WalkMe - An Enterprise Guide To Digital Adoption 1
WalkMe - An Enterprise Guide To Digital Adoption 1
Digital Adoption
Q3 2021
DANIEL NEWMAN SHELLY KRAMER OLIVIER BLANCHARD
Founding Partner + Principal Analyst Founding Partner + Lead Analyst Senior Analyst + Research Director
3 Introduction
4 Executive Summary
As we know, 2020 changed both the trajectory and velocity of digital transformation for every single
business on the planet. The global COVID-19 pandemic forced companies to suddenly accelerate
and expand their digital transformation plans almost overnight, as formerly on premise workers
immediately became connected remote workers. Collaboration and operational best practices
became mostly online-based; retailers that had traditionally relied heavily on a mix of brick-and-
mortar sales and online orders suddenly had to shift their model to one that prioritized digital
transactions. Every company specializing in order fulfillment, logistics, and shipping had to scale
almost exponentially. In our 2020 Digital Transformation Index, 67 percent of organizations said
they have had to completely rethink their operational models. Every organization found itself forced
to not only digitally transform as quickly as possible, but also had to significantly increase its volume
of mission-critical apps and solutions. This created a massive amount of additional friction to already
overwhelming and often ill-managed digital adoption efforts.
Due to the sheer volume of new solutions, processes and tasks being introduced into an employee’s
workday, enterprises need an intuitive, scalable, intelligent solution that will assist with visibility and
insights into the underlying applications. Ultimately that data will help onboard, guide, and support
employees in real time throughout their digital adoption journeys. Digital adoption is getting to a
place where employees gain the ability to use digital tools as they are intended and to the fullest
extent . Using human trainers isn’t a cost-effective option to perform this task — or even an option
at all with remote work. This is particularly an issue in the enterprise where scale can be a significant
This type of solution is a radical improvement from traditional user guides, in-app help menus, and
generic pop-up bubbles. Ultimately, the goal of this type of platform is to enable organizations to
make data-backed decisions that drive desired user behaviors to maximize the impact of their digital
transformation and accelerate the return on their software investment.
Executive Summary
Prolific technology adoption has defined business in the last few years. According to research
outlined in our 2019 B2B Digital Buyers’ Journey, over half of all businesses are equipped to buy
a software solution when the need arises. This has led to over-saturation of technology solutions
in the enterprise and little oversight on who is buying what solution and how, or whether, it’s
integrated within the organization. On average, an enterprise organization has over 200 apps in
its technology stack. Further complicating matters, the two-year application turnover rate is about
60 percent. Meaning what an organization used in 2018 is likely not in use today — and that was
before the pandemic hit. In a recent Harvard Business Review report, 56% of executives said that
employees are expected to learn at least three new digital touchpoints every year. Turnover and the
rate at which new technology is introduced can be difficult to manage.
Digital transformation in 2020 happened on steroids. Organizations in every industry had to quickly
pivot their operating models to protect employees and customers, but after the initial dust settled,
the problems were clear. Employees struggled to keep up with the level of technology adoption
that was now required — and that struggle is an ongoing one. Major pain points currently result
in an estimated $700 billion in annual digital transformation spend that falls short of delivering on
the desired results. From overwhelmed employees to poorly executed digital adoption programs,
turning to the right piece of technology — a Digital Adoption Platform (DAP) could actually be the
solution. Digital Adoption Platforms are uniquely positioned to help enterprises address those exact
critical digital transformation challenges, at scale, and with minimal friction.
As organizations move forward with their digital transformation objectives, finding the right DAP that
can eliminate pain points and meet every need while driving a substantial impact to the bottom line
is crucial. That’s what led us to evaluate WalkMe’s Digital Adoption Platform and share our findings
below.
Cloud and ERP are still among the most consistently high performing technology categories driving
digital transformation in the enterprise, but areas of rapid expansion like customer experience (CX),
artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are adding additional complexity to the tech stack
and complicating the employee experience.
To put that complexity in perspective, the average enterprise manages over 200 “mission-critical”
apps. That is a staggering number of software solutions that employees are being asked to learn
how to use and become proficient in. The user experience inside these apps changes regularly as
well, and often without warning, adding yet another layer of friction. It is no wonder that so many
employees have become overwhelmed with the seemingly impossible task of keeping up with a
constantly growing and evolving toolkit of solutions, interfaces, and processes.
