Maximizing Technology Investments: The Importance of a User Adoption Assessment

Technology plays a crucial role in driving efficiency, innovation, and growth. However, the true value of technology investments extends beyond mere acquisition and implementation. It hinges on successful user adoption.

According to a recent Deloitte Global Human Capital Trends survey, more than 90% of surveyed business leaders believe that using technology to improve work outcomes and team performance is very important to their organization’s success. Despite this, only 22% believe their organizations are adequately prepared to harness technology to achieve these goals. This alarming disparity underscores a readiness gap prevalent in many organizations.

Closing this gap requires establishing and deploying a robust user adoption strategy aimed at making sure employees embrace, understand, and effectively utilize new technologies in their day-to-day activities. This approach is less of a “build it and they will come” methodology, focusing instead on changing the depth and organizational approach to user adoption success.

By addressing the readiness gap through a structured user adoption assessment, you can unlock your technology’s full potential, driving sustainable growth and a competitive advantage in your sector.

Understanding the Challenge: 6 Signs You Need a User Adoption Assessment

Even the most powerful tools can fall short if users revert to old habits, create workarounds, or struggle to keep up with updates. If your organization is facing roadblocks in user adoption, it may be time to take a closer look.

1. Fragmented Workflows and Communication Barriers

Are certain departments embracing change while others revert to old behaviors? If you ask the same process question to multiple departments, how many different answers do you get? 

Without a unified approach to technology adoption, your organization may struggle to realize the full benefits of its digital investments. Inconsistency can lead to fragmented workflows, communication barriers, and missed opportunities for organizational efficiency and innovation.

2. Inconsistent Task Processes

Is your team juggling different approaches to the same tasks? 

If employees perform the same tasks in different ways across teams, it can lead to confusion, errors, and slowdowns. Having multiple ways of doing things can also make it harder to onboard new employees, enforce compliance, and optimize workflows. 

A lack of process standardization often signals deeper issues in user adoption and system utilization.

3. Underutilization of New Features

Do you feel overwhelmed when new features are introduced by software vendors? 

Poor adoption of new features is usually due to resource availability, an inadequate communication or change strategy, or end user change fatigue. These all limit the organization's ability to make the most of its technology investments. 

These upgrades are included in your subscription and often developed based on ecosystem feedback for needed functionality upgrades, so why not adopt them?

4. Workarounds Due to Procedural Changes

Are you using workarounds because of procedural changes? 

When employees create “shadow” systems—such as Excel spreadsheets, personal databases, or offline processes—to skirt procedural changes, it’s a red flag. These unofficial methods may seem like quick fixes, but they introduce risks such as data inconsistencies, security vulnerabilities, and compliance issues.

Workarounds indicate that existing workflows are not meeting user needs, whether due to poor system design, lack of training, or resistance to new processes.

5. Disruptions From Leadership Change

Did new leadership request different approvals or routings for their workflows? 

If new leadership modifies approval processes, reporting structures, or key business functions without clear communication and alignment, employees will struggle to adapt. This leads to inefficiencies, frustration, and an even stronger resistance to change with future implementations.

Leadership transitions must include a focus on maintaining process consistency and reinforcing user adoption strategies.

6. Inadequate or Outdated Training

Was the training you received not comprehensive, or has it become outdated? 

Inadequate or outdated training can negatively impact user adoption metrics. The employee user experience starts with communication and training, prior to using the solution. Missteps here start a sequence of events minimizing product adoption and user engagement that is difficult to overcome.

The Solution: The Groove's User Adoption Assessment

The Groove's User Adoption Assessment addresses these challenges head-on. Leveraging our 15+ years of experience deploying Workday, we can provide leading best practices for successful user adoption via a comprehensive analysis of your current Workday platform. We examine the system and the user experience with a focus on diagnosing underlying reasons for low adoption and offering easy-to-implement recommendations to improve user adoption. These suggestions are never singularly focused and commonly range from minor configuration adjustments to complete process redesigns, both within and outside the application.

Here’s a closer look at what our User Adoption Assessment includes:

Comprehensive Staffing Plan

While a roadmap of easily consumable implementations is a start, we also understand that resourcing (both internally and externally) will greatly impact project success. We look across your organization and prepare a staffing approach that considers availability, training, and development needs, as well as ongoing business commitments. We layer this with our expertise to make sure the project has the right guidance at the right time with a laser focus on knowledge transfer and ownership.

Standardization of Workflows

As part of the assessment, we also take a deeper dive into the processing of workflows, impacts of security, and the routings and approval processes to identify discrepancies and provide recommendations to standardize and streamline workflows across teams. We understand decisions of the past dictate what we have in front of us now, but we want to make sure we focus on the future and not recreate the wheel of times gone past.

Tailored Strategies for New Feature Adoption

We pinpoint barriers to user adoption and offer tailored strategies and a project roadmap to promote the uptake of new features. Incorporating these new features into the aforementioned roadmap and not treating them separately focuses the communication and training on end users. Leadership can measure user adoption success while there's less change fatigue for your user population.

Effective Change Management

Providing insights and recommendations for effective change management and communication is pivotal to the success of any roll out. Users in different areas and different levels consume information differently. We help you navigate and craft a measurable change approach that supports smooth transitions across your user populations, maintains continuity in the technology adoption efforts, and can be validated post adoption phase.

Comprehensive Training Plans

Training plays a vital role in the user adoption process. Whether the training is for end users, super users, or service delivery team members, all aspects of the organization need to be aligned to gain the most effectiveness from the system. Our team comes up with a training plan using methods determined to work within your organization to foster organizational adoption of Workday.

Your Roadmap to Seamless Technology Adoption

Is user adoption important? The answer is unequivocally, yes.

That’s why businesses cannot afford to overlook the importance of a good user adoption strategy. The Groove's User Adoption Assessment is built based on customer demand and offers a roadmap to help businesses overcome product adoption challenges, optimize processes, and maximize the value of their technology investments.

When employees fully embrace and make use of the tools available to them, they work more efficiently, collaborate more effectively, and drive better business outcomes. In supporting internal operations, a well-adopted technology ecosystem also impacts customer success. When teams can streamline workflows, work faster, and leverage the latest features, they are better equipped to provide faster, higher-quality service. This leads to stronger relationships, increased customer satisfaction, and a higher customer lifetime value.

By prioritizing user adoption, organizations are not only investing in their employees but also in the long-term success of their customers. A workforce that confidently and consistently uses technology to its fullest potential creates a ripple effect—boosting operational excellence, enhancing customer experiences, and fostering sustained business growth.