Choosing the best system to ensure successful adoption

Digitization of internal processes, introduction of new tools, creation of new entities, change of manager or a move to new premises: change management affects every aspect of a company.

There are numerous resources for managing change – but it isn’t always obvious which one – or ones – best meet the needs of particular businesses and their employees.

For instance, take the case of this big CAC 40 group, that was getting ready to launch a project to transform its sales department.

To this end, the IT department approved the purchase of various so-called “adoption solutions” intended to cover training, communication and information sharing. Each of the solutions addressed a very specific need. Altogether, 4 different types of tool were used:

Although the tools were useful in terms of training and communication, it was clear that 6 months after the project went live, adoption rates were still well below expectations and trundling along at 30 to 40%.

What actually happened was that employees got training and support right up until the project went live, after which they were just left to get on with the new processes and new roles as best they could.

Some weren’t very keen on the training courses they had to follow, others didn’t understand what the point of the program was or didn’t know what was expected of them – meanwhile the change management team was unable to identify the nature of the problems or which employees were concerned.

This example leads us to ask the following question: The tools may well be useful, but can they guarantee employee adoption and hence accelerate their transformation?

This question is easily answered if we ask ourselves if they bring enough added value.

Of course such solutions offer indicators, but they only tell us about rates of employee participation and success with respect to the training courses themselves. There are no guarantees that processes will be performed correctly from then on in.
They do not provide for regular communication with employees (see proactive “Calls to Action”) when course indicators reveal weaknesses. This prevents any natural customization of course content to address perceived weaknesses.

The same applies to messaging on company social media, which tends to be very general, completely untargeted and doesn’t always refer to any particular program.

As a rule, the Change Management team do not get any user feedback that might give them an idea of how well the content is being received or what, if any, impact it is having on employee progress towards their goals.

These are significant disadvantages when it comes to successful adoption of the new processes.

They highlight the fact that it’s not enough to just manage the means – support must be available for long enough to measure the extent to which the new processes have been satisfactorily adopted and, later, their effect on performance.

Hence the need to use a platform that not only combines the above-mentioned missing features, but can also be seen to complement those very tools.

This would give change management teams a unique platform that operated rather like the conductor of an orchestra, managing the process of adoption and offering different content to suit different needs.

As well as “conducting” the change, such a tool would act as a launching ramp for the motivation campaign.
Of course, the content would still be hosted by the training and communication tools, making the Training Department’s job that much easier.

But this central platform would identify useful training and content items, and then send personalized notifications about their availability to whichever employees might need them. Thus the platform would promote this content, particularly in cases where it may be under-used.

Such a system would probably have helped the group in question to double its adoption rate, which would have automatically halved training and motivation costs.