In today’s quickly evolving technological landscape, it can be incredibly challenging to keep abreast of the constant changes many CRM platforms implement to ensure their suite of offerings remains effective and competitive. Unfortunately, this myriad of updates often comes as a double-edged sword to CIOs, who often encounter the unique challenge of change resistance when it comes time to introduce new tools. While there might be an initial spike in usability and adoption following a CRM rollout, that spike can often quickly dissipate.
Regarding productivity, this trend of short-term spikes followed by longer-term declines after product updates is why CIOs are increasingly turning to digital adoption platforms (DAPs). These tools support employees as they learn new software and processes by providing in-app, real-time teaching that guides them as they interact with the software.
By providing employees with on-screen, step-by-step guidance and analytical insights, DAPs can help CIOs simplify their CRM implementation and achieve digital transformation. Not only will these tools ensure a smoother adoption process for employees, but they’ll also offer CIOs insights into what’s working and what isn’t – which can be used to increase company success going forward.
Also Read: Top 5 Cloud Trends for CIOs in 2024
Easing the Transition
For CIOs, DAPs serve the dual purpose of addressing user adoption challenges while maximizing and proving the return on software investment.
Research shows that nurturing leads through CRM software can increase conversions by an average of 47 percent and the ROI of a well-implemented CRM system may exceed 245 percent. However, despite these benefits, CIOs often struggle to find true success through CRM implementations. While employees may attend training and make valiant attempts to use CRMs and their functions to the fullest extent, there’s an alarming trend where adoption falls off within the first week or two because users don’t understand how to use the new tools and, as a result, often default back to the old systems they are familiar with.
By offering personalized training experiences based on each user’s role and usage patterns, every CRM user can receive relevant, targeted guidance specific to their job function. Not only does this ensure that every user is efficiently onboarded onto and guided through the CRM, but also removes the need for everyone to sit through the same software use training, as some information may only apply to some users instead of all.
Moreover, whenever CRM systems are updated, CIOs can leverage DAPs to gain insights into user behavior and system performance. Based on that data, they can then optimize how their employees use new CRM features, ensuring their organization can always adjust to market demands and customer expectations, keeping them a step ahead of the competition.
Also Read: The Role of Cyber Insurance in Mitigating Financial Risks from Cyber Threats
Overcoming Resistance to Change
Alongside a struggle to adapt to and adopt new technology, resistance to change is the most common challenge CIOs face when introducing new CRM tools. Tools like DAPs play an essential role in maintaining—and even elevating—productivity amidst changes, such as a merger or acquisition. As previously mentioned, by providing intuitive, in-the-moment guidance, DAPs lessen the learning curve associated with new systems or procedures. This ensures an optimized learning workflow that translates to faster goal achievement and software feature utilization.
Additionally, when it comes time to implement digital transformation or a new CRM update, employee frustration and training struggles can become increasingly prevalent. A strong DAP can improve this experience by enabling CIOs to provide employees with personalized training and onboarding modules, ensuring that employee productivity isn’t hampered by a steep learning curve. This, in turn, positively impacts employee satisfaction and empowers CIOs to continue making software-related choices that will lead to better results.
Clearly, the need for digital transformation is more important than ever before. Adding a new CRM to the mix, or adapting current CRM updates, can be challenging for businesses and employees alike. While CIOs know that digital transformation is essential to a company’s cost-cutting and growth goals, adding those changes to workflows can bring up a host of other challenges: change resistance and a lack of data-based insights into employee use, just to name a few.
The good news? Strategically deploying DAPs can address all of the above by reducing low productivity and improving the speed at which companies can reap the full benefits of their CRM-driven transformation initiatives. This can then help enhance profitability and accelerate an organization’s competitive advantage.
[To share your insights with us as part of editorial or sponsored content, please write to psen@itechseries.com]
