Increasing customer adoption of enterprise applications
Decreasing time to value for new customers
Reducing customer support tickets by providing self-help materials
Decreasing new employee onboarding time
Increasing the success of multidepartment digital transformation efforts
Enabling asynchronous training for remote teams
One reason sales is a key use case for digital adoption solutions is that successfully implementing a new CRM can significantly boost sales team productivity. Companies that achieve complete adoption of new CRM platforms report productivity gains of 11-30%.
Digital adoption solutions are particularly useful for enterprise businesses because these companies are typically training and onboarding large numbers of employees or customers at any given time. Self-guided training reduces the load on customer support staff and training managers, freeing them to focus on other tasks.
For example, PlanetHS, an athletics management software company, eliminated 190,000 support tickets in 12 months by implementing Whatfix.
DAS are also well-suited for large companies because they work within the businesses’ existing technology. Enterprises often have established learning management systems (LMS), knowledge bases, and other training tools. It would be difficult and time-consuming to completely transfer their established training modules to a new system. DAS integrate with existing technology, allowing for a seamless transition and easy consolidation and organization of learning materials.
Enterprise businesses need training solutions that work across multiple applications and can offer training for apps with numerous customised features. When evaluating DAS, companies should consider their use cases carefully and select solutions that can handle the necessary volume of users and features.
When businesses consider Whatfix, they can see that the platform works with multiple enterprise-level applications, including Salesforce, ServiceNow, Oracle CRM, and SAP SuccessFactors. Businesses can also see that Whatfix was the first to offer SCORM-compliant guidance, and the platform has xAPI integration so companies can easily track online and offline learning progress.
Because of Whatfix’s long history working with enterprises, its platform is specifically designed to meet the unique needs of such large-scale companies. It can handle large numbers of users with multiple roles, and it works within highly customised applications and across multiple pieces of software. As a result, enterprise businesses consistently award Whatfix a high rank among digital adoption platforms, with the highest score for customer satisfaction.
As you evaluate and compare different digital adoption solutions, there are a few features to look for. The best DAS typically include:
There are two main types of digital adoption solutions: built-in options that are already integrated with a piece of software, and stand-alone platforms that you can use with multiple applications.
One example of a built-in DAS is Light My Way. Light My Way is an integrated digital adoption solution for 3DEXPERIENCE, a product lifecycle management platform. Built-in DAS are useful, in that they work perfectly with the application, and you do not need to integrate the DAS with your application. However, built-in solutions have a limited sphere of use and cannot work across different pieces of software.
Whatfix is an example of a stand-alone DAS. You can leverage Whatfix with multiple applications, and the platform will integrate seamlessly, offering a consistent user experience throughout your software. Whatfix offers contextualised guidance and self-help menus, so users can immediately access the most relevant training materials for their role and position within the application
Whatfix running on Salesforce
Ultimately, the best digital adoption solution will be one that suits your company’s needs. Talk to employees to find out the kind of training help they most want. After you implement a digital adoption solution, monitor usage analytics, and collect regular employee feedback to see whether you need to make adjustments.
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