Guest Blog: The big accurate picture: Change adoption metrics that matter
Tuesday 5th September 2023
Writer: The Inform Team, Editors: Peter Ely, Kathryn Piper
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Digital transformation is a necessity for staying competitive, meeting ever-changing customer demands, and adapting to new technologies.
“But what does successful digital transformation look like?”
Success differs from one organisation to the next, but essentially the headlines will be…
- Your business is more efficient
- Costs have been greatly reduced
- Your customers are happier
- Your people are happier
- Your products/services are modernised and enhanced
Wouldn’t it be great if you could quantify that success and present hard evidence that your people are fully embracing the change?
What exactly is change management?
In a nutshell, change management is about how well employees and stakeholders receive, adopt, and sustain the change.
But - it’s important to note it goes beyond simply introducing change within an organisation. It needs to include adoption, rather than simply rolling out the change and bringing it to a halt early on.
We find many organisations limit the scope of change management, meaning it doesn’t extend far enough beyond technical delivery. The change team may help people move to new ways of working, but they don’t have the valuable time to spend with them thereafter along the change journey.
Whether it’s launching new initiatives that’ll support them in their day-to-day activities or migrating legacy IT systems to Microsoft 365, adoption refers to how ‘on board’ your people are with that change, and how they’ve integrated new technology into their ways of working.
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Successful change adoption (High) |
Unsuccessful change adoption (Low) |
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The change has been fully embraced and integrated, and the organisation’s seeing desired outcomes and benefits. |
There’s resistance to the change, a lack of understanding, and/or inadequate support. |
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Definition check Project management delivers technical solutions, e.g., a new platform or new tools. Change management supports the user adoption of the new platform or new tools. |
Measuring up
Change adoption metrics give valuable insights into how well a new initiative or digital change programme is being embraced by employees and stakeholders.
Without metrics, you’re flying blind.
These metrics are the catalyst for predicting change impacts and tailoring your change management strategies to specific employee groups.
There are a series of core change adoption metrics:
- Employee engagement
- Change readiness
- Adoption rate
- Training effectiveness
- Communication impact
- Resistance levels
On top of these, there are powerful user adoption analysis tools available, like Bytes’ Quantum 365, which assess user activity and behaviour. Quantum 365 tells you exactly how many licences are being used as well as usage trends, meaning you can focus on improving your adoption rate (hello optimised investment!)
We believe it’s important to move beyond technology adoption and reach digital maturity. Digital maturity is about boosting productivity and exploiting the full potential of the technology at your fingertips to help everyone achieve more. And believe it or not, it’s something you can measure.
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Our Digital Maturity Assessment builds on Quantum 365’s data and other volumetrics already available, which can be turned into real tangible steps on how to improve adoption across your organisation. |
By evaluating the true extent of technology adoption, companies can get a clear picture of the impact of their efforts, identify any areas of improvement, and ultimately ensure organisational change is successful.
Sustaining change and driving continuous improvement
Change management isn’t a one-time event – it’s an ongoing process.
To sustain the change, drive operational efficiencies for long-term gains, and optimise time/cost investment, companies need to embed the new technology into their organisational culture, promote continuous learning, and adapt to evolving business and employee needs.
You can do this by:
- Recognising the achievements of employees involved in the change process
- Providing ongoing training and development opportunities
- Regularly reviewing and assessing the effectiveness of the adopted technology
- Encouraging feedback from employees and stakeholders to gather insights for future improvements
To summarise
Understanding how your people use the technology that’s available to them is crucial to successful change adoption outcomes. Equipped with this intel, you can apply interventions and changes to improve organisational adoption and personal benefit from using the technology.
An in-depth assessment will help your organisation get the most out of your investments, optimise collaboration and productivity, as well as reduce any potential risk.
Your journey to digital maturity starts here…
Bytes and The Inform Team are helping organisations achieve companywide technology adoption.
Whether it’s a Maturity Assessment you need, support with your change management workstreams or a demo of Quantum 365’s capabilities, get in touch [email protected].
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