Best Practice Series: Adoption
Jul 8, 2009"If you don't change direction, you'll end up where you're going."
proverb
That’s good advice for pretty much anything you do. But—how do you know if you’re heading in the right direction, towards your goal?
If that goal is a successful CRM application, getting there means getting your users on board. It’s no surprise that the most common reason for failure is lack of user adoption. If your user adoption rates are flat or heading south, what can you do? Do you even know you’re in trouble? And, once you know, how can you entice, nudge, or—if necessary—compel people to use the app?
Two people with unique insight into these questions are Nancye Michaelian and Matt Jadhav. Both are customer success managers (CSMs) who know, from working with dozens of customers, how adoption can make or break a project. They've written Best Practice documents to share what works—how to track user adoption and how to improve it.
Here’s Nancye: "User adoption doesn’t happen overnight … it’s a constant challenge that needs a solid strategy. My most successful customers incorporate rewards programs into their plans. It really works ... I mean, who doesn’t like money or prizes?"
Join the conversation and tell us what you think of these suggestions. What’s your experience with user adoption? What’s worked for you? For additional adoption resources, visit this area of the community site.
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Nancye's advice has always been A++! She has been our CSM since 2004, and i am happy to say she has helped us to bring our sales users to full compliance. The two best pieces of advice are 1.) Incentive & 2.) Management Buy-in...without those two factors, our users would not be where they are at today! Also, I have learned over the last 5 years as an admin that listening to the users and placing yourself in their shoes can allow you to see where small tweaks to the system make big differences! For example, colored reports & dashboards helped our reps immediately identify lost sales & erratic buying patterns in their territories. This, in turn, makes them want to use salesforce.com as much as possible to help increase their quarterly sales!
Posted by: JenAtFFF | July 13, 2009 at 02:08 PM
Nancye is right on ... building a value proposition for the users is an important part of an implementation. Also, giving more information to users than is asked FROM them is another way to drive adoption.
Posted by: Scott Cabral | July 13, 2009 at 04:44 PM
I, 100%, agree with Nancye's advice here!!
It is so extremely important to measure user adoption and set KPIs. If your users know what is expected of them, and they know that the system is tracking their performance, I guarantee that they'll use it more and accurately. Plus, the more they use it...the more they love it. I get emails every single day - "this is too cool, can we do this in Salesforce".
Whether you're gaining adoption through rewards, peer acknowledgement/recognition, or other incentive - your users are ultimately the ones who will make your CRM a success!! Involve them, hear their ideas and concerns, bring their feedback to life - watch the adoption rise.
Another great point - get your stakeholders involved and riding on the Salesforce.com train!!!! Show them the WiFM ("what's in it for me") factor. There is no way an executive isn't going to love that 360 degree view of their business/customers - and employees.
We measure our adoption rates using the adoption dashboard from the AppExchange (free) and it goes out to our entire IT department, stakeholders, executives, etc. It generates a lot of visibility, and heat for those users who are "slackin" a bit.
I've heard of a few neat ideas on increasing user adoption through rewards and games:
1. "Pimp My Account" - The first rep to fully complete all required information in their account, accurately, gets a reward of sorts.
2. "SFDC IdeasExchange" - This is one that we've used and it's been a great success!! We use our own IdeasExchange, internally, to gain prospective on what is desired or needed by users to help speed up their every day jobs.
If a user posts an idea, and that idea is put into effect, they get rewarded via email alert to all users, and their managers, as well as the VP. It's great fun and has since turned into a competition. We have reps battling to see who can think of the best and post the most ideas.
Thanks again for your insight, Nancye!! You are always right on target!!
Posted by: Heather Peterson of Belkin International Inc. | July 13, 2009 at 07:04 PM
I am in violent agreement with Nancye’s point about the need for identifying – and tracking – KPI’s to monitor user adoption rates. As someone involved with end user training and support for Salesforce, I’d like to also add that whatever the KPI’s are, they should be clearly communicated and reinforced in both the training and any support mechanisms provided by a company for Salesforce users. In many cases, there is a high degree of change that users must accept during the adoption process – changes to their work habits as well as changes to their overall approach to CRM. I find that it is critical that users, especially salespeople, have a very clear understanding what’s in it for THEM that would motivate them to invest the time and energy to go through the change/adoption cycle. Therefore, in addition to the methods and ideas that Nancye identified in her article, I would also add “Reinforcement in Training and Performance Support Programs.” That is, training and support programs should first make very clear what the benefits are to the company AND to the end users, and secondly, they should be robust enough to ensure that users can feel tangible personal benefits in productivity from Day One.
Posted by: Lou Roberts | August 20, 2009 at 01:12 PM