Digital Adoption is Change Management in Disguise
Why Human Factors drive Tech Adoptions
In my years of consulting, I’ve seen organizations spend up to six figures on platforms and software, or decide to use glitchy open-source software only to have the staff revert to using sticky notes and personal spreadsheets three months later.
Why? Because the project was treated as a one-off technical installation when it was actually a psychological transition. Digital adoption is rarely about the software; it’s change management in a digital disguise.
Friction of the "Old Way"
When you begin working with system changes and digital adoption, the old ways are often built on legacy processes that relied on a heavy human element. They’re often designed as a bespoke system or using legacy platforms, which often demonstrate unstable processes and poorly documented overviews and knowledge bases.
The friction between the tech platforms and the humans that use them, is real:
The Lack of Point-Person: If a contact or expert retired or left the project, the knowledge of how to use the system left with them.
The Glitch Factor: Barriers to access or leaky data funnels that carry over from the old system to the new will lead to frustration and abandonment.
Manual Slogging: Manually copying data is a time slog and opens the system to human-created errors.
Strategy Over Software
To fix this, consider implementing a Change Management Plan that runs parallel to the technical build. Here are some ways you can tackle the transformation:
1. Build Trust Through Transparency
Empower team members to make decisions within their roles, demonstrating limits and areas where they can pull in extra resources or manage on their own. Move away from a top-down command structure to an open channel where notes, ideas, and troubleshooting can be shared in real-time. By removing obstacles for your specialists, you can smooth the path for the software implementation.
2. Create Space for Feedback
Launch a system understanding the internal and external aspects for the community it impacts. Create user-adoption and feedback tools like town halls, group meetings and intake forms. By giving users a voice during the transition, you turn potential resistors into project champions and you gain useful information and feedback that in turn, can inform your completion of the project.
3. Human vs Automated Logic
Replace manual chasing with automated triggers. This isn't just about efficiency and reducing human errors; it is about reducing cognitive load. When the system demonstrates data and information and tells you what to do next, the fear of doing it wrong, or inputting errors, disappears.
Digital adoption is successful when the technology becomes invisible and the mission becomes the focus. By prioritizing change management and acting on user feedback, in one project, we saw:
94.67% Approval Rate: The system served requests and client needs well enough to submit high-quality applications.
0% Support Requests for Logins: We eliminated the technical noise, and human communication needs, that usually derails adoption.
Strategic Shift: The Project Manager moved from "troubleshooter" to "relationship builder."
If you are planning a digital shift for your SME or nonprofit, look at the feature list of the CRM but as importantly, look at the daily habits of your team. If you don't plan for the friction, the resistance, and the training, your perfect system will risk becoming a very expensive paperweight.
Expertise areas:
Human-Centric Design: Building systems around user behaviour.
Strategic Planning: Aligning a Change Management Plan with a Business Plan.
Process Automation: Using logic and automation to simplify complex workflows.
Stakeholder Diplomacy: Managing transitions for schools, artists, and government funders.