Elevate Your Digital Growth Using Technology Adoption Curve

The world around us is constantly evolving, and so is technology. Implementing a new technology forms an essential part of the digital growth of an organization.

However, an effective and efficient implementation process may still not be sufficient to make the users adapt to the new technology.

In order to make technology adoption successful, organizations need digital adoption – a process that enables employees as well as customers to adopt new technology faster.

Every organization, be it a startup or an established organization, reacts differently to the adoption of new technology. And that can be best understood with the help of the technology adoption lifecycle.

In this blog post, we will learn about different categories of adopters in the technology adoption lifecycle and how businesses can use this to accelerate digital growth.

5 Stages of the Technology Adoption Curve

A technology adoption curve is a bell curve model that describes how different people give varied reactions to adopting and accepting new technologies.

There are five different categories of the technology adoption life cycle:

• Innovators
• Early Adopters
• Early Majority
• Late Majority
• Laggards

Each of these categories comes with a different set of motivators. Let’s have a look.

Innovators

Innovators are the first category of users in the technology adoption life cycle. They account for 2.5% of the entire group of users of technology.^[i]

This category of users prefers to try new apps or tools. Due to their enthusiasm and willingness to use new technology, they are often the initiators of change.

What Motivates an Innovator?

Innovators can be referred to as a volunteer army that helps a business save on content creation time, enhance user adoption rates, and improve productivity.

And considering their eagerness to try out new technologies, they do not need much convincing.

Early Adopters

The early adopters account for about 13.5% of the users. They are comfortable taking risks. However, they want to form a solid opinion before they opt for a particular technology.^[ii]

Early adopters prefer to be the first ones to know about a newly launched technology. However, they are concerned about their reputation, which differentiates them from innovators.

What Motivates Early Adopters?

Early adopters tend to become the internal champions of organizational change. Providing guidelines and training to use a new tool can be a major motivating factor for this group.

They are the ideal beta testers for new technology as they are the best at finding minor flaws and setbacks in the implementation of the tool.

Providing walkthroughs and guidance through text and videos can help them learn more about the technology. And if the early adopters understand the product better, they are more likely to promote it.

Early Majority

They form 34% of the group. This set of users relies on proof to believe in the effectiveness of a product. They tend to have a pragmatic approach before committing to a product or making a purchase.^[iii]

What Motivates the Early Majority?

Motivating this group may involve demonstrating and solving problems with the help of technology. As this category of adopters relies on data-driven arguments, providing the experiences of other users can help convince them to use the tool.

Late Majority

This category of adopters accounts for 34% of the group. Convincing this set of adopters requires solid proof that the technology is worth their time and money.

The late majority do not like to take risks, which is why they prefer to read user reviews on specific technologies before implementing them.^[iv]

What Motivates the Late Majority?

To motivate the late majority, you need to create concrete proof that the new technology is effective. They need to see it in action to believe it. Here, innovators and early adopters can help convince the late majority of users about the new tool. They can help show them how the tool works and how it is beneficial for their organization.

Laggards

They tend to form the remaining 16% of the group of users. This category is wary of new technology. They are strongly opinionated and need answers to their “What’s in it for me?” question.^[v]

This is a group of users who aren’t easily convinced by the new technology. Moreover, they are relatively less patient than others to see promising results of a new tool right from the beginning.

What Motivates Laggards?

People in this category show little to no opinion leadership. If you can convince laggards on how to use the technology, you are home free.

How Can Businesses Leverage the Technology Adoption Curve?

A technology adoption curve helps businesses to identify the stages where their employees and customers currently fit in. It can help them create contextual guidance according to their category and make technology implementation successful.

What Are the Ways to Accelerate Technology Adoption in Your Organization?

Accelerating technology adoption can help with the smooth digital transformation of any business. Every aforementioned user of the technology passes through these 5 phases of technological adoption.

• Awareness of the users
• Interest of the end users
• Evaluation of the technology at hand
• Trial of the new technology
• Adoption of the onboarded technology

Here are a few ways an organization can help its employees and customers quickly adapt to technological change:

• Enabling communication between innovators and early adopter groups to encourage the latter to use new technology.
• Communicating the benefits of newly onboarded technology to encourage users to try and adapt to the technological changes.
• Providing an in-app guidance tool that simplifies the use of new technology in the organization.

Let’s understand this by taking into consideration one of the most popular CRMs, Salesforce.

Businesses use Salesforce Communities as it allows them to connect with their employees and customers in a more effective way. And to get the maximum benefit from their Salesforce investment, businesses tend to prioritize their digital adoption efforts.

To that end, implementing a digital adoption platform can assist them in understanding the purpose of community, navigating it, and showing consistent participation.

To maximize the digital adoption for Salesforce-powered communities, using a digital adoption solution such as GuideIn can help.

Developed by Grazitti, GuideIn facilitates seamless employee onboarding into Salesforce-powered communities. It is a Salesforce-native and Lightning-ready solution that provides walkthroughs and real-time guidance to help users adapt to the community faster and boost their participation in the community.

Wrapping Up

Technology adoption curve of an organization shows a user journey that starts from knowing a new technology to adopting one. Learning about different categories of adopters and their phases of adoption brings insight and direction towards the steps that can be taken for digital growth.

Want to Accelerate Digital Adoption in Your Organization? Talk to Us!

Statistics References:

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