Setting up for Success with New Technologies

Driving Successful Adoption of New Technologies

 

These days, there is no shortage of new technology being offered in the market. From apps translating spoken language, to bots that can scan years of data in seconds. With endless capabilities and offerings, organisations are increasingly looking to adopt new technologies in hopes of advancing their business.

 

The key role of Process Management

Consideration of new technologies often starts with building the business case for the organisation. This helps to answer a few key questions; Why and where do we need to make a change? How will this benefit our business and services? A key step in answering these questions is to review your processes. This creates a foundation for redesigning processes to better understand the impact of change. In doing so, organisations can more clearly identify the need for new technologies and justify their purchase.

 

With Engage Process, organisations can quickly and easily visualise processes. By engaging staff in defining current (AS-IS) processes, teams gain a deeper understanding of how the business is run today. This creates a basis to define future (TO-BE) processes; adjusting current ways of working to reflect and demonstrate how new technologies will impact the organisation. In analysing their processes, organisations are empowered to make more informed and data-driven decisions.

To learn more about running a successful Process Workshop, download our Whitepaper here.

 

Driving Successful Adoption

Successful adoption of new technology requires organisations to engage with their teams and understand the processes driving their business each day. This is not only an important step in demonstrating value and building the business case for a new purchase, but also plays a key role in driving successful implementation. For example: How do you implement the technology across the organisation? What challenges can we expect during the implementation and how can we overcome these? How do we gain buy-in and cooperation from the team? What additional resources may be needed for successful implementation? What does success look like? These are important questions to answer, and ones that many organisations struggle to overcome when implementing new technologies and systems. Below are some key considerations and strategies to ensure successful integration and utilisation of new technology.

 

Align Technology with Business Goals

The first step in any successful technology implementation is ensuring it aligns with your organisation’s vision and goals. This alignment helps in prioritising technologies that offer the most significant impact. To set the foundation for successful adoption and fully understand the impact that new technology can have, teams must first review, document and analyse current processes to see how a new system would fit in. Here, teams may also evaluate how the new technology adds value and improvement, so that priorities can be directed to those processes and process steps which will benefit the most.

 

In Engage Process, our platform was designed to enable people-driven change; running process workshops so that various teams can come together and provide feedback while viewing the impact of changes in real-time. Reviewing as a diverse team also helps each group to understand how changes in one part of the business may affect others. Once your processes have been mapped out, swimlanes allow you to quickly and easily view where in a process a piece of technology is used and which roles are involved.

 

Engage Stakeholders Early and Often

Adopting new technology is not just an IT responsibility. Engaging stakeholders from the outset is critical to gaining buy-in and ensuring smooth implementation. Stakeholders include everyone from top executives to front-line employees who will encounter the technology daily. Their insights and feedback are invaluable in tailoring the technology to meet organisational needs effectively, and help to overcome silos that may exist.

Tip: Form a cross-functional team including representatives from IT, operations, finance, quality assurance, and end-users to oversee the implementation process and use Engage Process to facilitate collaborative workshops.

 

Break Down Siloes

To understand where new technology will create the most impact, it is essential to break down siloes and view the organisation holistically. This means understanding processes from start to end, not just within each department, but also how changes will flow through the organisation.

When viewed through the Engage Process platform, teams are able to visualise processes, helping to break down siloes by providing an overarching view of cross-functional workflows and dependencies.

 

Start with Users for Successful Implementation

In technology adoption, a bottom-up approach can be particularly effective. Identify where the technology will have the most impact by understanding where and how it will be used.

• Identifying Impact Areas: Engage with end-users early to gather insights on their pain points and how the new technology can address them.
• Outcome-Based Implementation: Focus on specific outcomes the technology aims to achieve, ensuring these align with user needs and organisational goals.

In addition, when reviewing processes to prepare for transformation or implementation of new technologies, it is important to consider the “hidden factory”. In Lean principles, this refers to exceptions to standards ways of working. Before automating or implementing changes, it is important for organisations to identify these exceptions. This will help to ensure that new gaps are not created when a new technology is added. Completing this work upfront will help to reduce risk, and ensure that new solutions can be truly effective.

Tip: Conduct test programs in selected areas to gather feedback and refine the implementation process before a full-scale rollout. Use Engage Process to document feedback and iterate on implementation plans, including Teamboard to track tasks and progress. With the intuitive icons and remote feedback capabilities, Engage Process enables participation from all stakeholders – not only process management experts.

 

Foster a Culture of Collaboration

Each department must understand their role in the adoption process and how their workflows will be affected. By including representatives from various departments and roles involved in the process, support is established right from the start.

The process Handbook created in Engage Process, serves as the central source for capturing and documenting all processes, roles, procedures, and practices. Employees are encouraged to provide feedback, and the process manager receive this feedback via email for discussion in the improvement team. A significant advantage of the process Handbook, is that it helps employees see their tasks within the context of customer-oriented processes.

Reviewing current, AS-IS processes is also a good time to assess and communicate to the organisation where there are challenges and how the new technology can provide a solution.

 

Gain Traction and Buy-In

Adopting new technology often meets resistance due to the "fear of change." To overcome this, it is crucial to demonstrate the impact and benefits of the technology clearly. Show the impact of changes in real-time through comparison of current AS-IS, and improved TO-BE processes to show how the technology addresses specific challenges or opportunities. Communicating this “why” behind the change can be a key factor for successful adoption within the organisation.

Engage Process allows you to compare processes, run analysis between them, and view process steps by technology used. This ability to show impact and outcomes of new technology makes it easier for stakeholders to see its benefits firsthand.

Actionable Tip: Develop a change management plan that includes communication strategies, training programs, and feedback loops to continuously improve, address challenges and highlight successes.

 

Conclusion

Overall, adapting to new systems and ways of working can be a daunting task. However, having a well-defined strategy that includes a clear understanding and communication of the impact to teams can help to drive successful implementation.

This requires a holistic, collaborative, and strategic approach. By aligning technology with business goals, engaging relevant stakeholders, gaining buy-in, and documenting workarounds, organisations can navigate the complexities of technology adoption and achieve sustainable success. Involvement of stakeholders and transparency about roles and responsibilities is crucial for successful implementation.

Engage Process is an invaluable tool in this journey, supporting people-driven change by making it easy to facilitate and run process workshops that engage the entire organisation and foster effective discussions and feedback around processes.