How to Drive Adoption of Technology with Clients

Looking to beat the January blues? Perhaps it's time to look at introducing new technology to dazzle and recharge relationships with clients in 2021.

Ringing in a new year allows us to reflect on the past while planning new processes in order to reach potential new highs - better communication, stronger relationships, increased revenue.

‘The good news is that you don’t know how great you can be! How much you can love! What you can accomplish! And what your potential is!' - Anne Frank

Undeniably, it is very hard to be positive about things right now. However, it is important to try - especially with clients while working remotely to meet their goals and challenges. With lockdowns and social distancing putting limits on ambitious goals based on past practices, it is important to focus on embracing the components we can control, make iterative improvements, and seize opportunities to try something new. Often with clients, the embrace of technology is driven by their preferences leaving client-facing teams being the "testers" of many software products - why not crowd source from your team the best practices? That's a positive position to be in when determining seeking new processes.

Speaking of new processes, are you struggling with a repetitive remote working routine - like VPN connections to access a shared drive or losing client meeting notes in your coffee dosed notebook - for those in lockdowns? Why not bring some ease to client-facing teams by introducing a new technology such as a client portal. If you haven't heard of a client portal, this is a great tool for your team to test out together, improving collaboration across the team and clients, and experiment with a new way of working.

After taking these steps to find technology to bring to clients, the first step is internal adoption before rolling it out externally. We're here to explore some top tips on how to with internal team members before making a splash with your clients (BTW - we'll cover that at the end 😉).

Driving Adoption of Technology: Internal

Bringing new technology into your team helps to improve productivity and promote unity. As the world adapts, so must we, by keeping current with technology. Yet, how do you ensure your employees will engage with new technologies, especially those who may be skeptical?

First things to consider are: planning, implementation and adoption.

To implement means to install a new solution and effectively train staff so they can use it, this is more of an IT team responsibility. Whereas, adoption is a management responsibility working to ensure the whole company embraces the new technology and is embedded in everyday workflows.1 Adoption can be seen in a company where a product is used to its full extent, if the technology is widely used to its full potential the more benefits it will bring. 2

“Employees need to understand why [the new technology] is an improvement from what they had before”

- Didier Bonnet, coauthor of Leading Digital 3

Planning must be done before starting implementation or adoption - plan the who, what, when and why to ensure you're successful with the latter. When researching a technology product look at the ease of use reported by existing clients, the level of support provided by the technologies team and pair those finds with your desired experience for your team and clients. We suggest putting yourself into the shoes of the end users - client & teammates - then choose a simple and user-friendly technology, if possible, to convince those who are not tech-savvy they can do it!

At Clinked, we pride ourselves on creating a client portal that's simple and easy to use. In addition, we offer significant support and training materials to help plan, implement and drive adoption. We realise changing technologies can feel daunting - especially when you have become reliant on a trusted tool to get that task done quickly and as expected. However, once transformed, often there is no looking back and efficiency improves.

It is important to make sure those who will drive adoption with clients understand the benefits of changing technology. At Clinked, we focus on training the trainer in our optional training sessions. We offer an online onboarding session, where team members can join to understand how to use the product and can look to tutorials on our Help & Learning centre.

As part of these session, we make sure the internal lead will have the essential skills and knowledge base to get started with Clinked. Here are some of the key points that we make sure to cover to start or compliment for your planning, implementation and adoption programme:

homepage example

-Group Home: make sure your team understand what this is
- Content: go through the different types of content (Files, Notes, Discussions etc.)
- Members: understand the concept of members & member types
- Operational Processes: explain how the new technology fits in with current workflow & processes
- Additional Systems: what can the new system link with to be compatible with existing technologies?
- Examples: show some examples of the system to put in context

Driving Adoption of Technology: Clients

Once your internal team has adopted a new technology, the next step is likely to be to roll it out to clients. Introducing a new technology to clients may create apprehension. However, rather than think about whether they will like the product or not, focus on how it will help their solution.4

For instance, for a client portal such as Clinked you could ask:

- Do you require self service & immediate access to documents?
- Would a task management feature help with deadlines?
- Do you need to share documents for approval & amendments?

Discuss these questions with a small group of "friendly" clients and confident team members who can lead testing with. This process of discussing will help you to feel confident that you have chosen the right solution. To get a clients to understand the purpose of the new technology, it starts with communication and seamless introductions supported by interactions. Nudge them into using the new technology - especially a tool to improve collaboration and communication in a remote working environment. Great systems see adoption around 50%, improving workflow for half your client base is a positive step.4 Adopting new practices will generate positive changes across your business.

‘Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything’ - George Bernard Shaw

Like what you've heard from our team? Clinked helps 3,000+ businesses in 22 countries work better with their clients. We've learned all these tips based on those experiences and are here to help you too!

Schedule a call to explore to introduce Clinked to your clients and team clicking below: