DAPs help keep employees engaged in digital transformation projects

It’s the moment your entire leadership team has been waiting for. You’ve planned and prepared for months, and it’s finally time to roll out your new digital tools. They’ll revolutionize how your organization works … or at least you hope so, but you can’t shake the feeling that despite your best intentions, things aren’t going to go quite as smoothly as you had hoped.

You have good reason to be concerned. Data shows that as many as 70% of digital transformation initiatives fail outright, requiring large-scale changes after the fact due to one very specific but often overlooked hurdle: employee frustration and confusion that inevitably leads to resistance to change.

Podcast: AI, automation and computer-aided manufacturing

This is where digital adoption platforms (DAPs) shine, mitigating unneeded headaches while at the same time allowing your employees to not only adapt but thrive in a new digital environment. When your entire business rides on employee efficiency—and what business doesn't?—DAPs aren’t a luxury, but an absolute necessity.

Onboard faster, train better

The days of handing a newly hired employee a stack of user manuals or scheduling hourslong training sessions are well and truly in the past. These old-school approaches aren’t just outdated; they simply don’t work in a modern business setting. Today, your employees need to be “day one productive.”

DAPs, on the other hand, can provide intuitive tutorials that actively train new users as they actually use the software. This hands-on learning is vitally important when employees are expected to master an entire catalog of applications to do their work efficiently.

The guidance provided by DAPs can be tailored to an individual's specific needs and assigned duties. This person learns exactly what he/she needs to learn without anything extraneous, not wasting time on miscellaneous software features that may have no impact on this particular individual’s day-to-day work.

DAPs also teach new staff members where to find the information they need and how to get back on track if they make a mistake. This real-time assistance means they rapidly grasp the tools essential to their jobs, making them more efficient employees from the very start.

With less time wasted on errant troubleshooting and inefficient training, DAPs give companies an edge in getting employees up to speed.

Reducing frustration enhances job satisfaction

Few things are more frustrating than not knowing how to use a piece of software, especially for work. You move slowly, are fearful to click on anything, and ultimately get little actual work done.

At the same time, you may feel hesitant to ask for help. DAPs—with their ability to hand-hold employees through virtually any process or workflow—completely eliminate this friction in both longtime employees and new hires.

With intuitive interfaces and prompts catered to an employee’s needs, DAPs alleviate the frustration that may come with new software or large feature updates. This, in turn, reduces the likelihood that employees will become disengaged from their work or resist the rollout of new software tools.

Organizations that emphasize the quality of their employees’ user experience actively support a culture of innovation and idea-building. Employees learn to adapt quickly, embrace new ways of doing business, and are more eager to leverage new technologies that have a lasting impact on their jobs.

The data tells the story

Asking employees if they have issues with new software will rarely get you the answers you want. Some may be struggling but will tell you everything is fine. Others, who are ready and willing to admit they are hitting bottlenecks, may have trouble articulating their issues.

The beauty of the wealth of data that DAPs provide is that it cuts through all of this, allowing leadership to easily identify pain points faster than employees can pinpoint them.

With robust analytics that follow the work of each employee, leaders can pinpoint the areas where users are struggling and apply in-app training to help to fix the problem.

Regardless of the cause—a process that lacks clarity, a feature with obtuse instructions, or even an error that appears intermittently—organizations can adapt quickly to the needs of their staff and mitigate any downtime, and minimize productivity lost through inefficient workflows.

Important today, crucial tomorrow

Technology marches on whether we’d like it to or not. The apps your business uses today will not be the same ones you use tomorrow, whether it be due to large-scale updates or the introduction of new, better software. Providing employees with a positive digital experience as your company grows and adapts is of utmost importance, and DAPs play a vital role in helping every business navigate this ever-changing landscape.