The number of people finding career paths using a Digital Adoption Platform (DAP) grows every day. Executives are recognizing their worth in managing digital change and realizing return on software investments at all-time high levels. 

Neglecting or taking the wrong approach to digital adoption can cost large organizations close to $100m. 

State of Digital Adoption, 2022–2023

But mastering the art of digital adoption is challenging. It’s a new discipline that has many facets, as described by Caroline Sancken in her blog about coursework strategy to enable DAP Professionals. The great artists of today had to discover what digital adoption means within their organizations without a blueprint for how it was done before them.

WalkMe invites you to Elevate 2022 to hear directly from some of these artists about how they address these 4 crucial elements required to master this exploding artform:

• Using data to validate success and drive decisions
• Building DAP into a change management strategy
• Demonstrating the exponential ROI of digital adoption
• Building a successful DAP team

Session 1: Designing a Data-First DAP Strategy

In the first breakout session, you’ll hear from Christi Lopez, WalkMe Administrator at W.L. Gore & Associates, who will give you tips on how to infuse a data-driven mentality into all stages of your digital adoption project. You’ll learn – through real-world examples, use cases, and templates – how to improve your DAP strategies with measurement and reporting best practices.

Session 2: Elevating a Human-Centric Transformation Strategy with DAP

Next, you’ll hear from Cristina Suéscum, Global People Transformation Manager at AB InBev, who brings a wealth of knowledge about change management. Cristina will share how she and her team infuse digital adoption throughout their change management strategies, putting the user at the heart of experience. You’ll leave inspired, ready to elevate your transformation initiatives, and redefine user adoption and experience. 

Session 3: Using “Store Walks” to Demystify DAP Value

Next, you’ll hear from Laura Valenziano, Program & Change Manager at Stripe, who will share a simple, yet powerful way to conceptualize, calculate, and communicate the ROI of your digital adoption program. You’ll see how to create user stories and identify areas where you can have the greatest impact, then put it into practice – complete with pro tips and calculation templates.  

Session 4: Building a World-Class DAP Operation

Finally, Matt O’Malley, Associate Director, Digital Adoption at KPMG will share what he’s learned building and running successful DAP teams. Whether you’re a one-person show or a fully staffed center of excellence, you’ll learn the skills you need to develop — or hire for — to succeed and scale your team as your business evolves. 

Join us at Elevate!

Set yourself up for great success by following the examples of great digital adoption professionals. Check out this stellar line-up and more at Elevate 2022. 

Register for Elevate! Join us virtually on October 25 or in-person from October 25–27 in San Francisco.

Are you using a Digital Adoption Platform (DAP) as a component of your Digital Transformation strategy today?

Are you the one who develops the strategy and drives the governance?

Are you the one who manages the projects that align with the strategy?

Or are you the one who creates and tests the content in execution of the strategy?

If you said yes to any one of these, then mark your calendars for October 25–27, because we’ve got an event for you — WalkMe Elevate.

What is WalkMe Elevate all about?

WalkMe Elevate is our annual event designed to propel DAP Professionals to the next phase of their career development. This event provides attendees with new actionable knowledge and useful resources to enhance the planning and execution of their DAP strategy.

Why attend WalkMe Elevate?

This year, WalkMe Elevate is a hybrid event with virtual and in-person programming, where you can… 

Join us virtually on October 25 to:

• Learn from your peers: Listen to some of the most talented DAP Professionals share how they succeed in the breakout sessions. Learn some new best practices and tips on strategy.
• Celebrate amazing work: Let’s highlight and applaud the best in DAP today. (Psst! Which can include you by the way, if you’re nominated to be one of the Top 100 DAP Professionals of 2022. See below.) 
• Hear what’s coming: We’ll announce some useful new resources for DAP Professionals, including the latest digital adoption research,  user groups, publications, educational coursework, and our new vision for what the DAP ecosystem will look like.

Join us in San Francisco from October 25–27 to experience the virtual program in-person, plus:

• Connect with peers: Expand your network of DAP Professionals at roundtable discussions and at social gatherings. 
• Get certified: This year we’re adding a new component — on-site DAP certifications. Earn an introductory coursework certification in the track of your choice and return home with something new on your LinkedIn profile. Be the first in the world to receive these new certifications.
• Have fun: Mix and mingle with peers, join in on the celebrations, and get some special swag items too! 

Who should attend?

WalkMe Elevate is for anyone using a DAP to drive critical business results. The 3 main audiences who will find value in attending are:

• Program Managers — Those who run their companies Digital Adoption program: creating the strategy, overseeing the projects, and driving the governance.
• Project Managers — Those who own DAP projects from start to finish: gathering requirements, managing the schedule, mitigating risks, herding the cats, etc.
• Builders — Those who create DAP content to meet project objectives: performing testing, troubleshooting, and offering support assistance.

Nominate your favorite DAP Professional for #DAPP100

It’s not too late to nominate your favorite DAP Professional (or yourself) to become one of the Top 100 DAP Professionals of 2022. We’ll announce this list in a press release, on WalkMe social channels, and celebrate some more at Elevate.

You have until August 18, so be sure to make your nominations now – submit  here! 

Stay tuned for Elevate registration to open on August 23rd. In the meantime, save the date and be notified the moment registration opens.

Hey everyone! We’re excited to tell you more about WalkMe Workstation, the all-in-one digital hub that simplifies the tech landscape for your employees. We think Workstation will move your digital adoption strategy to the next level and help you drive employee efficiency and business outcomes. 

What is Workstation?

Workstation is a centralized hub that sits on your employees’ desktops and simplifies workflows, information discovery, communication, and application usage. It integrates with your existing enterprise applications, enabling users to instantly search, automate tasks, and initiate processes in applications – all from one location.

