Editor’s Note: It’s always a pleasure to share our blog pages with like-minded people, so we were thrilled when Kristopher Clark – Head of Digital Adoption & Content at ServiceNow – accepted our invitation to share his wisdom (and creativity!) on our blog. 

Kris recently spoke at our DAP Professionals Community Meetup, where he broke down his journey to becoming a “super” DAP Professional, and we wanted to make sure people who couldn’t attend the event didn’t miss out.

In this post, Kris shares how you can level up your digital adoption program and why it’s important not only for your organization, but for you as a DAP Professional (or aspiring DAP Professional!). Ready to play?

Super DAP World: why digital adoption professionals have superpowers

If you’ve ever heard me talk about digital adoption itself, I tend to refer to WalkMe as like adding superpowers to any given system. Why? It enables us to add that “extra” layer on top of any given system and gives that system all of different capabilities that never had before. Systems are like regular  people – but if you add special abilities to them, they become “superheroes” that are ready and able to save your community (be it employees, customers, partners, or any combination of the above).

Yet, there’s one key competent left out of the conversation: the Digital Adoption Professional. 

If you’ve ever played video games, it’s a lot like going on an adventure – to new levels, new worlds, new tribulations – where you face different obstacles and gain special powers along the way for the next challenge at hand.

I’m going to share some of the things that I’ve learned on my journey, both in terms of conquering new levels and special abilities that I’ve gained, to help you – and all aspiring Digital Adoption Professionals – master what I like to call “Super DAP world.”

Level 1: Adventure land

This is where all the fun starts. 

Level 1-1 – Stop talking and start building

All too often, people start planning and defining business challenges, which is all fine and good – but in the meantime nothing is happening. 

When I started exploring Digital Adoption at ServiceNow, I quickly uncovered four other functions evaluating a digital adoption solution. They were planning and discussing, but

no one actually had pushed anything out to production. I saw an opportunity: create a small demo to show business stakeholders how digital adoption technologies – in this case WalkMe – work in real life. (Seeing is believing!).

You can do this with a one tiny walk-through (aka Smart Walk-Thru in WalkMe terms) highlighting new features of a specific system that lots of people use, a pop up message that reiterates a recent announcement that went into the email ether, or any other small, yet immediately understandable example. The main point: don’t talk about what you are going to do, just build it and demo it.

You will have detractors along the way. These are the folks who will say things like: “Oh, we already have training for that”; “we already sent out a communication”; “the system is intuitive enough, so we don’t need guidance.” 

But, with a demo, you can quickly show instant value and get people thinking about new use cases, with very little effort. 

If you build it, they will (likely) come. 

Level 1-2 – Find allies

Once you’ve actually built something that demonstrates a small bit of value, you need to find an ally or two to help you promote your new “power”. You want to find people that get it. 

Where do you find these people? Listen to what stakeholders or executive sponsors are saying in meetings, in 1:1 side conversations, or in your company communication channels. 

Are they using the new feature? Have they mentioned needing more training on a process? Are other people suggesting old-school methods for fixing these problems?

Once you identify the people who seem like they could benefit – or help champion – Digital Adoption technologies, reach out and show them your demo. 

Level 2: Build your squad

Even Mario couldn’t do it alone. 

After you have a demo built and have identified a few allies who support your vision, it’s time to expand your team. This is not about finding people who know the name “WalkMe” or know what “digital adoption” means (although these are great people to have on board!), it’s more about getting the people that are simply solution-oriented. 

Once you’ve built your squad, you acquire another superpower: superspeed. With a squad, you now have the ability to actually take on different projects at any given time, complete them at lightspeed, and deliver value back to the business quickly and continuously. 

Super DAP World Cheat Code: Conquering the training dungeon

So, you have a squad, you’re building solutions that solve problems, you’re getting more and more requests. But, this is where many people get stuck. 

Building digital adoption solutions that eliminate issues with traditional training or that provide step-by-step guidance for common processes is great – but if you’re using digital adoption solely for training? You’re only utilizing  1/10th of its power.

Think of stop lights. Green means go, red means stop. Easy enough. But if those stop lights are removed, what prevents the cars from crashing? 

This is where the superhero comes along to direct traffic or stop cars from crashing using that super strength. They – and you as a DAP Professional – aren’t just capable of one thing, you can “shape-shift” and solve problems in novel ways. For example, imagine a team asks you to build a step-by-step walkthrough for a process in a new system. Great, you can do that. But, what if, instead, you ask questions about common issues, goals with the system, and uncover a bigger issue that you can automate, remove, or simplify? 

That’s how you avoid being typecast as solely there to help with training or having your stakeholders think of WalkMe – or your digital adoption platform of choice – as solely a training tool (disclaimer: we need training and can definitely help with it, but we can do so much more!).

