Consider this scenario: Your organization just invested thousands of dollars—and hours—on a major software implementation. But you’re still not seeing the efficiency and accuracy improvements you were expecting.
As you explore the root of the issue, you discover that your team is using the software to manage recon outages, but they’re still tracking outage owners and expected clear dates in a separate, off-system spreadsheet—a much more tedious process than using the new software for the same purpose.
You dig deeper and learn that their training didn’t cover that functionality. The team simply kept their same old procedure, unaware that they could automate these components of the process.
Unfortunately this isn’t an uncommon problem with implementations. A truly successful implementation doesn’t end when the software is up and running; it ends when the end users have competently, confidently adopted the software.
Failure to Adopt Has Strategic Consequences
It’s easy to ignore adoption if it’s not integrated in the implementation process. But failing to ensure adoption has short- and long-term consequences for your organization:
1. Unrealized ROI: This is perhaps the most obvious and immediate impact of a failed adoption. Your organization has invested money, time, and resources in new technology, and now you’re paying for something that no one is using. Furthermore, you’re not gaining the efficiency and savings that should have come with that investment.
2. Hidden training and support costs: If adoption isn’t baked into implementation, the burden of training and support often fall to the wrong people—namely managers, team leaders, and the IT department. They can quickly get bogged down with redundant, avoidable questions and issues, all of which distract from their primary responsibilities.
3. Bloated processes: New software should streamline processes. But if your team doesn’t fully adopt that software, they’ll develop workarounds and processing exceptions that bloat SOPs—further complicating training.
4. Drop in employee morale and attitude: As employees feel defeated or overwhelmed by new software and processes, their morale suffers. This directly correlates with decreases in productivity.
5. Elevated risk for compliance violations: When users skip steps or work outside the system of record, your organization can be at risk for expensive compliance violations or audit findings.
6. Impaired decision-making capabilities: Most technology adoptions come with the promise of improved insights and data analytics. Without this information, your organization’s leaders lack the comprehensive information they need to make strategic decisions.
7. Detours on your organizational roadmap: Lags in adoption not only cost money, but they also ultimately hinder your organization’s digital transformation. Each time an initiative fails to launch, teams lose confidence, roadmaps slip, and eventually your entire strategic vision gets derailed.
Although there’s no foolproof method for ensuring a successful adoption, there are several principles that will increase your chances for success.
#1. Address process governance, not just process management.
In our experience, the most successful adoptions are those where the organization embraces not just process management, but true process governance. What’s the difference?
Process management is essentially tactical, ensuring that individuals follow the correct process. Generally supervisors or team leads handle process management, and they may not have complete insight into how their updated business processes impact other upstream or downstream business processes.
Process governance, on the other hand, is more strategic, with multiple goals:
- Ensuring that new processes align with overall business goals
- Fulfilling all relevant regulatory or operational requirements (especially important in mortgage servicing)
- Implementing the new process correctly and consistently across all impacted business teams
The ideal process governance structure is usually federated: individual teams have autonomy over process management and provide input, but a single team or leader is responsible for overall governance structure.
While it may require more time during the initial phases of implementation, establishing a robust process governance framework better ensures proper adoption. Here’s a (non-exhaustive) list of some key elements:
- Clearly defined roles and responsibilities: The most effective implementation teams fully understand what they “own” in the process. Your process governance plan should clearly outline who’s involved when, and what their responsibilities are.
- Detailed SOPs for the current and “to-be” processes: We frequently find that employees have developed their own—often undocumented–workarounds or shortcuts for current processes. It’s critical to understand these, and to document what the new process should look like.
- Thoughtful communication strategy: The best communication plans use the mantra of “Early and often.” Start before the implementation is too far along, and consistently communicate the business objectives of the new process. Tailor the messages for different stakeholders; end users will have different concerns and goals than senior leadership, for example.
- Relevant KPIs and metric tracking: It’s critical to define the success of any project, and a technology adoption is certainly no exception. Frequent benchmarking allows you to identify pitfalls or challenges as early as possible. More about setting KPIs below!
#2. Track the right KPIs and metrics.
As a business leader, you’re probably laser focused on the ROI of any technology adoption. And you should be! Often we see business leaders who are hyper-focused on the numbers that come at the end of a successful adoption (such as reduced headcount or decreased costs). While those numbers are certainly important, they don’t provide the insights you need in the interim.
Since we’re talking numbers, here are a few eye-opening stats: According to the Technology Service Industry Association (TSIA), 70% of software features don’t get used by customers. And the Whatfix 2024 Digital Adoption Trends Report concluded that 78% of employees lack expertise and knowledge of the software they use daily, and could use more training.
So when it comes to adoption, which numbers matter? Focus on the KPIs and metrics that demonstrate true user value:
- Workflow completion rates: This is usually defined as the percentage of employees who are using the new technology to complete the relevant work, rather than the old process.
- Time-to-task accuracy: How long does it take employees to do their tasks accurately and error-free using the new technology? This figure should decrease as employees gain more fluency with the new process.
- Support ticket volume: It’s natural for users to submit a higher volume of support tickets for a new technology. But if support ticket volume remains static over time, it usually indicates that users need additional training or other support.
- Use of workarounds and shadow tools: This can be more difficult to measure, but it’s important to work with your team leaders to track this behavior.
- Time to proficiency: How long does it take a new user or employee to gain fluency with the new process, as indicated by independent completion of the business process?
- Process cycle time: How long does it take to complete the end-to-end business process? Shorter cycles indicate improved efficiency.
- Employee productivity rate: How productive is each individual employee, as measured by their tasks completed each day (e.g., number of reconciliations submitted per day)?
- Organizational productivity rate: How productive is each team, as measured by tasks performed each day? These gains indicate improved organizational efficiency.
- Error rate: How often do employees make errors or require assistance to complete their work? High error/intervention rate often means more training is necessary.
Skip the vanity metrics here! The number of active users or total clicks is hardly indicative of how users are really using the new technology. For instance, high total clicks could actually demonstrate that users don’t know how to use the new system and spend lots of time clicking around, looking for the right things.
#3. Plan for adoption after the implementation ends.
So the implementation is over. That means it’s time to move on to the next project, right? Not so fast! While the “main” adoption might be over, adoption efforts must continue. Consider these three common scenarios:
- New employees join the team: Who is responsible for training new employees to use this technology? What does that training look like? Which KPIs will be used to determine when a new employee has achieved proficiency? And who is responsible for updating training materials as processes change or new features are introduced? All of these answers should be documented before you close out the implementation.
- Business processes evolve: Perhaps your organization acquires a new set of loans, and now you must meet a different set of agency requirements. Your vendor can add the necessary configuration, but your end users will still need to understand and use the new functionality. Or you identify another downstream business process that could be automated using this same technology. A new team will need to start from scratch to learn a new process. In both these situations, existing training materials will be a starting point, but they’ll need to be supplemented using a new adoption plan.
- The vendor releases new features: As technology partners, we work closely with our clients to determine which new features will add real value. We also provide how-to guides and walkthroughs to introduce new functionality to superusers and business team leaders. Our efforts can only go so far, and we need our clients to champion the adoption of new product features so they can achieve the desired value and results.
Address these scenarios during your implementation, ideally as part of your overall process governance. This will ensure smoother transitions for new employees, greater operational efficiency when processes change, and increased adoption of new features that can improve value.