Think of Workstation as a concierge at a 5-star hotel — a key element of the guest experience. This is the person who can answer your questions, arrange any service, and offer helpful advice, simplifying the hotel experience so you can focus on your vacation and not on how to interact with the hotel. 

How can Workstation help you?

At the hotel, guests want to know things like: When does the pool close? Does the restaurant require reservations? What are some interesting local attractions to see? A good concierge can handle all these questions and more. 

Like a concierge, Workstation is a single point of contact to navigate your digital landscape. Employees can use it to ask things like: How do I request time off? Where is that slide deck I need? What’s the status of my open IT tickets? How do I learn about changes to the company? What’s left of my onboarding? When is my next meeting?

Workstation is the starting point for employees when they need to get something done or questions answered. 

You can even add links to your WalkMe content. With a click, an employee can find any resource with a single search query, create an IT ticket, launch a Smart Walk-Thru that guides them through a new application, or they can use ActionBot to schedule time off without having to touch the app where that’s done. 

Let Workstation serve you better

The hotel concierge is also a source of great insights about guest behaviors, commonly asked questions, complaints, requests. Hotel management can use these insights to optimize the guest experience. 

It’s the same with Workstation — the analytics dashboard is full of insights that can validate the success of past initiatives and justify launching new ones. 

And like a concierge, Workstation waits quietly in the background until you need it. No two software users are the same, so it’s left to the individual how much engagement they need. 

The job your employees do is hard enough without them having to worry about how to navigate your tech stack. WalkMe Workstation removes that burden and lets them get on with their job. 

We probably aren’t the first to tell you: Digital transformation is hard. Acquiring the right tech is a good start, but there’s so much more to it. It’s an always-on effort that requires a comprehensive strategy, and most companies don’t have that competency built into their organization, so notions are vague as to what’s required to succeed. 

As the industry leader in digital adoption, WalkMe partnered with one of the world’s leading market research firms, IDC, to publish a guide outlining the considerations that anyone creating a digital adoption strategy must take into account. 

According to Amy Loomis, Ph.D, Research Director for Future of Work at IDC, the digital adoption process consists of three phases, which she describes in detail:

1. Laying the groundwork
2. Realizing value
3. Creating more value

In this three-blog series, we’ll look at each phase one by one, starting with laying the groundwork for a long future of digital adoption success from the beginning. 

Identify the core business challenges

Don’t jump into building content the minute a Digital Adoption Platform (DAP) is in your hands. You probably have instincts telling you what the problem is and how to solve it, but if your instincts aren’t supported by hard data, then you risk going down a fruitless path. 

Collect as much information as possible to evaluate the current state so you can make data-driven decisions about:

• Which applications are the best targets for DAP solutions
• Whether the biggest challenges come from employee usage or customer usage, or both
• What target outcomes will best drive departmental or organizational goals for digital transformation

With a complete data portrait of your situation, you can define impactful, measurable objectives like:

• Increase paid conversions from 25% to 30% by September
• Decrease support tickets from our top 10 issues by 20% by EOY
• Decrease time spent creating an opportunity in Salesforce from 7 minutes to 1 minute by EOQ

Tip: Set up the WalkMe Systems Overview Dashboard right away to start collecting user engagement data before deploying any DAP content. If you see that 2,000 users are actively using an application, and you’re paying for 20,000 licenses, you can immediately demonstrate cost impact to the business and set clear benchmarks.

Choose your DAP team

It takes a village to make this work. Here are the main roles you need to designate within your organization for any successful DAP project. (Exact title names can vary depending on your organization’s preferred nomenclature.)

• Executive Sponsor — According to Prosci’s best practices in Change Management, the number one obstacle to the success of any project is the lack of visible and active executive sponsorship. Engage with senior leadership early to determine the right person for this crucial role. 
• DAP Manager — You’ll need a project manager to drive your digital transformation strategy on a regular basis. This person is the primary point of contact for initiatives and also ensures visibility and collaboration across all stakeholders.  
• DAP Builder — The DAP Builder is responsible for putting the plan into action: creating the content, testing it, and working with IT to deploy it. Builders typically have experience with development, UX, and training.  
• Subject Matter Expert — This person is an expert on the target application. The Subject Matter Expert is consulted during planning, building, and deployment. 

Establish your governance model

Who is driving all of this digital transformation? Who’s accountable? How often will the team meet? It’s important to establish early on how current and future digital adoption projects will be operated and communicated. 

A primary concern is whether to use a centralized or decentralized governance model. A centralized model is more economical and has better cross-departmental collaboration, but a decentralized model allows for faster responses to issues on the ground and empowers teams with decision-making ability. Or maybe you need a hybrid approach where you have regular leader forums and common IT tech that link departments and regions. 

Regardless of which model works best in your organization, it’s important to identify which type you’re operating and who is responsible, accountable, and consulted as it is rolled out and implemented.  

Ensure compliance and security

Identify the types of user information you’ll be storing, how it will be transferred, and how you’ll comply with HIPAA or GDPR user privacy regulations. And make sure IT is confident that the transfer of DAP data won’t compromise any existing networks or systems. 

Compliance and security signoff with a Digital Adoption Platform isn’t much different than with any other platform or application you deploy in your environment, so there’s probably a document in your organization you can use as a template. 

This part isn’t the most exciting, but it creates a strong foundation for everything else, so it’s good practice to document your proof of compliance and security early. For a head start, see our Security and Data Privacy page. 

Stay tuned for Part 2 of this series, where we discuss best practices for understanding when you’ve achieved your stated business outcomes and how to demonstrate that success to your stakeholders. In the meantime, download a free copy of the full guide to hear the whole story straight from the analyst’s perspective.