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Increasing adoption of technology

Posted on February 5, 2007
Filed Under Increasing Technology Adoption |

Slower than expected end-user adoption is a common stumbling block in realizing the full ROI of business intelligence, project management, intranets and CRM applications.  The value the technologies provide is meaningless unless these systems are used.   Lack of adoption is often less about technology and more about ineffective utilization by the people who need the applications the most. 

 

So how do we encourage effective utilization by users as a key part of the requirements definition and development process? How does marketing fit into this equation?

 

Even the most conservatively calculated business case will never materialize unless a marketing plan designed to increase end-user adoption is formulated at the early stages of project inception.

 

In fact, end-user adoption should be a primary key performance indicator (KPI) for measuring technology project success.

 

A recent Harvard Business Review article by professor Das Narayandas titled “Building Loyalty in Business Markets” discusses the difference between B2B marketing and mass marketing. B2B customers are different than mass marketing customers because each B2B customer defines value, price and quality differently.  For this reason, Narayandas calls each B2B customer a “segment of one” whereas B2C customers are a segment of many.  

 

It is easy to apply this same logic to the internal or end-user audience. Each internal IT customer is a segment of one.   Each segment of one – from executive sponsor, business manager and every single end-user has a specific definition of value that is impacted by non-technical issues such employee turn-over, evolution of work habits and even growth of the business.

 

That means, all users, even those that don’t use the system but really on the data from the system must be included as part of the overall adoption strategy.

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