Adopting Insights to Help CFOs Maximize ROI on Digital Transformation

Editor's note:Andrew Casey is the Chief Financial Officer of the digital adoption platform companyWalkMe. The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author.

Digital transformation has become a long-term trend, but has it delivered on its promised value? If your organization is not reaping the expected benefits from new technologies, the problem may lie in the adoption process.

According to Forbes,84% of digital transformation projects fail. Given that spending on digital technology is expected to reach$2.8 trillionby 2025, more than doubling from 2020 spending, these failed projects represent a massive waste of time, money, and effort.

In fact, to maximize the value of tools, it is essential to monitor and report on their adoption and impact. But how do you measure adoption? Which KPIs and insights signal success—and how can you track them effectively to align business units and leaders around the digital transformation strategy?

Based on our experience working with approximately 2,000 global client companies, here are some thoughts.

Real-Time Analytics: The Key to Mastering the Digital Environment

With numerous tools and dispersed teams, organizations can easily lose control over their digital environment. According to Gartner research,60% of employees are frustrated with new software, and only 20% of employees have access to usage analytics dashboards. These two findings are interconnected: real-time analytics help measure key metrics, thereby driving the adoption of digital technologies across the organization and ensuring that investments are well utilized.

Detailed analytics presented through intuitive dashboards can help you understand software usage and whether employees are effectively using the tools. These analytics can answer the following questions:

• Which solutions have been fully adopted and are generating real impact?
• Which solutions are underused and could benefit from increased adoption rates?
• Where in the application do users get confused or drop off?
• Which tools have fulfilled their mission and are no longer needed?
• Which new tools can bring the most value to the business?

Data insights and analytics can be used to determine what factors enhance user productivity and why users abandon certain processes. It can reveal where and why usage rates decline—for example, when users leave fields blank or skip specific tasks.

It can also help you train employees to make fuller use of features or complete tasks more efficiently.

Analytics can also be used to streamline software spending by identifying unused licenses and redundant systems, or by revealing tools with extremely low usage rates, making them candidates for phase-out.

Armed with this information, organizations can reduce friction during new technology deployments while maximizing the value of existing investments.

Measurement Practices: From KPIs to Action

Forward-thinking companies are using digital adoption platforms (DAPs) to collect and track KPIs to determine the success or failure of digital transformation initiatives. These rich data insights enable CFOs to make data-driven decisions, thereby maximizing technology investments and ensuring that technology spending serves the business well in the long term. More and more companies are realizing that a digital adoption strategy, supported by the right technology, must complement digital transformation ambitions.

One of the most important KPIs for measuring successful adoption is the speed at which employees onboard and become proficient with new software tools—that is, "speed to proficiency."

This can be reflected in employees' ability to operate new applications quickly and effectively.

For example, for CRM users, timely entry of customer information is crucial. If sales representatives do not fully understand how to use the system, they may fail to complete these processes due to lack of training and understanding, leading to lost leads and creating a pattern where new employees work inefficiently outside the technology system.

Such behavioral data, covering the entire organization and spanning dozens of software systems, can provide you with actionable insights to more effectively guide new employee onboarding and ensure that employee capabilities are not wasted. The result is accelerated adoption, improved employee efficiency, and ultimately higher employee satisfaction.

Good leaders should always pay attention to employee satisfaction, so it should be measured just like any other business metric.

Employee satisfaction with new technologies can be reflected by measuring employee productivity and tracking reductions in support tickets related to tool usage.

Other important adoption KPIs include user retention rates, time spent using applications, and engagement with new features.

These metrics help provide insight into how the organization empowers employees to fully leverage the potential of applications and extract maximum value from investments.

No Adoption, No Transformation

As the work environment continues to evolve and new technologies are constantly introduced, extracting maximum value from digital technologies will remain a pressing issue. Without successful adoption, the potential of digital transformation to help organizations improve efficiency and profitability cannot be realized.

To maximize the impact of digital transformation, CFOs must leverage appropriate technology tools to accelerate digital adoption. Only with these tools can CFOs monitor the right KPIs and extract actionable insights from adoption-related data.

Remember, successful digital adoption goes beyond mere tool usage—it also expands the boundaries of your technology stack's capabilities, helping you maximize the value of your investments across the entire organization.