Digital Uptake Lags Among Businesses, Despite Large Investments in IT

Despite growing pressure for organizations to accelerate digital transformation, a lack of uptake of digital technology is leading to overspending, costing the average enterprise with more than 10,000 employees north of $96 million.

These were among the findings of WalkMe's 2022-2023 State of Digital Adoption report, which surveyed 1,475 senior business leaders at enterprises across North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.

The report found that large enterprises are spending more than $346 million on reaching their strategic goals, with digital transformation, software, and other IT spend forming a significant proportion of this amount.

Related: Benefits of Digital Transformation

Despite this significant investment and its strategic importance to the business, the survey indicated organizations often struggle with training employees to properly use existing and new digital processes.

Nearly two-thirds (63%) of survey respondents said a one-size-fits-all approach to technology support and training "isn't applicable," and 60% said change management programs are "no longer fit for purpose."

It's not atypical to see organizations stumble over technology implementation when leaders authorize spend before the business is ready to implement the newly acquired technology, said Mark Arnold, vice president of advisory services at Lares Consulting.

"It is paramount that organization measure maturity, capacity, and capability prior to expending monies on new technology," he said. "Strategic goals should account for all three factors to improve implementation outcomes."

Some organizations have resisted adopting newer technology for fear of disrupting familiar business operational models, Arnold said.

"Pandemics and geopolitical changes are forcing the hands of business stakeholders to move past trepidation to embrace new technology toward improved business outcomes," he said.

IT Evolution Accelerates, Making Training Critical

One major factor businesses must contend with today is the rapid pace of new software and technology deployment and adoption, according to Khadim Batti, CEO at Whatfix.

"Traditional training methods are not suited to deal with this kind of dynamic speed," he said. "The key is to make organizations more adaptable to technology changes by learning within the flow of work without disrupting it. There are software solutions that can help support this."

For example, when businesses offer contextual, in-app guidance using the capabilities of a digital adoption platform that sits on top of applications used in a specific workflow, it can have a tremendously positive impact on adoption and overall effectiveness.

A lot of users may find new technologies confusing or cumbersome, with simple things, like redundant data inputs, presenting obstacles to employee adoption, Batti said.

"Most of the time, the key is smoothing out any friction that users might be experiencing or disruption to existing workflows," he said. "Limiting the learning curve is an important factor in enabling quick adoption and helping organizations glean the benefit of newly integrated technologies."

In addition, implementing solutions that provide users with personalized help without disrupting their jobs can go a long way toward reducing such friction.

While typically the CIO should be responsible for setting the tone for business-wide technology adoption, many organizations are realizing how important the role of technology adoption is today, according to Batti.

"One can see new roles like employee experience coming up where organizations are hiring vice presidents to head it," he explained.

Similarly, other new roles such as digital adoption manager and tech adoption consultant should also evolve soon to support this new function.

"These leaders will be responsible for leading by example and, of course, enabling the workforce with the necessary tools," Batti said. "But it's also essential to articulate the reasoning, benefits, and best practices for successful enterprise technology adoption."

He added that it's important to have C-level buy-in across the board as implementing, adhering to, and enforcing policies are only effective when it's a business-wide focus.

"To ensure ROI, these decisions must be applied uniformly to an entire organization," he said.

IT Operations Should Take Adoption Management Lead

The responsibility for successful configuration, testing, and deployment falls to IT operations, said Tim Flower, Nexthink's vice president of sales enablement and transformation.

"It is their job to create the visibility needed to understand employee technology consumption, respond to what employees need, and then act on it accordingly," he said. "And these determinations are the tricky part."

It is also their job to implement the technology generally and ensure it is compliant with company policies, he said.

"However, for technology adoption to be successful, it needs the full support of management and the individual department heads where it is being deployed," Flower explained. "It should be a team effort to achieve success."

End users do not often benefit from capable project management, Arnold said.

"As a result, end users are swept up in the flood of hype cycles in the attempt to introduce the next 'hotness' in the marketplace," he said. "End users must be considered a crucial component in the implementation lifecycle and accounted for in the overall technical strategy of an organization."

Remote Work, Shadow IT Complicate Adoption Efforts

Now that more employees than ever are working remotely, there is a new set of dynamics companies must deal with in terms of employee enablement, and traditional training for remote employees is more impractical than it is for their in-office counterparts in many cases.

Related: Organizations Must Formulate Long-Term Remote Work Strategy

"The upside is that employees are growing increasingly accustomed to supplementing their workflows with digital solutions that ease the burdens associated with remote work," Batti said. "However, organizations need to be mindful of these changing conditions and habits. This means adopting technologies that can accommodate remote work more effectively than those that do not."

Flower added that the switch to remote work has complicated end-user technology adoption by increasing the use of shadow IT, which accrues when employees look for applications that will help them be more productive but may not be authorized by their companies.

"For some organizations, remote work has made communication around new applications more of a challenge," Flower said. "Without the awareness of the full scope of the resources at their disposal, employees won't take advantage of the new technology."