To fast-track transformation value, enterprises must focus on the employee experience

Digital transformation programs are failing to realize the value that enterprise leaders expect.

Facing outcomes ranging from a 50% success rate to a 70% fail rate in this cost-conscious environment, CIOs and CTOs must fast-track solutions that can close the gap to success. And rather than the kind of big deal, digital transformation that rips it all up to start again, in 2023, those leaders must focus on lower-hanging fruit to get a faster return on their investment in digital applications.

Employee productivity is the low-hanging fruit

Employee productivity is the low-hanging fruit of realizing value. Buying the technology to speed up workflow is only part of the solution. If those applications take time to learn and create fail-points and bottlenecks, new applications will lead to dips in productivity. This dip in performance is a challenge within individual apps, and it’s amplified when workflows travel across multiple apps– as most do. Presenting at WalkMe’s London analyst day, Senior Vice President Maor Ezer claimed the average salesperson was engaged in workflows that crossed 13 applications.

WalkMe is a digital adoption platform (DAP) that focuses on improving the experience for both employees and customers in reaching their goals.

The Nasdaq-listed company does this with a combination of AI, ML, UI intelligence, and data analysis to simplify the use of software from a user perspective. While individual application providers may work hard to make their user interface as simple as possible, WalkMe acts as the glue between the applications that may be integrated to deliver end-to-end processes.

As WalkMe Chief Business Development Officer Amir Farhi pointed out, no single independent software vendor (ISV) can control the experience.

The user should never need to know when a new app has been deployed

WalkMe acts as a digital coach to users, ensuring speedy adoption and accurate use of whatever apps may be in play through a standardized, natural language, processing-focused user interface. The end user should never need to know when a new app has been deployed as part of the workflow, eliminating the challenge of change and adoption. The potential is to transform without dips in productivity, quickly achieving value for digital spending.

The WalkMe approach strongly aligns with the employee experience (EX) and customer experience (CX) focus of HFS OneOffice, shown in Exhibit 1, with an emphasis on enabling end-to-end, cross-silo processes.

Exhibit 1: Like HFS OneOffice, WalkMe takes an end-to-end, cross-silo approach to digital adoption – driving employee productivity by augmenting the workforce

DAPs can cut the time to value for digital investments

Tom Winstanley, UK cluster CTO and Head of New Ventures for WalkMe partner NTT Data, said the success of DAPs (a category including a wide range of WalkMe rivals, such as Pendo, Appcues, UserIQ, and Apty) would depend on them becoming enterprise grade and out-competing pure digital experience platforms (such as Adobe Experience Manager and Salesforce Experience Cloud) and next-generation BPM and workflow platforms (such as NewGen, Pega, Appian, and Workato).

NTT Data applies WalkMe as a digital accelerator to improve time-to-value by augmenting employee capabilities in its client engagements.

The Bottom Line: CTOs and CIOs should consider DAPs as a shortcut to realizing value from their digital transformation investments.

DAPs can deliver faster realization of value, helping onboard users and, with the kind of analytics WalkMe offers, identify which of your apps are performing and which are not. In cost-conscious times, CTOs and CIOs would be wise to take a closer look. There are invaluable HFS Horizon 1 functional digital transformation wins within reach, such as cost reductions, speed, and efficiency.

However, the biggest wins come not from improvements in individual performance (employee productivity) but in improvements at the system level (processes). To deliver their greatest impact, DAPs will need to move beyond optimization of the status quo and be part of enterprise- and ecosystem-wide Horizon 2 and 3 transformations, with appropriate partners that design and implement new ways of working.