Digital Adoption is Scalability 

[00:00:00] With Daniel Garcia, Vice President of Strategic Alliances, ClickLearn

Hello everybody. My name’s Rick McCutcheon. I’m a Dynamics Business Applications MVP, and I’m here today on Digital Adoption Talks. There are over 300,000 business professionals with digital adoption and their job titles on LinkedIn. So this is why we put this podcast together. So on this show, along with my co-host Joachim Schiermacher CEO, ClickLearn we talk to some of the leading digital adoption experts in the Microsoft ecosystem. 

This week we’re thrilled to have Daniel Garcia, the Vice President of Strategic Alliances for ClickLearn. Welcome, gentlemen. Please introduce yourselves and tell us what you do, and we’ll start with you.

Joachim: Thanks for having us here today.

It’s a special episode Rick because we have a very special visitor Danny has come to help us understand a little bit about the progress Dan been working in with the, with vendors across the board and see if we can, can make digital adoption more  intelligent. I’m super excited.

[00:01:00] Help software vendors deliver better training and adoption for their users

Rick: okay. Daniel, tell us who you are and what you do.

Danny: Yes, absolutely. So first of all, great to be here. Hi my Rick. So I’m, I’m head of Strategic Alliances here at ClickLearn. In essence what that is, I help software vendors deliver better training and adoption for their users.

Rick: Okay, great. So when you do that, let’s talk a little bit about click Learn for people who don’t know about the product.

What does ClickLearn actually do for these software vendors?

Danny: Sure, sure. So it’s my responsibility basically to identify and develop relationships with independent software vendors that are looking to fill a gap. They’re trying to answer this question, you know, I’ve sold a product and I’ve implemented the product.

[00:02:00] What is digital adoption for software vendors? Onboarding, user performance, and more.

Now what, how do I best onboard my users? How do I increase their user performance? And how do I prevent churn to impact my, my revenue stream?

Rick: In other words what is digital adoption to these people?

Right. Exactly.

Danny: That. Exactly. Okay, fantastic.

So, Daniel, when you’re talking to these software vendors, how important is digital adoption?

 It’s key. It’s key, right? What they see in digital adoption is scalability. They’re out there just like everybody else trying to stay competitive, and they’re developing new features and they’re developing new technology in order to focus in on the verticals that they’re serving. And that has a huge implication in their organization.

Disrupting all of the documentation and training that they have done with the rapid release cycles. So they view digital adoption as a means to have a scalable solution to address these problems.

[00:03:00] Traditional training is giving way to scalable training for ISVs

Rick: Okay. And Joachim, would you like to add anything around, you know, when we’re dealing with these ISV and software vendors around how do they look at digital adoption?

Joachim: Well, I think, in terms of maturity, we are slowly starting to see people actually being engaged in this field. And it means that the traditional training is sort of going away and we are giving room to some new methods that are, as Danny said, a lot more scalable because we don’t need all the resources in there to facilitate that.

We do that relatively easy. And I think that one of the things that we can see when Danny and I have talked around how things go, is that at the beginning there’s certain conservativism. Because if you’ve already built up an entire business unit around “how do we deliver these services?” Face to face or using maybe less scalable models, let’s say.

[00:04:00] There can be resistance to transitioning to scalable training at first

 We can see that there’s a certain conservatism in the beginning but once you start getting them used to the idea that you can actually do something better, you can actually have someone in the room with the, a digital assistant that lives inside your system, it becomes so much easier to get that discussion going.

I think one of the tough points, Danny, correct me here was that you found it really hard in the beginning to, to actually lift this up to a strategic level. Can you talk a little bit about that, what your experiences were?

Danny: Absolutely. So I think by default we’ve all been trained to have this transactional point of view when thinking about solutions. The essence of what the Click Learn solution can do is generate automation by being able to understand the underlying business system at a granular level. that implies that both of us click learn, and the software vendor, have to collaborate in order to generate that efficiency.

[00:05:00] Gives the means to create and maintain documentation with minimal resources

Ultimately, what we’re doing is we’re giving them the means to create and maintain everything that they need to do with minimal resources, right? And so at the same time, exponentially increasing the value for their end users. And that sets up the foundation for us to have a collaborative revenue plus model that is mutually beneficial.