Why do organizations and their employees have to wrestle with so many apps and solutions? The
answer is simple. Digital transformation has created an ecosystem of specialized business solutions
categories that keeps growing. Typical categories of digital business solutions today cover the gamut
from customer service solutions, CDPs, CRM and sales solutions, to digital workplace management,
HCM, ERP and collaboration solutions, to an entire universe of IT services solutions and everything
in between. In the past year alone, prompted by COVID-19 lockdowns and the broad sweep of
work-from-home policies, most workers found themselves having to incorporate new apps and
productivity solutions into their daily workflows, learning how to collaborate remotely through
platforms like Zoom, Slack, Webex, and Microsoft Teams. Videoconferencing went from being an
occasional digital touchpoint to becoming the medium by which virtually all meetings, briefings,
and professional events were conducted on a daily basis. Retail workers suddenly found themselves
having to reinvent their jobs around managing deliveries, shipping products, and optimizing app-
driven curbside pickups.
DAPs aim to help rectify this shortsighted and ultimately self-defeating lack of planning by putting
users first, and addressing every challenge currently keeping digital transformation efforts from
reaching their full potential.
Add technology into the mix, and the complexity of business transformation can quickly
become compounded. This can initially seem paradoxical, as technology solutions deployed by
organizations during digital transformation initiatives are meant to simplify business processes and
make organizations more operationally efficient rather than make life more complicated. But when
organizations have been slow to adapt to change, aren’t already operationally agile, and/or find
themselves tasked with radically modernizing their technology solutions ecosystem, particularly
along an accelerated timeline, digital transformation can become a serious challenge. This is why,
according to Boston Consulting Group, as many as 70% of digital transformation initiatives fall short
of delivering on their original objectives. This isn’t to say that digital transformation programs are
mostly doomed to fail entirely, but the reality of digital transformation in the real world as opposed
to digital transformation on paper is that the majority of business transformation efforts that involve
technology solutions tend to fall behind schedule, fall short of expectations, or both, and the
reasons for this tend to be fairly predictable.
Friction within Digital Assets. For starters, every single digital asset potentially brings with it its
own unique set of new friction points for users and admins. New solutions, even those that deliver
significant improvements to an organization once effectively deployed, can initially confuse or
otherwise intimidate new users, and often require a period of training and acclimation. This is often
true even if the solution’s user interface is intuitive and well-designed. Additionally, as many as 54
percent of companies have reported employee resistance to digital adoption in general, caused by
a number of factors, ranging from anxiety about having to learn new things to overly packed work
schedules. Another factor in employee resistance to change is
that companies often fail to understand and accommodate
employee preferences when it comes to not just the selection 54%
and implementation of technology solutions, but also the of companies have reported
crafting of operational processes which will be impacted by employee resistance to digital
the deployment of these solutions. adoption in general.
Each Department is Unique. Deploying technology solutions
across an organization often means addressing department-specific needs and challenges. A
marketing department’s needs, culture, adaptability, and capacity for adaptation, for instance, are
likely to be very different from the needs, culture, adaptability, and capacity for adaptation of a
customer service or billing department. The pace of adoption of technology solutions can vary from
department to department, leading to another layer of adoption asymmetry where departments find
themselves out of sync with one another. These complications can create additional operational
inefficiencies that run counter to the overall objective of digital transformation. To make matters
worse, this particular challenge can be exacerbated when an organization is spread out across
several geographies, particularly if markets, language, culture, and business imperatives are not
uniform.
Users are an afterthought. The final critical point of friction that often contributes to derailing
digital adoption initiatives touches on user experience. Organizations consistently wrestle with
individual digital aptitude of users as well as adjacent factors like language barriers, varying levels of
adaptability, and even the willingness by some users to learn how to master a new platform at all.
In a perfect world, employees would be part of the technology selection process and would also
be given ample time and training to adjust to their deployments. Sadly, and with large organizations
especially, this is often not the case. As a result, almost all organizations encounter UX-related
friction when deploying solutions. At best, employees take a little longer than expected to become
proficient in the use of a solution or suite of solutions. At worst, if the pace and/or scale of the
change brought about by a complicated or ineffective deployment overwhelms employees, many
may simply become too frustrated and give up, which can grind a digital transformation initiative to
a halt.
