High Stakes Gamble: Many Organizations Bet on IT Success with only a 1 in 4 Chance of Winning
REPORTED
A recent article by the Corporate Executive Board (CEB), a research and advisory firm to leading organizations, stated that many companies in the Financial Services (FS) industry are increasing their investments in IT solutions, despite the volatile market conditions. What is shocking is that CEB reports, “only 24% of the controllers we recently asked believe they are realizing positive returns.” CEB is advising organizations, “to get more value out of finance IT by upholding data standards, aligning IT investments with real business needs, and focusing on end-user adoption”.
TRI TUNS VIEW
At Tri Tuns, we have found that many firms do not have effective User Adoption Strategies. Effective user adoption programs focus on driving desired user behavior – such as how and when people use the technology, the actions they take to ensure data quality, the degree to which they follow defined business processes, and the actions they take to ensure compliance. The skills and methods required to drive effective user adoption are very different from those required to implement IT systems. Unfortunately, these are often missing from most IT implementation projects.
The CEB post indicates that only 24% of controllers “believe” that they are realizing positive returns on their investment. Based on this, consider:
- The remaining 76% of organizations do not believe they are getting a positive return on investment. This is a ridiculously high percentage. Even in Vegas you have a better shot of getting a positive return!
- Would you make an investment if you only had a 1 in 4 chance of getting a positive result? (Well, you might if your portfolio includes shares in Solyndra.) Before making major IT investments, you should have a clearly defined strategy for when and how you will measure the ROI on your IT investment. What you will find is that User Adoption is the biggest item on this critical path. What you will probably find is that you are not doing enough to maximize and sustain user adoption over the life of your system, and this is the leading cause for failed IT investments.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Before investing in IT projects, make sure you have a clear User Adoption Strategy that aligns user behavior & adoption of the IT system with your business goals and IT ROI needs. Further, you need to determine how will you implement your user adoption strategy and sustain your User Adoption Program over the life of the system. Be sure to recognize that changes in the levels and effectiveness of user adoption (over time) will change the ROI you receive from your IT investment. Quite simply, whenever you stop measuring and driving effective user adoption your IT investment is at risk.
TRI TUNS CAN HELP
Tri Tuns helps organizations maximize the ROI on their IT investments by developing and implementing User Adoption Strategies that maximize and sustain effective user adoption over the life of the system. We conduct User Adoption Assessments, Develop User Adoption Strategies, and provide hands-on User Adoption Program Implementation services.
Tri Tuns also provides the MyUserAdoptionPlan.com, an online User Adoption Portal that addresses all of your critical User Adoption needs. MyUserAdoptionPlan.com is an all-in-one solution that helps you lower the time and cost to create and maintain user adoption programs, while increasing the effectiveness of your User Adoption Program. MyUserAdoptionPlan.com is based on User Adoption Best Practices and comes preloaded with the core content you need to quickly define and launch your User Adoption Program. Contact us to learn more.
The page above is from MyUserAdoptionPlan.com and shows some of they key User Adoption Program areas that you need to address as part of your User Adoption Program.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
- Check out MyUserAdoptionPlan.com – an all-in-one User Adoption Portal
- Read: “Design the right metrics to improve user adoption”
- Read: “Motivating User Adoption: Commitment, Compliance Or WIIFM?”
- Read: "What is IT "Success"?
- Read: “Leadership: Are You Really Committed?”
- Read: “The Myth of User Resistance”
MOTIVATING USER ADOPTION: COMMITMENT, COMPLIANCE OR WIIFM?
OBSERVATION
Many organizations underestimate the critical impact employee motivation for adopting new technology has on IT system success. The prevailing attitude is that employees will have “no choice” but to use the system. The reality is that employees have many choices in user adoption. They decide if the are going to follow business rules, if they will keep information outside of the system (using personal Excel or Word files), when they enter/share data (do they enter data right away so others can use it or do they will wait for a more convenient time to share information), etc. Once you realize that each user has extensive choice in the manner, degree and time in which they use your system you can begin to focus on the more important issue – how do you motivate people to use the system in a way that delivers maximum benefits?Many IT projects suffer from a lack of clear understanding of how to best motive desired user behavior. People often use terms like “carrots and sticks”, “ensure compliance”, moving people along the “commitment curve”, and “What’s In It For Me (WIIFM)”, but they typically do not understand the fundamental nature of these terms and their implications for motivating desired behavior.
Let’s take a quick look:
“Compliance” and “Sticks” In its essence, this is negative approach focused on maximizing fear and punishment. The underlying principle is, “if you don’t do what I say, you will suffer.” Compliance driven motivation is:
- Based on consequences/punishment
- Only effective with rigorous enforcement
- Only works when people think you are watching
- Only drives minimum effort required to meet minimum criteria – there is no incentive to go beyond bare minimum
“Commitment” Appealing to individuals’ commitment is a positive approach that taps into their internal drives and desires to achieve a shared goal. The underlying principle is, “if we all pull together we can achieve something great.” Commitment driven motivation:
- Is based on desire to achieve a goal bigger than oneself
- Is “Self Driving”
- Works without external monitoring
- Requires trust, relationship, shared values
- Encourages people to give discretionary effort above bare minimum
- Taps into individuals’ creativity to overcome obstacles and achieve goals
“What’s In It For Me” (WIIFM) WIIFM appeals to individuals’ self-interests without regard to achieving a larger shared goal. The underlying principle is, “If you do X you personally will get benefit Y – regardless of what others do.” WIIFM motivation:
- Appeals to the selfish side of individuals
- Requires you understand the individuals’ actual goals, motivations and priorities. Unfortunately, these vary from person to person and they change over time
- Ceases to motivate once the individuals’ self interests are fulfilled or there is no perceived marginal value for providing additional discretionary effort
- Encourages individuals to focus on their own interests and does not necessarily encourage them to work towards larger, enterprise goals
CONSIDER THIS
Achieving IT and organizational success requires people to work toward a common, shared goal. You should focus the majority of your effort on maximizing commitment of all employees to achieving that goal. Clearly demonstrate the link between the individuals’ technology adoption and how their behavior impacts goal achievement. While in some situations (such as when there specific legal requirements/regulations) you may need to clearly define minimum accepted system use, you should minimize your focus on compliance and WIIFM.THINGS TO THINK ABOUT
- Do you focus on commitment, compliance, or WIIFM in your current IT efforts? How effective has it been on driving user adoption?
- How do you increase employee commitment to achieving shared goals? What are the skills and tools needed to increase commitment?
- Are your organizational leaders effective at motivating employees and driving commitment to organizational goals? If not, what can you do to develop your leaders’ skills and abilities in this area?
- Have you clearly established the link between effective user adoption and its impact on achieving shared goals? Do people believe that their behavior/IT adoption has a meaningful impact on achieving shared goals?