Adoption = Your Businesses Success
The objective of this blog
Many businesses fail to recognize a vital concept: Adoption. No, we’re not talking about adopting a new family pet, we’re referring to software and product adoption— specifically of PowerBI.
Here’s a definition I like, “Adoption is the process by which users become aware of a product, understand its value, and begin to use it. Successful adoption will enable people to become long-term users of a product.” Notice the emphasis on ‘understanding its value’ and ‘long-term users’. When users understand the value of a service or product, they are most inclined to change their behavior as it will ultimately benefit them. When users experience this benefit, often seen in time saved, they become long-term users.
Figure 1: The value of Adoption for your business is clear as it maximizes your Return on Investment.
There are four key stages in Adoption:
1. Awareness
Provides context for existing team members. Employees become aware of PowerBI and its potential features.
2. Understanding
Creates momentum for individuals. When employees understand the benefits of PowerBI.
3. Enablement
Increases knowledge, provide support. Employees learn, and consequently know how to use PowerBI and its features.
4. Successful Adoption
Changes behavior. Employees now use PowerBI regularly after seeing its benefits.
Adoption Explained
Here’s a metaphor I use when explaining how Adoption can make or break a business:
Let’s say your business is a car, seated in that car are your business team members. Before joining FreshBI and using PowerBI, your car was driving on a road full of potholes (data issues) and everyone was bouncing around, quite disorganized. Sometimes, the car would even break down, or pop a tire. Utilizing PowerBI, our team at FreshBI has built a lovely smooth road (your dashboards) right beside the existing one for you to drive on. When some of your employees adopt PowerBI, the car turns partly onto the smooth road. The more people on your business’ team adopt your solution, the smoother the car will drive. When there is 100% user adoption, the car moves completely on to the improved PowerBI road: resulting in your business running smoothly.
We know that the reason why we even care about Adoption is because the previous, or current, data access situation is flawed and negatively affecting the business. When businesses become aware of this, they search for an alternative solution. In order to move in a better direction, behavior changes are key.
Adoption Challenges
Common challenges in the Adoption of PowerBI are similar to those of any Software as a Service (SAAS) Adoption roadblock. Most often, problems will occur in onboarding, training, knowledge retention, and tracking/analysis.
Adoption will likely fail if the team onboarding process has no structure or plan. Team members who are new to PowerBI require training and attention to help familiarize them with the software. It’s important to remember, if a service feels familiar at the outset, it requires less learning. The goal is to minimize user effort and friction.
Thorough and easy-to-digest training will help PowerBI users develop the skills necessary for successful Adoption. Microsoft Partners like FreshBI have numerous options for training, for example our popular Dashboard-in-a-Day workshops, to make this process flow as smoothly as possible.
Knowledge retention is a struggle in any field, especially when adopting new workplace practices. This ties into both previous points: a strong onboarding plan would take this into account and have periodic check-ins and training. Successful training will teach and encourage team members to become long-term users, as they see the value in the resource.
Adoption doesn’t end with successful onboarding and training. Keeping a pulse on the ‘big picture’ goals, and tracking/analyzing user engagement is incredibly important to maximizing your ROI. With periodic Adoption meetings and up-to-date Solution Status documentation, we can see trends in your team’s feedback and user metrics, therefore preventing potential issues.
Your Custom Solution Status
At FreshBI, we understand and emphasize the importance of Adoption for every one of our partners. Our dedicated Adoption Specialist sets aside time to meet with PowerBI consultants and partners on a regular basis, to ensure complete satisfaction and that Adoption is being monitored.
In these meetings, the Adoption Specialist creates a unique Solution Status booklet with a number if key features:
Long-term BI goals - What are our “big picture” goals for the year?
A record of achievements - What have we successfully achieved so far?
Project usage metrics tracker - Are team members utilizing PowerBI? Is Adoption rising or falling?
A detailed project plan and timeline - What and when are our upcoming, current and past projects?
An “Incremental ROI” page with key business area map and opportunity checklist - Which areas of the business have we seen the greatest Return on Investment? Where do we see an opportunity for positive PowerBI impact?
Figure 2: Example of our Incremental ROI business map, where we can clearly see what areas PowerBI has had successful impact, and where there is opportunity.
As more and more companies embrace the SAAS business model, the concept of Adoption will undoubtably become a familiar term, we at FreshBI, think you should start using it today.
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