The Adoption Formula – 10 Steps to Company-Wide Usage
What does the videogame Cyberpunk have in common with the iPad’s ancestor, the Apple Newton? Despite the products having originated from some of the world’s best-regarded technology firms, they were released before they were ready and flopped as a result. Both are valuable lessons in why Silicon Valley’s ‘ship it and see’ approach to software adoption is inefficient, ineffective, and even dangerous.
If you want your enterprise software to avoid the same fate, you need to prepare for sustained adoption. The two leading methods for this are the Diffusion of Innovation (DOI) theory and the Technology-Organization-Environment (TOE) theory. These theories have been supported by over 20,000 studies, but we’ve combined their thinking and our experience to arrive at a master product adoption formula.
Follow these steps and you can break the adoption problem and ensure that a product will work before scaling it across your entire organization.
Why Adoption Matters
Full user adoption is the ultimate defining moment when building any new software, app, or product. Even well-designed products can fail to deliver on their promised return on investment (ROI) if they aren’t used, causing businesses to lose money.
While there is some overlap, focusing on user experience (UX) is not the same as focusing on adoption. An enticing and user-friendly product does not guarantee mass uptake. Businesses need to concentrate on addressing the entire process that improves software adoption rates.
The 10 Step Formula
Our 10-step master formula combines the best aspects of the DOI and TOE theories to create a recipe for adoption. It all starts with the product in question. From there, designers and innovation teams can drill down into the following areas to secure higher usage rates:
Information Quality
Information quality affects how useful an application or program is. Developers need to ensure that the information served up by their solution is timely, accurate, and helpful within its specific context.
Teams should focus first on what information is needed, and then how frequently it needs to be updated or refreshed to remain current.
Ask Users: How often does this information change? How frequently does the software need to refresh?
System Quality
The flipside of information quality is system quality, which covers how well a system performs. It’s a question of whether it’s fast and efficient when being used in its use-case context.
Observe Users: How fast does the program need to be to unlock the ROI? Are there any barriers that needlessly slow down its operation?
Service Quality
Even the most ‘perfect’ program needs to be maintained. Enterprise software adoption relies heavily on the quality of support provided to users. Innovation teams should therefore focus on how easy it is to acquire help and perform maintenance.
This might mean changing the organization’s IT support structure, or simply scheduling regular updates. Either way, service quality is the backend that facilitates systems and the information they serve up to users.
Ask Users: If you need help with this product, where would you go? What does the IT support process look like?
Organizational Support
IT assistance isn’t the only kind of support needed to secure app adoption. Users also need the support of their wider organization to use a product - including everyone from managers, site leads, and peers.
Getting this right requires businesses to do more than just let a product loose after a corporate demo. Instead, there needs to be a top-down alignment that permits and empowers users to incorporate the software into their work.
Ask: Was the product easy to set up and start using? Does your manager support you using it? Do your peers use it?
Training
The need for training can be seen as a sign to employees that a product isn’t user-friendly. As a leader then, this needs to be portrayed as an opportunity to introduce your team(s) to new software. You can achieve this by actively engaging with users during training sessions. Address concerns and reduce resistance – all while equipping them for change.
By learning how the current processes work with the following questions, you can determine what system can be put in place to be most effective.
Ask Users: How are you onboarded? Do you usually receive training?
User Involvement
Digital transformation failures happen when designers work from assumptions. To avoid this, users of all levels should be involved throughout the production lifecycle. The insights they provide can be used to shape better software that addresses the needs of users.
Involving users at an early stage through usability tests and interviews can help to reduce resistance and improve process adoption rates.
Perceived Usefulness
Any enterprise software needs to be sold as a solution – a means of making users’ work easier. To address the issue of perceived usefulness, organizations must demonstrate how helpful a product can be for their jobs.
Perceived Ease of Use
Similarly, users need to be convinced that software is user-friendly enough to make adoption worthwhile. Both perceived usefulness and ease of use are all about thoughts, emotions, and winning over hearts and minds.
Behavioral Intention
For mass adoption, you’ll need to convince users that they want to use your solution. This will require a communications strategy that tackles fears about complexity and finds ways to ‘sell’ the software into the business ecosystem.
User Satisfaction
In addition to any technical considerations, users also need to be happy with a product. This often comes down to personal choice, requiring innovation teams to engage with users and look at problems in-depth.
Issues could range from something as simple as the color scheme to more fundamental problems. Happy users are not only more likely to adopt an app, but also to advocate for it amongst their peers – making this step crucial.
Unlocking Success Through Adoption
Designers and innovation teams that can address all of these areas stand to secure the successful organization-wide adoption of their solutions. Asking questions of users and following this structure will help you to identify and rectify any issues that are limiting to the ROI.
Daito applies this exact formula to help clients secure adoption on a grand scale. It blends data science with business development, bringing the right technology to the users that need it.
Ultimately if you aren’t following this process, you’re not prepared for sustained adoption so contact us and we’ll be happy to help.