Level 3: BOSS stage – create some FOMO

The final level – or the last one we’ll discuss today  – is when you reach the BOSS stage. This is when you show people the impact you’ve been able to make and what they are missing out on by not using your team to supercharge their systems and processes. 

Once they get a picture of the power of digital adoption, they will want to jump onboard. Trust me on this.

At ServiceNow, we started with that small demo and now deliver solutions for  35+ systems, have built our own brand for our Digital Adoption implementation, and have a dedicated team for all things Digital Adoption solutions. We’ve avoided the training dungeon and seen way more engagement than you could ever have with any typical forms of training and communication. 

So, the last upgrade that you get? A jetpack. Firstly, who doesn’t want a jetpack? Secondly, in all seriousness, this upgrade symbolizes how you can “fly up” to get a bird’s eye view of the entire organization, its challenges, and can influence your organization from the top level. 

With your squad, your shape-shifting capabilities, and your jetpack, you’re the ultimate Super DAP Professional: you see what, where, and who needs help and your team has the why and how to change it.

Thanks again to Kris for his insights! (And, we agree, who wouldn’t want a jetpack?! 🚀) 

If you found this interesting and want to learn more, check out the Digital Adoption Institute for Digital Adoption Professional courses and certification (open to all).

If you’re a WalkMe customer, we invite you to join our WalkMe World DAP community (available to all WalkMe customers) to share your perspectives, learn more about digital adoption, and connect with members of the community. 

Sales automation can drive significant performance improvements throughout the sales department, which can free up agents’ time for more value-added activities and drive bottom-line revenue improvements.

What sales activities can be automated?

According to McKinsey, around one-third of sales activities can be automated, including:

• Sales strategy and planning
• Lead qualification
• Configuration, pricing, and quotation
• Order management
• Post-sales activities
• Structural support

Within these categories, an even greater number of tasks can be automated, including:

Prospecting and outreach. Automated outreach, when done appropriately, can exponentially amplify a sales representative’s engagement potential. Using automation tools for social media or email can enable a single person to contact tens, hundreds, or even thousands of potential prospects, without performing any manual work.

Lead identification, generation, and qualification. Modern sales platforms can analyze data sets automatically and use preprogrammed rules to score, qualify, and even distribute lead lists to sales staff.  

CRM data entry. Manual data entry is becoming a thing of the past. Rather than having employees manually enter data into a CRM system, sales automation tools can automatically pull data from databases, or even media platforms such as LinkedIn, and directly import that information into a sales application.

Communications. Initial outreach, mentioned above, is only the first step in the sales pipeline. Subsequent communications, such as email follow-ups, social media messages, appointment scheduling, and appointment reminders can be automated.

Call logging and analysis. Some tools, such as Otter.ai, can automatically transcribe meetings or calls. Others, such as Gong, go even further, automatically analyzing interactions with customers across channels and providing sales staff with insights that can help them improve their sales numbers. 

Platforms such as Salesforce digitize and automate a number of time-consuming tasks that can, in today’s modern workplace, slow down sales staff, lower productivity, and inhibit agility. 

Salesforce Lightning includes features such as:

• Salesforce Einstein, Salesforce’s AI, can score leads, analyze emails, and more.
• Einstein Search, is the system’s search engine that expedites the location of key information and increases employee productivity.
• Lightning Dialer, an in-app calling feature that includes automated features such as pre-recorded voicemails.

Lightning app developers can also build custom apps, which can then automate even more activities, such as specialized workflows.

Additionally, other automation platforms, such as WalkMe’s Digital Adoption Platform, enable cross-app automation. This, in turn, can lead to the automation of interdepartmental processes—a necessary step for hyperautomation.

Calculating the ROI of sales automation

Automation tools, when implemented properly, can result in improvements such as:

• Increased efficiency
• Shortened process timelines
• Improved business outcomes
• Greater revenue

More specifically, in the context of the sales department, automation tools can be used to:

Improve the productivity of sales staff. When automation tools can take on much of the tedious work normally performed by people, it means that the productivity and potential value of each employee increases.

Enhance the customer experience. Automation tools can leverage data to personalize the sales experience, simplify employee workflows, and more, which can all contribute to a sales experience that is more on-target, personalized, and profitable.

Generate better sales numbers. Improved customer experiences, increased employee productivity, and the other benefits covered in this article can all translate into bottom-line results—one of the primary reasons why sales automation platforms are a worthwhile investment. 

Shorten sales funnels. Better customer experiences, improved employee productivity, and other similar factors not only increase sales numbers, they accelerate sales timelines. 

