Digital Sign Adoption Made Easy

Digital sign adoption

are you ready to perform at your highest potential thank you for joining this gp strategies webinar where we'll explore best practices and innovative insights to help you and your organization improve performance hi everyone and thanks so much for joining me today to talk a little bit about digital adoption platforms what are they how are they different than what we've used in the past and what do they mean for you as you're trying to drive adoption of technology within your organization i'm linda lampert i'm a director in the enterprise technology adoption group at gp strategies i've been working helping companies implement new software for more than 25 years now have lived the evolution of digital adoption platforms and other technology in support of learning and performance support for many many years so as i started seeing this term digital adoption platform or digital adoption solution in the marketplace the last few years started trying to learn a lot more about it many of our customers have been using tools like this for many years and so really just wanted to spend a few minutes today talking to you about about these tools what we've learned so far and share a little bit of our of our experience so what is the digital adoption platform um originally this term was used i believe by what fix but really talking about software that is integrated on top or into other software applications or websites so it can be used with on-premise software it can be used with cloud-based software or on many different kinds of websites that people might have and really the what it does is it guides users through tasks or things that they're trying to do in this software and it can work in a lot of different ways depending on what your organization is trying to do and depending on user preference um the big key here is that it relies on contextual information so information that um you are done what you are doing it knows what content to give you and that content can be anything from walkthroughs tool tips different kinds of interactive guides simulations all kinds of things even gamification is used in some of these tools but the idea is that we're providing a consistent user experience to everybody no matter what software tool they're using for their work um they're going to see a similar look and feel to this support this kind of support that they're getting and those of us who work in with customers and understand the that user experience that customer customer experience is just critical especially in these days of covid where we've got so many different demands on us so many critical things that are trying to get our attention having that consistent user experience is a huge plus so how then does it does the dap actually work you know it's different than many of the things we used to use where we were putting people in a training sandbox or something that's really separate these tools tend to be um to be powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning some of them focus on robotic process automation rpas so that instead of the user having to do all the tasks you put in a little bit of information and the tool actually will do those tasks for you and rpa is an evolution that these daps offer that you don't see in in many other tools in the past and then most of these tools i will say are used internally right now but you can also use daps for external needs so if you have a software or it's or a website that your customers or maybe your suppliers use daps could also support those so the first question a lot of people have is is the dap the same thing as training can i get rid of my training because i have one and in a word no what we what we find is that having a dap alone does not drive adoption of a new solution you need to have that broader adoption strategy and really um the most important role we see for daps as you're driving application of learning to the job and you're helping ensure the sustainability of your solution over time so really um it's it's not so much about that initial learning it's more about the solution over time what we also see is the daps uh are a really good vehicle to allow what we call learning in the flow of work burson calls it learning um where you're doing your embedding learning right into the work you're doing versus pulling people from learning from work to do learning so really you know gartner called out in 2019 so just last year the purpose here is not to replace training or coaching but really increase adoption and reinforce training spend a minute talking about where did these daps come from a lot of us who've been doing this kind of work for a long time remember back in the day when automated documentation was the big thing like you wouldn't have to cut and paste and you snag it to get the content in you could run the transaction and it would pull that content in and that created help that you stored outside of the system either in a big thick binder or somehow online and as that tool evolved you were still having to help outside the system but you got to a point where you could do a single recording and have multiple kinds of outcome outputs simulations test scripts job aids all kinds of things and then the big moment what that was very exciting was then we were able to link that all that content to the production system whatever system you were trying to do the job tasks in with a context-sensitive linkage and that let you break through the barrier of having to make the user go out and find the help somewhere so they could just ask for help in the system and it would know where they were and bring up appropriate help so a lot of folks are using a tool um like that right now to be able to bring people help inside the system but some companies have those tools and they haven't gotten around to actually making those context sensitive links so they have these great tools but they aren't taking full advantage of that context sensitivity what happened next as we got to help inside the system the big next big breakthrough was that that help actually got embedded into the systems that the users were using so in the older models those that helped was still outside the system here it's actually part of the production system and linkedin and oftentimes you know you go to a particular page and it's showing you on that page in the production system exactly what you need to do you're accessing the help directly in that user environment and in many of these tools you're also getting guided on how to complete the task so it's telling you the next step and the next step and the next step and beyond that there are tools now that give the view the capability to set things up so that maybe the user puts in a few entries but the tool actually completes the task in the system and that robotic process automation rpa is just a huge time saver and works really well with some audiences so we see it a lot in the sales force when they're trying to do you know document new contacts and things like that and it's it helps with your audiences who may not always be the most compliant in how to do job tests so what's driving companies to embrace these daps you know obviously digital technology is advancing at a mind-boggling place and some of our employees and users are using you know 5 10 15 different systems on a daily basis and they have to navigate that whole thing and they can't keep up with not just the systems that they have to use but those systems a lot of them cloud-based systems they change periodically so how do we keep them up to speed on that traditional training is not practical and it's not effective and that's particularly true now in the time of covid where you know before you would just pull those people out and stick them in a classroom for half a day or a day can't do that anymore um so really you know we're being driven to having new solutions and and at the same time our learners are demanding new solutions because they're living in a world of um you know customer satisfaction and customer experience where they go on amazon and it tells them you know give them the best recommendations it walks them through the process they expect that in other aspects of their life including the learning world so you can see companies