Drive Digital Transformation With In-App Content
Core digital transformation technologies such as AI, cloud computing, Big Data, and the IoT have grown dramatically since COVID-19, further increasing the rate of digital transformation. A Bain & Company study found only 8% of global companies achieve their targeted outcomes for digital technology investments [1]. The world is changing faster than ever, and if your organization is not investing in digital transformation, it could be left behind by competitors or new emerging technology. But investment alone isn’t enough—most digital transformations fail, with some studies finding an average failure rate of 87.5% [2]. You need to work actively to drive adoption and ensure the technology behind your digital transformation is used by your employees and customers.
What Is Digital Adoption?
Digital adoption is the process of teaching employees, customers, or users new technology, software, features, or functions, to enable them to use the technology efficiently and effectively, and achieve the full potential value from the technology. The entire goal of digital adoption is to have your core users become adept and proficient in a new aspect of your digital stack.
Why Digital Adoption Matters
Companies and people today are inundated with technology and software. The rise of SaaS, apps, and IT has driven an unprecedented level of differing and often competing technologies. The amount of technology, software, and apps required in many jobs is rapidly increasing. If proficiency or adoption of those technologies lags, then businesses and entire organizations can fall behind.
Digital adoption ensures the most critical pieces of your tech stack—or even critical features of your own product software—aren’t overlooked and therefore undervalued by your users. Without adoption, the investment into new technology, features, and software is a waste of effort and dollars.
Common Challenges In Digital Adoption
The most important aspect of any digital adoption strategy is to communicate the why behind the digitalization, new technology, and changes. You’ll likely have a digital adoption manager whose primary responsibility is owning the digital adoption strategy and the ROI of new software and technology transformation. Without support and user buy-in, you’ll struggle to achieve meaningful adoption, no matter the resources, training, and effort you put into your digital adoption. Here are some of the most common challenges in digital adoption:
- Resistant employees or users.
- Lack of clear onboarding.
- Insufficient user training and resources.
- Fragmented User Experiences.
- Complex and unintuitive technology.
- Lack of skills in the new technology.
- Lack of analytics and measurement of adoption.
The answer to most of these challenges is to reduce the friction for new users in your digital adoption strategy. That means you need solid training, clear onboarding, accessible resources, and guided tours. All of this is even better when they are implemented directly in the app.
What Are In-App Tutorials, Resources, And Courses?
In-app tutorials, resources, and courses are made available by software that runs on top of your User Interface to increase user adoption and efficiency. These in-app tutorials, resources, and courses are a training layer baked directly into your software, making it easier and more efficient for users to get the help they need to learn about new features, tools, or entire products.
This technology is known as a digital adoption platform, and the goal is to provide the necessary tools to aid user understanding and ability directly in the software itself, in real time. As an added benefit, most digital adoption platforms also contain product analytics to help observe and track user behavior within the software, their usage of training materials and courses, and their ability to accomplish a task.
The Role Of In-App Tutorials
In-app tutorials help users learn about new features, tools, or entire products as they work within the software itself. The famous adage of "see one, do one, teach one" necessary to learn a new skill applies here, with the tutorial providing the "see one" portion. There are a handful of benefits for in-app tutorials to drive digital adoption:
- Real-time, self-paced learning [3].
- Increased user understanding and engagement.
- Building trust and reducing resistance to new features or tools.
- More personalized User Experience.
Types of in-app tutorials include:
- Interactive walkthroughs and tours.
- Tooltips.
- Smart tips.
- Feature highlight.
- Task lists.
- Onboarding guides.
The goal of in-app tutorials is simple, clear, and effective information delivered at the exact time of need.
The Role Of In-App Resources In Digital Adoption
In-app tutorials help users learn the basics about a given feature, function, tool, or product. For deeper learning, you should provide additional resources, centralized in a knowledge base. Knowledge bases typically include videos, articles, training material, process documentation, SOPs, announcements, and FAQs. A good knowledge base is a vault for all digital resources to help users better understand features, functions, tools, and the entire product of your business. The benefits of in-app resources include:
- Better onboarding.
- Improved Customer Experience.
- Reduced support tickets.
- User empowerment.
- Enhanced collaboration and communication.
Your goal with an in-app knowledge base of resources is to reduce friction for new users. By providing an entire vault of resources, you empower users to self-direct their own learning as they grow more familiar with your tool—thereby empowering your digital adoption.
The Role Of In-App Courses In Digital Adoption
In-app courses are the fastest way to invest in employee development while driving digital adoption. Courses help you train and upskill existing employees, and embedding the courses directly into the application improves comprehension and learning efficiency. The types of courses you can embed directly in-app:
- Learning Management Systems (LMS) [4].
- Course authoring platforms.
- Learning Experience Platforms.
- Microlearning platforms.
- Online course providers.
- Video training.
- Knowledge-sharing tools.
In-app access to courses can be both reinforcement of already learned material, and access to entirely new material related to the feature, function, or tool they’re operating in. The goal once again is just-in-time access [5], reducing friction for new users and thereby increasing digital adoption, user ability, and upskilling.
In-App Elements Drive Digital Adoption
In-app resources, tutorials, and courses are a lynchpin of digital adoption and learning. Today’s pace of technological change is faster than ever, and people, companies, and organizations are struggling to keep up. If digital transformation is on the roadmap for you professionally, your business, or your organization, digital adoption should be the watchword to success and ROI.
The challenges to adapt and adopt new technology are steep; user reluctance, friction, complex technology, unclear strategy, lack of user skill, and fragmented User Experiences can all work against you. The best bet you have to improve the adoption of critical features, functions, and tools is to embed material directly into the software itself. Any material critical to helping users understand, absorb, learn, and adopt new technology needs to be directly where the user engages with the technology itself. Great in-app experiences increase user engagement, time-to-value, retention, and understanding—all while providing the benefit of self-directed and self-paced learning.
References
[1] A Better View of Technology Spending Improves Business Outcomes
[2] 3 Stages of a Successful Digital Transformation
[3] Self-Paced Learning in the Workplace: Benefits & Strategies
[4] Learning Management Systems (LMS) Comparison Checklist Of Features
[5] 6 JIT Video-Based Support Tools That Are Missing From Your Customer Service Training