Reduce errors. Although humans make mistakes from time to time, rules-based software does exactly what it is programmed to do. This means that automation platforms such as robotic process automation (RPA) tools won’t make the same types of mistakes people do. 

In a best-case scenario, and with the proper approach to adoption and implementation, sales automation platforms can help differentiate your sales department from those of your competitors. 

Interdepartmental automation strategies

As mentioned, sales automation platforms can be integrated with other automation tools, such as employee training software, HR software, and financial software. By weaving together a variety of tools across departments, sales managers can extract even more value from their sales automation platforms.

Here are a few examples:

Hiring. HR software, such as applicant tracking systems, can streamline and automate many recruitment-related tasks, such as candidate selection.

Accounting. Integrating sales systems into financial software can save time and labor costs by automating tasks such as calculations and data entry, while also eliminating potential errors that could arise from manual data inputs.

Customer service. To create a seamless customer experience, it is important to centralize customer data into a single repository, through tools such as customer data platforms. These types of tools allow different business functions, such as sales, customer service, and technical support to have access to the same data, which helps agents better meet customers’ needs.

Training. Digital adoption platforms can automate software onboarding and training, and platforms such as WalkMe even include modules specifically designed for sales tools, such as Salesforce.

These are just a few of the many examples of how sales platforms can be used to automate even more business processes, bridge the gap between the sales department and other functions, and continuously generate even more value for the organization as a whole.

Launching a new product is always thrilling. Especially one close to the heart of Dan Adika, our CEO and Co-Founder, like WalkMe’s latest product, UI Intelligence (UII) for Microsoft Dynamics 365™️. 

As we introduce UII to the market, Dan sat down with us to answer 5 burning questions about WalkMe’s latest product, UI Intelligence for Microsoft Dynamics 365™️.

So what is UI Intelligence?

UI Intelligence is a new AI/ML technology that understands and analyzes user interfaces, similar to face or voice recognition. UII allows us to understand context, elements on a page, and business processes directly from the UI without computer vision, which is a type of AI that enables computers to derive meaningful information from digital images and other visual inputs and take action. 

And today we are launching just one out of many applications of UI Intelligence:  UII for Microsoft Dynamics 365™️. UI Intelligence for Microsoft Dynamics 365™️ will allow Dynamics customers to automatically get insights regarding their user experience; for example, they will be able to see what type of errors users are getting, where the errors are happening, and how much time it takes users to complete a process.

All of this is done without any configuration or any additional action from customers, it’s all being done automatically by our AI/ML algorithms. Just last year we got 6 patents on this technology.

How did UII come to be? 

WalkMe has a great insight and analytics platform, but one of the main requests we get from our customers is that they need to know what’s broken, proactively. Our customers deploy dozens of applications, and they need a technology that will help them prioritize and understand exactly where any issues are. 

We took up the challenge to build something that won’t need any BI or data analysts that can be done completely by machine. So we built an AI algorithm that will automatically detect basic things like errors, completion time of forms, error types, etc.  We ran it on our own CRM, and the results were mind blowing. From there, we productized the technology, and today we are excited to launch the first app designed for Microsoft Dynamics 365™️.

Why did you decide to create WalkMe UII for Microsoft Dynamics 365™️? 

Companies invest millions of dollars in technology, but without adoption, this investment is worth nothing. When talking with CIOs, System Admins, and Sales Operations, one of their main issues is lack of data and visibility into usage. They don’t have an easy way to see what’s going on with their users, therefore making it almost impossible to improve the user experience and drive better adoption.

With UI Intelligence, they will be able to see exactly what is working and what’s not working in their CRM system, which will help them reduce data inaccuracy, improve their data quality, reduce time to complete a form, and increase the overall completion rate. 

What’s the significance of machine learning/deep learning in general in 2022 and beyond? And for WalkMe specifically?

As mentioned above, UII is a ground breaking technology; by having machine learning for how we use software, identify anomalies, and notify on exactly where we need to improve, we will be able to take productivity to a new level. And this is just the beginning. Imagine that the machine will correct you automatically, do the process for you, and even automate the workflow for you.

The impact is huge –not just for the end user,  but also for today’s enterprises that have issues with massive amounts of data.  It’s very hard for enterprises to drive change management without insight into technology adoption to solve for gaps in productivity.  With AI, understanding exactly where the issues are will allow enterprises to help users in real time.  And solving these problems up front will help enterprises maximize their ROI on technology while improving their strategic goals.

What are some of the benefits to Microsoft Dynamics 365™️ customers?

For our existing customers this feature will help them build more specific content because they will be able to see exactly where people are having issues. It will help them prioritize and focus on the main issues. In addition, they will be able to measure the impact and show their leadership team the real ROI from the technology they bought.