are you know really being driven right now to embrace daps so how are they different from other tools that people might have been using you know from a usability experience obviously they're giving that great user experience across all the different systems and as usability and accessibility is improved that's going to drive adoption everywhere in the organization at the same time um you know companies that are able to use those rpa capabilities that's a huge clear benefit on return on investment but at the same time from a development strategy from a solution strategy perspective it's really important in these times to have a strategy to guide which tasks get documented and how they are documented you have to balance that complexity of documentation versus that usability and user experience and i you know i talked to some companies and they've done you know thousands of job aids to help users and it's like well how many of those are being used and are you maintaining them all um you really need to have a strategy in place here and and particularly if you're using daps with that embedded content that's in your production system it has to be developed in such a way that as a user is doing a task it doesn't get hung up if the system does something unexpected uh so or if your user does something unexpected so you know this idea for example of you know documenting something as simple as a an expense report it seems very simple but at the same time every expense report is a little bit different and the tasks that users do are going to be different if your system is trying to walk them through a particular tap path and they have a different thing that they're trying to do in the system it's going to get hung up and they're going to get frustrated and not want to use the help so really critical to have that development strategy in place and then of course from a usability perspective it's even more critical to keep the content up to date because the moment that that content is out of sync with your production system things are going to get hung up users aren't going to use it and that's particularly true if you're using it for rpa another question we hear from customers is how do daps support the five moments of need a lot of customers have a lot of companies are really um very keen on the five moments of need bob mosher and conrad gotfordson's methodology which is is great and looks at things again from a user perspective from a learner perspective so the good news is that daps are great in supporting five moments of need from everything from you know getting them help or learning at the time of need when they first need to learn to giving them links and opportunities to branch to additional content when they're ready to learn more applying and refining as you're in doing tasks you can ask for additional content and and um easily provide them with additional content content to help them learn more and the um big bonus here adjusting to change so as the systems evolve as business processes change these daps have alerts and notifications and content that you can push out to users and of course finally react when something goes wrong that's where the context sensitivity often comes in because people will be able to when they get to that point where something goes wrong ask for help and get the help when when you know mid-task when they need it instead of having to go out and look for it so great great support of the five moments of need from these tools and then the other thing we think about a lot is so how does a dap work with uh adoption of technology and what i'm calling the new normal our new world you know in the covid world and postcovid learning's going to look a little different and what we are are working with customers on is implementing um solutions that meet these four four key criteria first is change messaging making sure that we can get people's attention when things are changing how do we you know draw their attention from all the other things in their lives and help them learn about what this change is that's coming up giving them targeted online learning and learning in the flow of work so this really reflects some of the macro learning and micro learning uh philosophies that are being pushed out by josh berson and others he talks about macro learning as being like onboarding learning and then learning in the flow of work as being all the things you learn once you're onboarded in technology world we think of macro learning as being that learning that has to happen before go live and then learning in the flow of work are all the things you learn to do as you apply what you've learned back on the job so maybe the philosophy the processes the new terminology are the new macro learning and the back on the job is how do i actually execute this task in the system and then the fourth element here are those empowered adoption advocates so you know in the olden days these were super users or power users perhaps those people might have been you know down the hall or in another building nowadays they're working from home potentially they aren't around um you're working different shifts in them so how do we empower those people to do that same um kind of support in the new environment and as we look at daps and how they can support that new normal there's a really nice fit so change messaging we can augment um anything with messages from the dap to get people's attention and take advantage of that an in-app deployment of the change messaging when we get to creating that introductory learning that macro learning obviously these daps have a lot of abilities to create e-learning chunks and that can often be the completion of that can often be tracked using scorm of course we've got context help context sensitive just-in-time learning and performance support that's available to give those micro learning pits and then last but not least we want to teach those adoption advocates how to use the dap to support their users and make sure they push that use and some companies are even considering authoring capabilities for those folks to help them build that that solution so as we're thinking now um about daps how do you select one if there's a wide range of tools that are now calling themselves daps and so you have to really go back and think pretty critically about what are my business requirements what are the user requirements what are the functional requirements we're trying to meet what are it and security requirements most of these tools are in the cloud so if that might impact usability for your organization another big piece is how do you integrate this with what you already have going on and do you transfer existing content into the tool and if that's going to be something that you're going to want to look at you want to be very clear on what the tool offers to try to automate that process or make it easier because there's a wide range of capabilities there budget and resources you need to think not just about implementation not just about licensing but also about maintenance because maintenance is critical you can't just build this content and stick it in you know on the shelf somewhere you have to maintain it or it's not going to be effective and then last but not least these two final bullets kind of come together future use cases how might you want to use it in the future and what's the tools development path so you might not be ready for our rpa right now but you think you might want to be then look for tool that has that or a tool that's going to be developing that capability so a lot of things to think about as you're thinking about these tools if you want to learn more we're here to help and feel free to reach out we also have an infographic available um to you to try to help educate your colleagues and yourself maybe a little bit more about these tools so feel free to reach out and ask for that i thank you so much for your time and wish you the best as moving on to these new technology opportunities that we have in our near future thanks so much this webinar is brought to you by gp strategies together we can create a world where business excellence makes possibilities achievable you can access more webinars or download additional resources at gpstrategies.com forward slash resources hyphen library you