The Journey to Digital Enablement: Webinar Wrap-Up

230,000 people, 158 countries, one successful digital adoption process.

Something amazing happened last week, we had the opportunity to sit down with our partner, PWC, and discuss their digital adoption journey. Now, this was no ordinary journey. For a company of this magnitude, 23,000 employees to be exact, there needed to be a customized strategy that took both the individual employees and their digital needs into account.

In a world where 70% of digital transformations fail to generate return on investment, companies often plow through their digital transformations with poor user adoption and a lack of behavioral change. But not PWC.

Brittany Rolfe Hillard and John Mark Ikeda from WalkMe, and Philip Grosch and Jean Lee from PwC Front-Office Transformation joined forces on a webinar to discuss the strategies PWC used during their digital transformation process that resulted in a successful company-wide digital enablement.

They tackled some of the hiccups, along with solutions, that PWC combated when implementing their digital enablement strategy for Salesforce Lightning adoption. There were two major aspects that stood out for PWC: Training their employees and addressing the technicalities of the digital transformation.

First Challenge: Training the employees

“You need a multifaceted learning approach if you want to have a realistic goal of 90% adoption when most programs end up with only 30% adoption.” — Philip

One of the major sins among enterprise training is adopting a one-sided learning approach and expecting that your whole team full of different individuals have the ability to easily adopt your new system. Because no two people are alike, a “one size fits all” approach will not cut it.

PWC understood the necessity for an effective learning approach and designed an adoption strategy suitable for the needs of their dynamic team to successfully adopt Salesforce Lightning.

During the strategic planning stage, PWC faced some common change management challenges which they remedied with their next-gen training strategy.

The challenges

• People are different, which means that they all learn differently. This demands a multi-faceted approach, in order to accommodate all types of learners.
• People expect enterprise technology to be easy, and to be able to learn how to use new software at work as quickly as they learn how to use their personal technology.
• People are getting bored with generic training methods that don’t correctly teach users.
• People don’t change overnight, so there shouldn’t be an expectation that employees will be fully proficient in a new software after one day.
• People follow leaders, which means that organizational leaders must embrace the new technologies alongside their teams, leading by example.

The Solution: A non-traditional change management approach

Straying off the beaten path and taking a fresh approach at change management was key for PWC when creating a new employee training strategy. They designed a three-tier training strategy, which incorporates their major pillar of a human-centered philosophy.

PWC assembled a team of “gold medal” specialists who possess the necessary Salesforce, change, and transformation experience to lead the process. They also created a one-third rule, which states that one-third of the project is based on enabling their own people. This approach ranged from user experience design application to unique training techniques. Lastly, they accommodated the global aspect of their organization by implementing a balancing act mentality.

PWC understood that by leveraging their in-house talent of the digital and marketing teams, they would be able to design an internal powerhouse to generate change. This new approach helped engage the employees struggling to embrace change, and got them excited about the digital transformation and the adoption of Salesforce.

Second Challenge: The digital transformation

“We’re changing the way we do business by making the experience interactive, in order to generate adoption, interest, engagement and behavioral change within the organization for a front office transformation rather than just Salesforce adoption”- Jean

The Solution: A creative training approach

PWC change managers made human-centric their mantra, putting the employee at the front of their digital transformation efforts. They implemented the following techniques to ensure that each employee felt that they genuinely had the ability to learn.

Personalizing the role

With the goal of enhancing digital adoption within Salesforce, PWC inserted their own adoption techniques to help users adopt seamlessly. On par with their human-centered design approach, they drove the focus away from the dry technological aspect and instead implemented a creative and interactive strategy. They created a panel of role models who shared rich insight on various topics — all available for their employees to follow. Each role model represented certain behaviors that employees could study in order to identify the relevant traits applicable to developing their own roles.

Making the experience interactive

Gamification

PWC took gamification to a new level, providing the opportunity to learn creatively. Keeping in line with the company’s values on excitement and true learning, they developed a Salesforce escape room which incorporated their fundamental philosophies. Employees were able to learn the processes of Salesforce while having fun.

Automation

PWC utilized automation technology to help make more efficient connections and strengthen user relationships. This technology cut out the irrelevant processes, making learning more efficient.

WalkMe

Lastly, PWC utilized WalkMe’s technology across Salesforce adoption. They implemented WalkMe’s technology to simplify navigation and adoption, helping the user to focus on specific processes and learn more efficiently and smoothly.

You can read more about PWC’s journey here.

The takeaway

For many large organizations, digital transformation may seem like the equivalent of climbing Mount Everest in a day.

Considering the number of people that must be trained in addition to the low success rates, many organizations often shy away from tackling a transformation at this scale. PWC’s dedication to each individual employee’s learning experience proved that any can climb Everest without breaking a sweat.

Their success shows that with the right digital adoption and training strategies, organizational transformation is possible for companies of any size.

Click here to listen to the full webinar.