Enterprise Software: Focus on User Adoption, Not Features
Effective user adoption is the absolute best predictor of enterprise software success. That was one of the key takeaways for me from the OpenAir User Conference this week.
According to a study done by the Sand Hill Group and Neochange, the most critical factor (70% listed it as number 1) for software success and return-on-investment is effective user adoption.
Software functionality came in at 1% surprisingly, with organization change at 16% and process alignment at 13%. This is a remarkable result.
You can have the best software in the world, with the most sophisticated features, analytics and integration, blah blah blah - but if people don't use it, it isn't going to add value. I can't tell you how many RFPs and software selection processes I've been involved with in prior lives that focus almost exclusively on tiny little features that few people will ever use. This study shows that focusing so much on features is missing the boat entirely.
This finding is very interesting for all kinds of applications, particularly enterprise apps but also consumer apps. Features very rarely make someone take to an application or not. Moreover, I doubt most software companies really take user adoption as a holistic approach into account when designing their applications.
If this trend is accurate (and my experience tells me it is), then I think it has very interesting ramifications on how software should be designed, sold and implemented. User adoption is typically something that comes at the end of a cycle. This says it should be one of the most important elements of the entire process. Please share any opinions or war stories that either confirm or refute this conclusion.
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Wow I couldn't agree more but damn is it hard to get some people to see that. I run into that at work often when people want to focus on the features and not the usability and this the adoption rate. Hopefully this study resonates with developers.
A-MEN!
Dear Facebook, please read this. Thank you and have a pleasant day.
I agree very much with this point of view. As an enterprise SaaS company, customer adoption is our #1 priority. With each customer we capture, we learn something new...whether it is how they want to buy (pricing models), which part of the story resonates with the problem that they are trying to solve, or how they want to integrate our product with their existing business processes.
By capturing more and more customers you can start to identify trends which help guide the decisions you make in terms of both company and product strategy. I believe that being guided by this hard evidence from the marketplace is far superior to educated guesses from the ivory tower. Release and sell early and often.
Ben Ruedlinger
http://wistia.com
Wistia, Making Video Productive
As the Director of Technology Adoption at my firm, it's more than a little gratifying to see adoption recognized as the most critical factor in attaining software ROI. But what makes adoption happen?
Our research and experience confirm that adoption only happens when you deliver superior technology in harmony with supporting organizational and behavioral change programs. Put another way, you can't have adoption if you've missed essential features, provided a poor quality product, and/or failed to address the organizational challenges posed by the enabling technology.
So while I wildly agree that adoption is essential to realize return on investment, I'm not willing to let our technologists and OD folks off the hook quite yet!
Hey Folks,
Thanks for the comments. Any specific techniques or strategies have you used in the past to accelerate user adoption? Have you seen anything that fell on its face?
Jason
Given that Neochange's tag line is "Driving Effective IT Adoption" it's not surprising that they reach this conclusion. It's also a tautology: if enterprise employees are not using the software then it's unlikely you will get additional orders/subscriptions/upgrades. Although the fact that term "shelfware" exists indicates some companies are able to make money selling software that's bought but not adopted.
As to tips and techniques for fostering adoption Peter Cohan's model for collecting user stories by listening to users in a structured and sustained way is an excellent place to start. See http://www.secondderivative.com/Four_Opportunities_to_Harvest_The_Value_of_Informal_Success_Stories.html
I am learning a lot of techniques or strategies to accelerate user adoption.Great post!
Leslie Giordano (comment 4) makes a very good point. I can easily agree that adoption of a software product is probably the most important measure of success, but what do you do to get adoption? Is there a way you can judge in advance the likely adoption rate of a system? If you want to improve adoption rate, what do you actually do? It's going to be a combination of the other factors in the survey probably.
I have been looking for some statistics on user adoption challenge...thanks
what We have realized is that educating the users works best
You may have good value proposition but if thats not communicated properly it wont work...best is to educate users on benefits, motivators etc...We learnt it early and are now working on implementing the same...not sure if the next set of changes will solve the problem...but the success mantra is to...involve users and keep evolving
Will have to go look at the base study but it sounds kind of circular to me. What drives user adoption if not functionality?
OK, that makes sense. They let the software suppliers take the survey too!!! The questions that split the two up are interesting (although no "n's" are provided so its hard to guage statistical significance).
