Podcast 86: A Smarter Way to Drive Software Adoption

EPISODE 86: Improving Software Adoption

John Wade, Principal and Executive Officer, BrainStorm

So many applications, so little time! Research says that the typical enterprise ecosystem has skyrocketed in recent years to more than 1060 applications. But with that many choices, how can you ensure that people learn how to use applications that are essential for their success?

I’m excited to discuss this key software adoption question today with John Wade, Principal and Executive Officer at BrainStorm, Inc.

For more than 20 years, John has been leading the charge at BrainStorm. His philosophy is unique because his solution helps everyone in the software value chain — buyers, sellers and end users.

Find out why it makes such an important difference on this episode of the Talented Learning Show…

Improving Software Adoption — KEY TAKEAWAYS

• Business software is powerful stuff — but only if users know which applications are relevant for their needs and learn how to apply them effectively. This is where creative software adoption tools add significant value.

• One approach relies on a hybrid solution that expands on typical learning management system features — combining a digital training marketplace with a customizable user experience, communications capabilities, data measurement tools and more.

• It may seem counterintuitive, but the goal of a user-focused software adoption platform is not to maximize educational content consumption. Rather, it’s about minimizing the time users must invest to achieve the level of application fluency they require.

Improving Software Adoption — Q&A HIGHLIGHTS

Welcome, John. To start, could you tell us the story behind your company?

Absolutely. BrainStorm was founded as a software training and publishing business nearly 30 years ago by people from WordPerfect and Novell. At that time, they produced 300-page user manuals that organizations distributed to employees who needed to learn various applications.

However, tech innovation continued to accelerate. By the early 2000s, my business partner and I believed software would soon be changing faster than people could learn how to use it. So, we acquired BrainStorm to develop a digital solution that could help people accelerate their effectiveness and productivity as software users.

We’re no longer a publishing business, or even a live instructor-led training business. Instead, we offer a SaaS platform that software buyers and sellers rely upon to help people get the fullest use from applications.

Which learning system is best for you? Check the 2024 RightFit Solution Grid, based on our team’s independent research! Learn more and get your free copy!

As a software adoption specialist, how would you describe the state of customer education? What gaps do you see? How can organizations improve?

Good question. Our expertise is in the software piece of customer education. We’re always educating people on how to make better use of the digital tools they need at work.

And frankly, today’s users are kind of overwhelmed. We see a sort of app exhaustion. As a technology investor at Andreessen Horowitz once famously said, software is going to eat the world. And it definitely has.

Today’s worker typically has access to dozens of applications. But research shows that people actually use only about 20% of an application’s capabilities. Often, they’re not even aware of half of the software they’re licensed to use, because new and updated software comes at them so quickly and so often.

Right…

This is mostly a cloud-era phenomenon. When enterprises embraced cloud technology, it lowered barriers to entry, and a wave of software suddenly came into the market.

Much of this software is amazing. It delivers a lot of value. But the value leaks away at the user adoption level. It’s not because users are lazy. It’s not because they don’t want to learn or they can’t learn. It’s because the task is that large.

Interesting. So, who’s responsible for training these users? Their organization’s IT department? Or the software seller’s customer education team?

We spend a lot of time thinking about that because we’re trying to solve this market challenge. And our best answer is – everyone.

There are so many parties with a vested interest in this. Naturally, software vendors want customers to use their products successfully. That’s how they deliver value, drive renewals and grow their business.

Users also have a vested interest in this. Who wouldn’t want to be more productive with their time and make a bigger impact on their organization and their professional life?

Also, IT departments are under pressure to be more than just a break/fix type of a department. When they purchase software for their organization, they want it to support business strategy and make a measurable impact.

And Brainstorm has a vested interest, too.

Want more details about how Brainstorm works? Check the BrainStorm listing in our LMS Directory — including company/product profile information and videos.

Sure…

So, we’ve found that the best solution is to bring all these parties together to share data and create visibility into what’s happening. That way, they can leverage best practices and stay aligned.

Because it’s not just about targeting one party and saying, “Hey, this is your problem.” Instead, let’s collaborate and work on it together, with each of us bringing our expertise and insight to the table.

That makes sense, conceptually. But how do you make it happen? How do vendors work collaboratively with IT departments?

First, you need to track data that shows what’s really happening. That’s why our platform integrates with the telemetry data of any application. Who uses the software? How are they using it? What buttons are they clicking? What buttons are they not clicking? And so forth.