These pain points can cost organizations precious time and money, especially if not remedied
quickly and systematically. The larger the organization, the higher the financial and operational
stakes during that process. As discussed earlier, in an organization that may have as many as
200 of these solutions, the sheer scale of adoption, from a user’s learning curve perspective, can
become an insurmountable operational challenge for even the most well-organized and proactively
managed workforce.
To address this challenge as effectively as possible, organizations need to tackle the problem in
a way that will feel custom-tailored to each individual user — a daunting task that, without an
adequate, scalable solution, would require enormous amounts of one-on-one employee training
and supervision. And without the right data and insights, an organization would lack visibility and be
unable to fully address pain points.
For starters, the right Digital Adoption Platform can provide an enterprise with digital experience
analytics that enable managers and decision-makers to monitor the progress and success of a digital
solution deployment, identify problem areas, suggest solutions to overcome any challenges, and
ensure the value of any investment is realized. WalkMe’s UI Intelligence technology is a machine
learning algorithm which understands the underlying graphical user interface (GUI) and provides
actionable insights to be addressed with WalkMe content. Second, a well-designed Digital Adoption
Platform will also deliver the guidance, acclimation, and adoption assistance to employees across an
enterprise that no number of training programs can deliver consistently or on demand, let alone at
scale. For any Digital Adoption Platform to even be worthy of consideration by an enterprise, it must
serve both of these objectives.
A third feature for organizations to consider when they begin to evaluate Digital Adoption Platforms
is ease of implementation, which boils down to how easy it is to deploy and use, how well it works
with the vast ecosystem of third-party digital platforms that it is tasked with helping workers adopt,
and how intelligent its analytics are. Lastly, the right DAP must justify its value to an organization by
providing clear and measurable ROI against quantifiable business objectives.
Sadly, enterprises all too often find themselves entwined in a poorly planned, scattershot approach
to digital adoption. Rather than taking a step back to consider all of the challenges of digital
transformation as we did in an earlier section, enterprises often find themselves addressing each
new problem or friction point individually, as if each were disconnected from the whole. This
piecemeal approach to solving digital adoption friction often results in organizations injecting far
more complexity into their technology ecosystem than they need to and contributing to the very
problem they had set out to solve. And because these platforms don’t always work seamlessly
with one another, let alone deliver a cohesive, full view of how well employees are acclimating
themselves to new digital solutions, they create more work for IT while delivering less than optimal
value.
This is why an advanced Digital Adoption Platform that is explicitly designed to address these
operational gaps can make the difference between a company joining the 70 percent of
organizations that struggle to meet their digital transformation objectives or the ranks of the 30
percent that don’t struggle and can therefore focus more of their resources on innovation, growth
and profitability. In other words, as enterprises continue to see their business driven by not only
digital transformation but the agility and speed with which they tackle it internally, the difference
between companies that surge ahead of their competitors and companies that drag and struggle,
may very well be decided by the Digital Adoption Platform they have adopted, benchmarking and
applying best practices.
One of the most compelling features of WalkMe is how it puts its money where its mouth is when
it comes to reducing digital adoption friction for its enterprise customers. The WalkMe platform’s
easy no-code implementation both simplifies and accelerates integration into an enterprise’s IT
ecosystem. WalkMe is designed not to fall into that trap, or rather, not to let its enterprise customers
have to deal with unnecessary new layers of complexity that they hoped to get away from.
Another major benefit of WalkMe’s no-code implementation, besides overall operational agility, is
the potential for significant cost reductions. Unlike other enterprise-class DAPs, WalkMe does not
require customers to keep a team of dedicated developers on staff just to keep things humming
along. WalkMe’s no-code management design means that the platform’s management functions
can be easily handled by existing staff when needed. Aside from the cost savings of not having to
hire a team of dedicated developers, no-code implementations mean that changes, upgrades, and
customizations to the platform can be handled fairly easily and quickly as needed, which again is
likely to result in significant cost savings, especially when compared to heavier, more limited DAPs.
This relatively unique feature in the enterprise DAP space should give WalkMe an immediate
advantage in DAP selection criteria conversations involving ROI calculations.
Another very compelling characteristic of the WalkMe DAP is that unlike some other enterprise-class
DAPs on the market, WalkMe is entirely platform-agnostic, which we think is an important attribute.
WalkMe works with whatever applications and solutions an organization is using and is designed
with ease of use and integration in mind — freeing IT departments and the enterprises they serve to
implement alongside as many enterprise solutions as they need, regardless of what they are.
As the average enterprise already manages over 200 apps and solutions, it only makes sense that
an enterprise-class DAP should not be limited to a handful of products, or skew an enterprise’s
technology ecosystem toward certain solutions and platforms, especially at the expense of others.
The freedom this gives IT decision-makers isn’t trivial. Choosing a platform-agnostic DAP liberates IT
departments to deploy virtually any solution they want without having to worry about compatibility
issues or platform-centric limitations. Even for enterprises that currently prefer a homogeneous
stack of digital solutions, which may come with their own proprietary DAP platforms, the advantage
of a platform-agnostic DAP like WalkMe is that when the time comes to add more solutions and
digital platforms to their IT ecosystem, they will be less constrained or limited than they would have
been had they relied mostly or solely on a platform-centric DAP.
Showcasing its enterprise pedigree, WalkMe smoothly integrates with major enterprise platforms like
Salesforce, ServiceNow, Microsoft Dynamics 365, SAP, Oracle, and Workday.
WalkMe’s built-in analytics delivers a powerful set of intuitive insights that give enterprises maximum
visibility on what is working with their digital adoption objectives, and what isn’t. For starters, the
platform collects and analyzes usage data in a way that paints a clear sight picture of where users
appear to be struggling both individually and collectively, to make it easier to understand the
interactions that users have with underlying applications.
On the management side, decision-makers are then pointed toward actions that will facilitate digital
adoption and accelerate solution fluency across the organization. This function typically focuses on
digital assets inventory and utilization, product analytics, employee productivity metrics, learning
management analytics, survey and NPS insights, search reports, automated operationalized content,
and predefined benchmarking. The ability to deliver these types of insights quickly, clearly, and in
a data-driven format that eliminates guesswork and operational blind spots, gives an enterprise’s
digital transformation efforts a much straighter, smoother runway to success. This acceleration and
smoothing out of friction points is what allows large and complex organizations to identify, manage,
and move past multitudes of digital adoption friction points that would have otherwise been missed,
and in the process hindered an organization’s ability to quickly adapt to change.
Intuitive and AI-powered UX Helps Boost the Speed and Ease of Technology Adoption
On the user side, we like the fact that WalkMe quickly identifies pain points with individual users,
and helps guide them first through the acclimation and learning process that naturally comes with
the deployment of a new technology solution, but it doesn’t stop there. The WalkMe platform
also continues to develop users’ familiarity and fluency with each solution as they become more
One aspect of WalkMe’s functionality that we find particularly impressive is its unique ability
to prompt users towards the correct next step or series of next steps when it senses doubt or
uncertainty slowing down a task. This takes the digital adoption user experience, which was until
now mostly limited to generic help bubbles, to a whole new level of personalized, contextual
assistance. This advanced UX model results in employees who may have otherwise been
overwhelmed and/or confused by the complexity of a new solution and its processes to complete
tasks accurately, quickly, confidently, and consistently.
What we also find notable in WalkMe’s approach to user assistance is just how proactive it is. Rather
than wait for a user to ask for help and have to figure out how to ask a question or where to go to
find the adequate help resource, WalkMe is able to anticipate individual user needs and over time
learn how to provide personalized guidance tailored to each user’s natural preferences.
Lastly, at least with regard to this topic, WalkMe also provides an impressive set of smart automation
designed to tackle repetitive or otherwise mundane tasks. This helps digital workers focus on the
aspects of their jobs that are most valuable and helps boost their productivity.
ROI and TCO: Discussing the Tangible and Intangible Value of an Enterprise-class DAP
We have already touched on a few ways that WalkMe’s value can clearly be articulated within the
context of an ROI discussion. But perhaps the more significant ROI discussion that enterprises
should also be having touches on the intangible ROI that WalkMe also delivers, one that extends
beyond the explicit value of the platform itself. WalkMe manages to deliver nearly exponential ROI
for its customers by freeing organizations to maximize their technology investments. Consider
the operational cost of user friction for an enterprise-class business that has invested significant
resources in digital transformation solutions and deployments: Hundreds of technology solutions,
from CRM and customer service to ERP and collaboration underutilized, under-optimized,
sometimes barely used at all. Consider the financial scale of lost productivity resulting from
frustration, hesitancy, confusion, and inefficient use of these solutions across thousands of
touchpoints and employees across a complex organization. By removing this friction from the
adoption equation, and helping organizations adopt new digital solutions with very little difficulty,
what WalkMe delivers isn’t merely digital adoption at scale, but operational efficiency at speed.
Business leaders should ask themselves, what is the value of having a knowledgeable workforce and
full adept employees. That aspect of a DAP’s value should also be a factor in ROI discussions relating
to its consideration.
The central objective of every digital transformation initiative is, first and foremost, to build a better
business. For all its complexities and importance, digital transformation is, at its core, a process of
improvement. Whether a company initially tackles digital transformation reluctantly, out of a sense
of survival, or because it embraces the opportunity that comes with change doesn’t really matter
Because WalkMe collects usage and performance data from the hundreds of third-party apps and
solutions it helps connect individual users to, and it is uniquely positioned to help decision-makers
and individual users track digital adoption progress against scores of business objectives — and this
is where we find business leaders get excited about the WalkMe platform.
Here’s why: WalkMe can help an organization track and measure the degree to which an employee
utilizes an application or business process. Whether optimal, suboptimal or nowhere close to
optimal. This, in turn, can confirm to the organization that, based on employee fluency and
usage data, it should be meeting its digital transformation objectives. Or, if the data shows that
employees are still struggling with the platform, this will alert decision-makers that improving
digital transformation objectives may be hindered by unexpected friction in user adoption. More
impressively, in this type of scenario, WalkMe would not only alert the organization that a problem
exists but also proactively work to correct the issue at the individual user level. This would enable
decision-makers not to waste time trying to solve the wrong problem. And that is some significant
business value.
This is important because as many as 53 percent of businesses still reportedly struggle to effectively
manage their analytics capabilities. The problem companies face today is no longer that they
are lacking enough data to drive their business, but rather that they are drowning in such an
overabundance of it that they often can’t effectively make the most of it in real-time. Ultimately
failure to draw insights from data limits a company’s ability to make good decisions and achieve its
objectives quickly. By adding actionable data integration into its solution mix, WalkMe has found
a way to help organizations get to where they want to go faster and with more clarity. This is yet
another feature that helps WalkMe set itself apart from other DAPs and is one of the surprising value-
adds of the platform.
At Futurum Research, we aim to provide valuable insights that will enable smoother digital
transformation initiatives, that’s why we were excited about what we saw with this solution. From
eliminating the barriers at the platform level to improving user experience at scale, WalkMe’s DAP
will free up time for employees to focus on higher-value projects that drive innovation and revenue.
Don’t just take our word for it. IBM turned to WalkMe to lower user abandonment rates and improve
technology onboarding process — with great success. They saw an immediate impact with six
times higher retention rates, 300% in product adoption and an 80% increase in revenue after using
WalkMe’s DAP to help with integrating Segment, a customer data platform.
Quest Diagnostics saw similar results after using WalkMe’s DAP to help integrate an HCM platform.
The HR department saw an over 98% user engagement rate with its new HCM platform as well as a
reduction in support desk tickets.
Using a trusted solution like this, that can scale as the organization scales is critically important.
Consider the following as you contemplate your DAP investment:
Listen to Employees. Organizations, regardless of where they are in a digital transformation journey,
need to evaluate the needs of the employees. By opening the lines of communication, decision-
makers can fully understand the pain points that employees struggle with, and this will drive a better
user experience in the long run. And happy employees will drive the success of the business.
Understand That Not All DAPs Are Created Equal. The role that DAPs play in the success of digital
transformation programs suggests that deploying the right DAP is likely one of the most critically
beneficial technology investments that a company can invest in today. Much in the way that BI
platforms have enhanced enterprises’ ability to make consistently better decisions, DAPs hold the
key to the successful implementation of technology that can further drive digital transformation. But
Digital Adoption Platforms can vastly differ from one another in terms of features, cross-platform
compatibility, ease of implementation, and total cost of ownership (TCO). Organizations should
carefully evaluate different options based on their current and potentially future needs.
Start Now. As we mentioned earlier, 63 percent of organizations said their business and technology
requirements will not go back to pre-pandemic levels. In order to get ahead of the competition,
organizations must look to adopt the technology that will allow them to leverage other solutions
and drive success.
Based on the above parameters, we feel that WalkMe checks all of the boxes when it comes to
features, UX, broad cross-platform compatibility, data integration and reporting, potential ROI, TCO,
and overall performance as a true enterprise-class Digital Adoption Platform. Working with this
solution will quickly prove itself to be invaluable.
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