Great comments. I agree that it isn't a surprise that user adoption is the answer given the focus of the firms that conducted the study. However, I think the conclusions do make sense given past experience. Also, you don't always need the "best" product to get adoption; check out Microsoft:) There are numerous other factors to consider like training, ease-of-use, management support, incentives, etc. that drive adoption.
I too agree with Leslie Giordano (comment 4) that user adoption is the key to ROI and that both IT and OD people are required to make enterprise systems successful.
Bringing the two fields (OD and IT) together is just the beginning to maximizing user adoption and ROI. To make it work we need to make many major changes to how we approach IT projects. For example, we need to shift our focus from on-time and on-budget software delivery to focus on obtaining our ROI goals after the system is live. We also need to change the way we structure and manage projects, revise how we define “change management” and the activities we perform as part of our change effort, adjust the people and skills we staff on projects, and improve our understanding of what factors impact user adoption and what we can do about it.
I recently presented a paper at a project management conference titled, “The Future of IT Project Management: Managing Projects to Ensure End-User Adoption and ROI” that details how OD techniques should be applied to enterprise IT software implementations in order to maximize ROI. If you would like a free copy, please email me at info@TriTuns.com or check out our website www.TriTuns.com to learn how we approach things.
Best regards,
Jason Whitehead
wow, nice post. I am also trying to learn techniques of user adoption.
I don't think you can underestimate the importance of usability when considering user adoption. If someone can't use a new system then they won't.
All other criteria are secondary to this crucial step - no feature can be tested, no functionality appreciated, no organisational fit measured, if the user cannot use the system in question.
Sounds like everybody is saying the same thing. Adoption is critical for success. If nobody uses it, then what is the point in make feature filled software? I think adoption must be a priority when building any kind of software.
Brian
http://www.konnects.com
This is very tricky, and I tell you why.
You've got to be careful when you use broad meaning vage terms like "success" and "adoption". Maybe the survey document brings clarification on each one them. And if it does, please bare with me as I didn't read it.
We are talking about Enterprise Software here, not open systems anyone can access to the benefit of their own. Enterprise Software is only justifiable by a strong numeric rationale that proves favorable ROI. ROI for the business, not for IT. This means more _________ (sales, revenue, profit, customer retention etc).
Let's take an easy example: Lotus Notes. As being a groupware application it had 100% adoption on the enterprise. Or do you think people would deny using it and work without email and shared calendars? No way. So it was remarkably popular, but not necessarily successful for the business. It was expensive to buy/maintain, hard to use, harder to customize, ran on proprietary technology etc. MS Exchange, on the other hand, was less expensive, easier to implement and use. Adoption? Well, again, 100% of course, but now with a leaner less expensive operation and happier users that don't have to call support as often.
In short, by taking the assumptions of the article both groupware solutions were successful (100% adoption in the enterprise), when in fact ROI for the business in each case demonstrated to be very different.
My 6/7 of a cent
No doubt actual user adoption is the bane of enterprise software.
I think due to the fact that, until fairly recently, enterprise deals were mostly sold directly to senior level decision makers. Who never actually used the software themselves. When implemented, it was pushed down from above onto the masses - who need to enter there data and use the system, in order for the aforementioned senior level folks to make sense of their dashboards.
Maybe salesforce.com changed the model with their go-to-market strategy of gaining traction in a guerilla style before closing the enterprise deal?
In terms of specific techniques or strategies - my previous company had a classic enterprise product that was sold to the VP level, and was completely unusable. 98% of users hated it - unfortunately the 2% who liked it were senior mgmt. Still, implementation was always a battle royal.
So my co-founder (who had been in the trenches with me at my last company) and I knew we had to take a different approach with our enterprise product. In no particular order, a couple principles we try to live by to help ease enterprise adoption - they've served us well so far:
1. Product simplicity - KISS. All of the classic enterprise systems with poor adoption are real beasts. We tried to keep everything simple - the user experience, the architecture, the data, the value proposition, etc
2. Limit the actual # of end users - We catch a break because we are gathering a lot of data, but only a select few break down the data. So even in a large enterprise setting, we only have a few people to keep happy. Not everyone has to have their "hands" on the system.
Glad to see this discussion since it's not discussed enough for enterprise software. We focus on designing our process and project management platform based on user experience. Our UX mission is a combination of simplicity and intuitiveness (get up and running under and hour), value (covering daily needs), and performance. Since our startup is a project collaboration solution, user adoption will be key to our success.
So, user experience -> value = user adoption
Great insight into the topic. Thanks for sharing