WalkMe will be rolling out UI Intelligence for other systems over the next several months. So if you’re clamoring for UI Intelligence for your system of choice, stay tuned!

Learn more about WalkMe UI Intelligence for Microsoft Dynamics 365™️ and download your 60-day-free trial.

Customer-centricity has become a common guiding technique in today’s business world, and it is so much more than just a buzz phrase—it is a principle around which today’s most successful organizations align themselves.

Let’s prove the value of putting customers first and help you integrate this principle into your organization’s activities. 

What is customer-centricity?

Customer-centricity, customer-centrism, and customer-first all essentially mean the same thing:

• Understanding customers’ needs, expectations, perceptions, and situations.
• Developing mechanisms and engaging in activities to remain in sync with customers.
• Ensuring that customers are positioned at the strategic heart of the organization’s activities.

Making customers the focal point of your company’s strategies is a strategic imperative that delivers real bottom-line results. 

Amazon is a well-known example of a company that, according to Jeff Bezos, has built its brand on its customer-first strategy.

Bezos said that of Amazon’s four core values, “customer obsession” was by far the most important principle that contributed to Amazon’s success. He went on to say that although many companies claim to be customer-focused, “I believe they are competitor-focused, which is a completely different mentality.”

For those who want to be truly honest with themselves about their organization’s strategic concerns, the issue that should matter most is how to actually integrate customer-centrism into the business at the systemic level.

What does a customer-centric organization look like?

One mode of operation that utilizes a distinctly customer-centric set of values is the agile methodology.

Unlike traditional, sequential business methods, agile activities are deliberately organized around customer feedback, input, and data. Rather than designing processes that incorporate customer feedback at specific points, agile methods build processes, products, and services based on continuous customer feedback.

Since agility is born from a set of values, the exact design of agile business practices can differ from organization to organization. 

Here are examples of what customer-centric business practices can look like across a few different departments:

Marketing. Marketing that is customer-centric would rely on real-world data, such as customers’ engagement with marketing activities, to develop new marketing strategies and tactics. When customer sentiment or behavior changes, so too would the marketing initiatives.

Sales. In a similar way, sales tactics would also revolve around the customer, rather than the business. Sales professionals have long emphasized this approach, which is why experienced sales professionals focus on personalizing the benefits of a product rather than on a product’s features.

Product design. A product’s success—or failure—in the marketplace can be directly tied to its design. Those who follow process improvement methodologies such as lean pay very close attention to customer input during design, prototyping, and the development of minimally viable products. The goal is to reduce the number of irrelevant features and create products that are the most useful, relevant, and lovable for customers. 

Customer service. In customer service, personalization can create customer experiences that are tailored to specific circumstances and needs. Customer data, for instance, can help customer service specialists—or even self-service apps such as chatbots—solve problems more quickly and effectively. Feedback from customers can also be used to improve and optimize the customer care program. 

Culture and management. When the entire culture of the organization is centered around customers, this means that business processes, mindsets, and behaviors are geared towards one thing: customer success. 

Strategies such as these can drive improvements in key customer metrics, such as customer satisfaction and retention, which then translate into other benefits, including everything from an improved brand reputation to increased revenue.

How to develop a customer-centric strategy

To ensure that customer-centrism becomes an actual centerpiece of your organization’s strategy, rather than just something the cool kids are doing, it is important to both articulate this approach and take actions that embed customer-centrism into your business practices, processes, and culture. 

Here are a few tips on how to do that:

Implement methods such as lean and agile. Agile and lean methods, covered above, have become popular in recent years, in part due to their customer-centric approach. Although they are not the only performance improvement approaches that focus on customers, they are relatively easy to understand, test, and adopt. 

Use data-driven, customer-first methods. Data is key to understanding and meeting customers’ needs throughout the customer journey. The more data you have about customers, the easier it is to create experiences and products that are personalized, relevant, and useful. 

Hire a Chief Customer Officer (CCO). A CCO, unsurprisingly, is in charge of customer success. WalkMe, for instance, recently hired a Top 25 Customer Success Influencer of 2021, Wayne McCulloch, as CCO. Wayne will lead all post-sales functions, including customer success, service, and support, and he will ensure that the voice of our customers is represented at the highest levels to keep WalkMe’s efforts closely aligned with the needs of our customers. 

Build a customer-first culture. A customer-centric culture, as noted, keeps customers top-of-mind for employees. Having a customer-centric culture ensures that employee efforts stay focused on customers as the top priority, rather than on, for instance, competitors or other metrics that don’t drive customer success. 

Naturally, implementing strategies such as these is easier said than done, and for some companies, it may require significant pivots. However, in today’s disruptive, fast-paced economy, an organization’s success will often depend directly on the customer’s success.