FACT CHECKED
What is the digital adoption rate and why does it matter? In this FAQ, we’ll cover key questions and answers about digital adoption, digital adoption rates, and how digital adoption’s impact on the organization.
In recent years, digital adoption, digitization, and digital transformation have become popular topics in the business world.
Many professionals, after all, are beginning to realize the value of digital technology.
However, to profit from technology, it is important to understand technology’s role in the workplace and be able to use technology to its fullest extent – and this is where digital adoption comes in.
What Does Digital Adoption Mean?
Digital adoption means utilizing technology as it was intended and to its fullest extent.
When users have fully adopted a tool or platform, they are fully proficient and productive.
On the other hand, when users have only partially adopted a tool, they will not be using it to its fullest extent.
As a result, they will be less proficient and less productive.
What Is the Digital Adoption Rate?
When looking at technology adoption across society, the adoption rate often refers to the percentage of people that are using a tool or product. Mobile phone adoption, for instance, refers to the percentage of people that use mobile phones in a region or society.
The digital adoption rate, however, is a business metric that gauges how fully a base of users have implemented a tool.
Enterprises use digital adoption rates to measure factors such as:
- Frequency of use
- User proficiency
- User productivity
- The extent of a tool’s utilization
When used in the context of a digital adoption program, this type of information can help enterprises improve adoption rates and earn more from their digital investments.
Why Does the Digital Adoption Rate Matter?
Digital adoption rates are often used in two business scenarios:
- Software developers who want to maximize user engagement, longevity, and profitability
- Enterprises that adopt digital tools in the workplace and want to maximize employee productivity
In either case, understanding the adoption rate can offer insight into users’ needs, boost their engagement, and increase software ROI.
A company that adopts ServiceNow, for instance, would want to ensure that its employees are using the platform to its fullest extent. Training managers and adoption managers, therefore, would measure digital adoption rates as part of their ServiceNow training and adoption efforts.
That data, in turn, would offer insight into users’ training needs, stumbling blocks, which features aren’t being used, and so forth.
What Is the Best Way to Boost Adoption Rates?
Digital adoption strategies are structured programs designed to maximize adoption rates.
These programs often focus on stages in the user journey such as:
- User onboarding
- Software training
- Technical support
- Customer support
By understanding and optimizing these stages, adoption specialists can improve user outcomes at each point in their journey. As a result, adoption specialists can improve user performance metrics and, ultimately, the value of the product.
What Are Digital Adoption Platforms?
Digital adoption platforms (DAPs) are digital training tools specifically designed to improve digital adoption rates, user engagement, and product value.
These platforms are onboarding and training solutions that automate many of the key points in the adoption process.
Key features of these platforms include:
- Product tours that guide new users through a product’s main features
- Software walkthroughs that take users step-by-step through a series of tasks
- Software analytics that analyze user behavior and offer insight into training needs
- Self-service solutions, such as chatbots, that help users find answers to technical questions
DAPs offer a number of advantages over other training methods, such as in-person training or webinars, since they are contextual, experiential, and on-demand.
What Are the Biggest Challenges to Digital Adoption?
Today’s workplace is complex, fast-paced, and dynamic. New software is released constantly, existing tools are updated regularly, and businesses implement new platforms continually.
The result: a digital environment that is becoming more complex by the day.
Information overload and cognitive overload can become a major problem for any software user, whether they are a customer or an in-house employee.
This type of digital environment fuels many of the challenges associated with digital adoption.
For instance:
- Learning new software takes cognitive effort, time, and energy, which can frustrate users and decrease productivity
- Digital tools often form part of a software ecosystem, so users must often learn to use several tools at once to be productive, particularly in the business world
- Traditional employee skills development methods are not efficient, economical, or scalable, so adoption managers must find new approaches that are
To minimize these obstacles, adoption managers must adapt and adopt new training approaches that simplify onboarding, training, and the user experience.
When the adoption process is streamlined and simplified, users will become more productive in less time – and, as a consequence, software will generate more value for users, product creators, and other stakeholders.
