Crafting the right digital transformation strategy for your employees and then rolling it out is no easy task, especially for large enterprises. It won’t happen quickly, and most companies ultimately fail at doing it—most often because they don’t understand their own employees’ experience and factor it into their plans. But therein lies an opportunity.

For a digital transformation plan to succeed, business technology leaders and their partners need to have a clear understanding of how employees actually get their work done. In other words, they need to harness the power of analytics–particularly the robust analytics the best digital adoption solutions offer. 

To better explain the value of analytics, the organizational insights they yield, and how companies can best act on those insights, we recently published “The analytics-led path to digital adoption,” a new e-book designed to help companies empower their employees to do their best work—starting with leveraging insights about your organization to craft the right strategy. 

An adoption strategy rooted in reality

When it comes to digital adoption, a little planning goes a long way. You might think it’s standard practice for most organizations to craft an adoption initiative informed by analytics. But that’s often not the case. With companies using more apps than ever before, it’s easy for business technology owners and their organizational partners to be reactive—rather than proactive—when it comes to software. 

Forming the right digital adoption strategy means planning around how employees really behave. That means leveraging analytics to understand the ways behavior contributes to the issue you’re trying to fix. 

For example, if a company wants to increase adoption of an expensive new feature employees are struggling to use, managers can use analytics to explore what ways employees are using to accomplish  the tasks the feature is meant to aid. This helps leaders better plan the transition and interventions with employees around using the feature, and gives context on which segments to prioritize guidance for.

To take another example, IT teams can harness analytics to audit their greater tech stack and plan a strategy to keep their budget in-check. At a certain point, the reasons why a company purchased a given app may no longer be relevant. What’s more, an app may be duplicative of something else already in the tech stack. If either of these is the case, behavioral analytics will bear it out. IT teams sometimes hesitate to retire apps for fear of conflict with other business partners. But with the right transition strategy and usage data to back up the decision, they can make a compelling case to management for doing away with them.  

Right insights, right tactics

Once you have your strategy in place, it’s time to think about the tactics for driving it. Strong digital adoption solutions such as Pendo Adopt come with a robust set of tools for driving change—including segmenting analytics by various metadata and behavioral categories, in turn informing customized guidance for the segments that need it most. 

Messaging within the app itself lets you give added context and grow awareness for new features or processes. Business technology owners can base that guidance on the existing behaviors analytics has shown employees to be engaging in. Whether it’s training users on adopting new software or features, driving compliance in key areas, or highlighting improved workflows, in-app guidance is the best way to get employees the knowledge they need. 

Through the power of analytics, companies can understand what’s really happening in the workplace. That knowledge is empowering. It may also be scary, especially if it communicates unpleasant truths about how employees are performing. But those who succeed in driving digital transformation are those with the courage to accept reality as it is—and plan change around it. 

To learn more about the power of analytics in driving digital adoption, check out Pendo’s new e-book here. 

The Software experience gap And why you need to close it.

Sometimes small changes in the world get intensely scrutinized while big ones just seem to… slip in unnoticed.

This is about
one of those big ones...

Something

pretty huge

has happened to the world

and it directly impacts
everything you do

Here's what
we mean...

In the old days,

A bank was a
bank…

An insurance company was an insurance company…

And a car manufacturer was…

(you get the idea)

Today, it’s different. Today, every company is a software company.

Every. Company. is a software company.

For your customers:

Software is part (or all) of your products and services.

Software shapes — or defines — a huge part of the customer’s lifecycle.

For your employees:

Software is where
work happens.

Software governs every process and workflow.

Software defines
a huge part of your employee experience.

In short,

Your business is the
sum of its software.

But here’s the problem...

There's a huge

Software Experience Gap

between what users* expect from the software you
ask them to use

and what they actually experience.

*Users = your employees, customers, partners, and suppliers

The experience
users expect:

• Intuitive
• Simple
• Fast

The experience
users get:

• Clunky
• Bloated
• Frustrating

Now multiply the software experience
gap by the number of different
applications you deploy.

The average enterprise maintains 288 SaaS applications—around 10 applications per employee— and that’s growing
30% a year.

— Blissfully 2020 SaaS Trends report

And you start to see the scale of
this problem...

Since software touches every employee and customer: The software experience gap puts the brakes on every goal across your business.

All the things you care about

from sales, marketing, product
adoption, and customer loyalty

to employee efficiency,
productivity, and happiness

to strategic innovation and
transformation.

They’re all held back by the software experience gap.

That's a lot of impact.

The impact

20%

of software budgets
are spent on
applications that
nobody ever uses.

— Insight Enterprises

70%

of digital
transformations fail
to hit their targets.

— Boston Consulting Group

And the software experience gap is
a key driver of McKinsey’s infamous

"Digital Achievement Gap."

"Digital Leaders grow 2-3x faster than competitors"

— McKinsey & Company

If you’re more moved by stories than data, here’s one:

A major international bank (okay, Citigroup), lost $500 million recently because of a confusing internal user interface in its loan operations software.

Ouch.

The good news:

When you close your software experience gaps, great things happen:

Customers get more value so you capture more value.

Lower cost of sale

Greater usage

Less churn

Employees adopt and use software more
so their work is happier.

Process excellence

デジタルアダプション

Faster transformation

Closing your gaps
also drives down
these costs:

オンボーディング

new employees and customers.

Training

so people turn software into value.

IT helpdesk support

for users and customers.

Custom software

and point solutions (that don’t scale).

All these costs go way down when you close your software experience gaps.

The really good news

Software experience is something you can control, even if you didn’t create the software.

It works in any software (whether you built it or bought it).

It’s a two-step thing.

First, you have to know how users are using the software.

Where they’re getting stuck.

Which features they use regularly and which they avoid.

Which steps are most important for the outcomes you want.

That’s the analytics and feedback part.

Then you can use that insight to help them...

With little guidance boxes.

And contextual tips.

And workflow helpers they see as they’re using the software.

That’s the
in-software guidance part.

And the analytics then let you see the impact of the guidance—an important feedback loop.

Okay, let’s wrap this thing up.

We all agreed that every company is a software company.

(including yours)

And we saw how the software experience gap hurts everything you value

product experience (for your customers) and

employee experience (for your people & partners)

In short:

A better software experience improves all the great things your company cares most about

Serving customers.

Helping employees do their jobs.

Minimizing frustration, mistakes and foul language.

Improving productivity, efficiency and whatever KPIs you’re tracking.

Accelerating digital transformation.

Driving down IT support and helpdesk costs.

Speeding up onboarding and training.

Creating a wonderful work experience for everyone.

All that, just by paying attention to how people experience the software that drives your business.

TL;DR

Your business is the
sum of its software.
Make it delightful.

We're Pendo

We help companies like yours give their customers and employees insanely great software experiences.

It’s kind of a mission.

If you’d like to explore ways to improve the software experience in your business - get in touch!

Not ready to talk? Take a look around our product.