In this age of digital transformation, the half-life of learned workplace skills is shrinking dramatically. That’s why every future-forward organization is investing in suitable learning technology including LMSs, LEPs, content authoring tools, and others—or, at least, considering adopting one.

However, you would only be throwing money down a black hole if you are unable to derive real ROI from such tools. In fact, according to Deloitte Human Capital Trends Report, 65 percent of the companies were unable to achieve their intended objectives with the technology purchased.

Ask yourself: Are your employees effectively learning, remembering, and applying the knowledge they gain in your learning tool? Is it their go-to platform for learning? Is the help section easily accessible and addressing specific queries? If they do find answers, how easily can they apply it to the enterprise application and start from where they left off?

If you answered no to any of these questions, the problem you’re facing is likely caused by a lack of learning in the moment of need. The users aren’t finding answers to their learning needs within the environment of their enterprise application, right at the time when they need it, for their role and context. This will eventually lead to little or no improvement in productivity as they would most likely raise a support ticket and spend double the time completing the intended task or finish it at sub-par performance.

This is what might be preventing you from getting the most out of your enterprise applications and traditional corporate learning tools.

How Do You Improve the Adoption of Enterprise Applications?

Imagine you are the head of operations at an automobile company and have convinced the board to invest millions on robust HCM and ERP systems. You then put these to work and even invest further in an LMS, training users on all the necessary skills. Theoretically, this was a great move! But one year later when you check in on the system adoption, you see that aside from 30 percent of the users, barely anyone else has used the systems. Unfortunately, you have become a victim of the dreaded implementation dip.

Resistance to change, fear of new technology, lack of real-time contextual and interactive training, and lackluster learning and support available within the HCM and ERP applications will cause your expensive systems not to deliver any value to the business.

But you can't have that. So, it's time to build a solid change management program regarding awareness about the HCM and ERP applications. Here is how you do it:

• Create a strong learning culture in which employees and managers are encouraged to share and support each other on their training journeys.

• Regularly communicate the benefits of the applications via emails, internal forms, and internal change champions to each business unit.

• Ensure proper onboarding by announcing that employees need to mandatorily complete required tasks in these applications

• Adopt learning in the moment of need via interactive walk-throughs that will guide users through key activities.

To achieve all of the above, organizations have begun to subscribe to a digital adoption platform (DAP) that uses contextual information to provide tailored guidance in real-time in the form of in-app walkthroughs and widgets. This productivity-enhancing tool is likely to help users understand software and streamline change management efforts.

DAP breaks complex training into smaller chunks then encourages users to learn in the flow of work. It runs atop your learning management app to guide users through the tasks and functions of the enterprise solution. It allows employees to practice using the learning tools in their live environment, powered by automated and byte-sized lessons.

Thus, it teaches people how to become intuitive, productive users of enterprise software. This does away with techno-stress associated with familiarizing yourself with new enterprise software. And, ultimately, employees will be more motivated to use their enterprise applications more easily and frequently.

How Much Value Is Enough?

DAPs help keep track of the unanswered queries that aren't locatable in any training content or response documents to plan for future content building. Further, the analytics embedded within the platform helps track points of struggle in a workflow and the associated reason. These insights can help tweak the interactive walk-throughs and easy flows.

So, to answer the question, “When does the process end?” it doesn’t. Improved adoption is a continuous activity that demands data-based changes. But having a digital adoption platform helps maximize usage and user experience to reap the full potential of enterprise applications.