Then, you need to socialize and democratize the data by sharing it with everyone who’s involved. That includes the vendor, the CSM who manages the account, the user, and the customer IT admin who is managing the application. Each views the data through a unique lens, so it’s important to give them that capability.

And then, turn the steering wheel over to them in certain ways.

How so?

For example, a vendor will know some software adoption best practices that a first-time customer will not have benefitted from yet. So, let the vendor create some best practices that the customer can borrow.

At the same time, the customer wants some control because they want to tailor those best practices to their organization’s needs. So, it’s important to give them the data, as well as the capabilities to respond to that data and craft their own user learning experience.

The more visibility those parties have as to what’s actually happening, and the more control they have to steer the ship, the more likely they are to participate collaboratively.

So, in this framework, where does the BrainStorm solution reside?

When designing our product, we put end users at the center of the circle. That’s because they’re often overwhelmed so they opt out of education. But their involvement is crucial, so we prioritize the user experience. Here’s how it happens:

Our platform has an instance for every software vendor. These are our customers, so we work directly with them to create the best practices and the user experiences they want to deliver to their customers.

And then, the vendor’s customer, say Company A, gets its own instance, as well. This is unlike most software academies, where all corporate customers log into a shared instance from the vendor. Instead, each company gets its very own instance to customize and manage.

This is more like customer-led software adoption because, when customers purchase software they don’t use, they’re leaving money on the table. This helps solve that adoption problem.

Find out how real-world companies are achieving more with learning systems that create business value. Get inspiration from dozens of success stories in our free LMS Case Study Directory…

I see…

In other words, every customer organization has its own instance that’s unique to them and they’re not sharing it with any other business. Meanwhile, the software vendor has an overarching umbrella. So, if they want to make one change in a best practice, it will cascade across all of their customer instances.

That’s great. So, let’s say I’m XYZ CRM software. My customers, Company A and B, each have their own instance of BrainStorm. What’s next?

You have to tell people about it, right? You have to let users know training is available, so they can get started…

And what about the other 38 applications I manage? How does this all come together?

Now you’re hitting on one of the main pain points for IT professionals.

It’s not unusual for a large enterprise to purchase over 1000 SaaS applications. No single IT person manages all of those applications, but if you’re an IT person, you probably manage dozens of them.

To educate users on those applications, you probably send them to different academies at unique destinations. However, you wouldn’t craft that kind of learning experience if you put users at the center of the problem.

You don’t want to send people to 20 different academies. That makes no sense. Yet, we hear it from our customers every day.

I bet.

The overall corporate education space has been seeing some aggregation, especially among learning experience platforms. For example, an LXP like Degreed can layer over 6 LMS platforms to provide a unique, singular user experience.

This is also happening in the software-specific adoption space, which is different from general corporate education in several ways. For instance, software adoption is very dynamic. An application may be updated hundreds of times a quarter, so it’s a moving target. And it’s a lot more dynamic than compliance or diversity training tends to be.

NEW FOR 2024

Which Learning Systems Are Your Best Fit?

Use our FREE RightFit Grid tool to build a shortlist based on our independent research. 50 leading learning systems mapped to common buyer requirements!

LEARN MORE AND GET YOUR FREE COPY…

Mmhmm…

So, with software adoption, if you’re a BrainStorm customer, you send people to your company’s singular instance. It delivers education for Microsoft, Box, Adobe or whatever. Plus, it addresses all the other software you make available to your users.

This means you still have a singular user-centered experience. But you also benefit from best practices of all those vendors, as well as their content and everything that comes with it.

So, if I have an instance of your software from one vendor, I have the opportunity to buy or license training from any of the software vendors in your ecosystem?

Right.

And that means every incremental software vendor you add is one more piece of the software adoption puzzle that all of your customers can leverage from their instance of BrainStorm?

Yes.

Cool.

Effectively, it’s a marketplace. In other words, if you’re company A and you’re introduced to our platform through Microsoft, Microsoft is not the only tool you will find there.

You’ll see a menu that shows all the other vendors we support. So, it lets someone from company A coordinate adoption across vendor types.

Why is that helpful? …

… For complete answers to this and more questions on software adoption strategies, listen to the entire podcast on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, on Amazon, or right here on our site.

Watch This Podcast on YouTube

Find Out More About Brainstorm

Want more details about how Brainstorm works? Check the BrainStorm listing in our LMS Directory — including company/product profile information and videos,  or visit the BrainStorm website.

Looking for a Better Customer Education Solution?

Let an independent expert help you choose the best system for your needs! For a free initial consultation call with me, John Leh, Founder and Lead Analyst at Talented Learning, submit the form below: