Managing Software Adoption by Employees -A Study Specific toIT Company in Bangalore

Every day, organization across the globe purchase new software/ digital platform that promises more speed, improved performance, increased output, cost savings and general betterness. For CIO’s and CXO’s these new technologies/software are introduced with great expectations that often go unfulfilled. That’s because 75%*of new platform/software implementations fail and the biggest reason is employees simply don’t understands its benefits & usage and results in low adoption.This study is confined to employees adoption on new software related to product lifecycle management (product conceptualization, design, develop and go to market for mass production and distributions). In this study researcher tried to gauge the adoption level of users on the digital platform/new software being used for product design & development (PLM software). It’s well established fact that success of any new software depends on not only on the power of its functionalities, features and benefits but on how the users understood the benefits, its usage and get adopted to achieve the intended objectives of higher productivity. In any transformation journey, its known fact that employees are critical determinant to ensure the success of any new software/digital platform implementation. Poor engagement of employees results in a slower speed of adoption, lower ultimate utilization and impact overall value of the investment. If an organization focus more on managing human aspect of change can help employees get engaged during the early cycle of change& adoption process and ultimately helps in reducing the learning curve and improve the benefitstoeachand every employee. Employee’s engagement is core to effective adoption. Any adoption initiative needs well planned and contextual framework to ensure engagement of employees proactively in early stage of implementation cycle to ensure adoption. In any new software/platform implementation adoption alsodepends on education to critical mass on product benefits, what’sin it for me (WIIFM), design thinking, ease of usage, top management buy-in and commitments, performance support and how employees are motivated and sustain the momentum.Any employee’s adoption on newsoftware requires2 fold approach: 1) assess and identify employees’adoption risksand mitigation proactively through various pertinent change management interventions 2) involvement of employees/users through design thinking and continuouseducation to impacted stakeholders (leaders, managers, platform champions/catalyst) about projects progress, milestones, benefits, expectations, performance support and regular feedback on platform usage and improvement.Our study indicates culture of organization, attitude, norms and perception of employees, immersive learning plays pivotal role in early and effective adoption. A structuredchange and adoption management framework on gauging employees’readiness, design thinking, risks identification & mitigation and putting contextual interventions on real time basis reduce learning cycle and ensureseffective adoption of employees to new ways of working.