Are digital projects succeeding? Three key questions to answer

Simon Blunn at WalkMe asks three questions about technology that businesses should be asking themselves if they wish to benefit from digital transformation

With businesses facing a growing number of challenges, digital transformation has never been more important. There are a number of hurdles in their path, including the Great Resignation (with nearly 1 in 5 UK workers planning to quit in the next year), the hybrid working revolution, and economic uncertainty that’s ripply across the globe.

As such, technology’s capability to make businesses more adaptable, more productive, and more resilient has arguably never been more essential. 

This is ramping up the pressure on businesses to complete digital transformations and start enjoying the benefits. However, if end users don’t adopt the technology in front of them and put it to full use, enterprises will quickly find that ‘completed’ digital transformations aren’t providing the results they expected.

To combat this, increasing numbers of businesses are focussing on driving digital adoption. This concept has been quickly elevated from the grassroots into a fully-fledged Gartner category, and with the amount businesses are spending on digital transformation continuing to snowball, it’s only going to grow in importance.  

But how can businesses ensure the completion of digital projects results in new technologies or capabilities being adopted by employees and customers? We surveyed 1,475 senior business decision makers, including CIOs and other senior IT executives, exploring three key questions businesses should be asking themselves.

1. Are we enjoying the projected ROI?

There’s no denying that businesses need to transform urgently: 67% of respondents said that their organisations are under “incredible pressure” to accelerate digital transformation further than they already have.

But however great the pressure is, any investment in digital transformation must be made wisely. Right now, many respondents (60%) are concerned about whether digital projects will provide the expected ROI, because end users aren’t adopting the technology quickly enough. But what does this look like in practice? 

If we look at the actual amounts spent on digital transformation, the picture becomes even more concerning. On average, organisations spent $47.85 million on digital transformation in 2021.

However, respondents also said that more than a third (34.6%) of this spending was on projects that failed to meet their ROI, because end users did not use the technology as expected. 

This is precisely the situation that successful digital adoption would prevent. The right digital adoption strategy would mean that end users are fully able to use  the digital technology in question to the full extent of its intended use.  Therefore, the percentage of these projects that failed to  meet their expected ROI would be greatly reduced.

Digital adoption is all about empowering people to fully use digital technologies, thereby unlocking the desired capabilities, making work easier and more efficient for the end user, and ultimately driving business outcomes. This lack of strategy has instead cost the average enterprise $16.52 million from digital transformation projects that haven’t met expectations. 

2. Do we know how much our digital tools are actually being used?

At present, many organisations still don’t see digital adoption as an essential part of their IT strategy, and don’t set goals and KPIs for it.

For instance, asked for the key KPIs by which they measure digital transformation success, only 22% of respondents identified end-user adoption. Similarly, only 22% could say with certainty that their employees were using new technology correctly.

Yet at the same time, more organisations can see that digital adoption is an issue – even if they don’t necessarily recognise that they need to have a strategy in place. 36% of respondents worry about not receiving the expected benefits from the technology they have invested in. And 40% are concerned that, if technology is not fully adopted, they would waste resources on projects that can’t meet their objectives.   

If enterprises can make digital adoption a priority, and include it in their KPIs, they will go a long way towards alleviating these concerns. Luckily, it seems that this has already started. 

3. Are we investing strategically?

Over the next three years, large enterprises plan to invest more than $31 million on digital adoption, including in improving employees’ digital dexterity, increasing new technology adoption, and boosting application utilisation. 

Given the costs of a lack of digital adoption strategy, if this can reduce even a fraction of the money currently wasted on under-achieving digital projects, it will be money well spent. The big question is, what’s the best way to spend that investment? There are three core elements to successful digital adoption. 

The first is analysis – if the organisation can understand who is using what applications, when, how and to what extent, it can begin to identify under-utilised technology and look for pain points within the end user experience that might be preventing full adoption.  

Second is intelligent help. Once the organisation understands the barriers to adoption, it needs to guide end users past them. This help should be immediate and contextual, based on the needs of each employee or customer at that moment in time. The longer a user has to wait to overcome an obstacle, the less likely they are to even attempt it next time.  

Third, any approach needs to be universal and cover all technology in use across an organisation. As so many corporate technologies are interdependent on one another, failure to adopt a single application fully can have unforeseen consequences on future projects. Business processes can break and inefficient workarounds can spread and be difficult to correct. Not to mention it will be a constant source of frustration to end users. Ultimately, technology should help individuals do their jobs better, not get in their way.  

Have your cake and eat it too

It’s clear, then, that businesses are caught between a rock and a hard place – the pressure to digitally transform, and the pressure to actually make use of the software they invest in.

But if digital adoption is carefully managed, businesses can prevent employee discontent and consequent resignations, adapt to the world of hybrid working, and protect themselves against the uncertainties we are all set to face in the coming months.

This means they can have their cake and eat it too: make sure investments in digital technology are put to the best use while boosting the employee experience and efficiency.

Simon Blunn is VP and EMEA General Manager at digital adoption platform WalkMe

Main image courtesy of iStockPhoto.com