And so being able to transcend from a transactional experience to a collaboration long. That I think has been the biggest initial challenge.

Rick: If I could just add, I’ve got a lot of experience actually running ISVs and when we’re building a product for the first time or more mature companies, the idea is, oh, we’re gonna build a product because we can resell it. To many people ,over and over again.

[00:06:00] Cloud computing has made companies global overnight

Then, you know, cloud computing came along and all of a sudden people who wanted to buy it weren’t, you know in Canada. We’re in Canada. We had somebody in Czechoslovakia wanting to buy it, or somebody in New Zealand wanting to buy it. So all of a sudden the cloud has made a lot of these companies global, which really affects their ability to support these  products.

And this is where we get into the multi-language thing. So when I’m talking to Software vendors about digital adoption. We think about the training piece as a big part to keep people trained. But I think, you know, the real problem or the real issue is support, right? I’m constantly trying to make my product better.

I have this roadmap and I’m adding functionality. And when I talk to ISVs, a lot of ’em are, you know, updating their product on a monthly basis, which is a lot for the customer to absorb. So how do I change my documentation on a monthly basis, and especially if I’m in multi-language? Right. So you know, I need a tool like click Learn, a digital adoption platform to be able to keep up with my pace of development.

[00:07:00] Support becomes a problem for customers, digital adoption helps 

And I think that’s a big key because if I can’t support this product, then that becomes a problem for my customer. And one of the wonderful things about the cloud is if I don’t like this product I’m using, I shut it off and I can turn on another product and start to use it. So I think digital adoption is going to mean a big piece for them being able to provide training and get their customers to use the product.

But I think a big issue is really how do I support this product and keep my information current to what my developers are doing.

Danny: Absolutely. Rick, that reminds me that there’s a project that I’m working on right now, it’s a company that’s servicing the construction industry and they have this vision to be able to deliver software from design-built and operations.

The roadmap to get there involves for them to build technology, but at the same time acquire other solutions. So now you have exactly what you just mentioned, compounded by the fact that you have support in one side of the world. You have the subject matter experts in another part of the world, and then you have this octopus scenario where everybody’s working in silos.

So you have that additional layer of complexity for them to realize their vision of having a unified interface.

 [00:08:00] Training and support needs to be available on all devices

Rick: Right. Construction’s a great example of this because I’ve worked on construction software in the past, and part of the problem is on a construction site I’ll have three or four layers of contractors.

I’ll have a general contractor, I’ll have a design contractor, and then I’ll have a mechanical contractor, electrical contractor, and they’re all trying to come together to put this building in place. So if I’m trying, and for years they weren’t automated, everything was done on paper. So if I’m gonna automate these people, I’ve got a whole bunch of people coming in and out of my projects that are gonna have to be able to use this technology, how am I gonna train and support them?

 I’m gonna hand them some kind of tablet or device to work with. Well, I’ve gotta be able to support that. So again, I can build the software, I can acquire it, but how can I get the users supported and trained on it? There’s many examples of that.

Joachim: Yeah, I think you’re touching something really interesting.

[00:09:00] The vision for user adoption often does not match the reality of what companies provide

The way that we normally start our conversations with the large software vendors that we are, that is contracting with is that we start out with saying ‘Imagine that you had a complete set of resources available to you. What would be a vision of how you would adopt users, making sure you drive user performance forward?’

What would that look like? And it looks amazingly different from what they’re doing today, every time.

 It’s not, there’s not a sense of that there are consent out there, right? They’re not happy with what they’re delivering today. They’re doing that out of need because if you’re servicing six different releases across the board you’re gonna end up with that PDF document because that’s all you have time to do, right?

[00:10:00] Training can be created and maintained automatically for new versions

But if you imagine that being created automatically and maintained automatically with each new version coming out, then it’s a completely different game. We can actually strike some interesting conversations. I can see that the people will be speaking to are typically vice presidents of training or vice presidents.

 They didn’t go six years to school to learn how to teach people in order to create a PDF document. They have visions back there, but someone told them at some point in time, look, you just need to deliver. Then it ends up with these types of documentation, lack of resources, conflict pattern the idea that our training capacity is basically just a cost center, right?

 All of those ideas come along. When you present them with the opportunity, now that you can do this with the resources you have on board, you can create that vision that you want it to. It creates excitement.

Rick: You want to add anything to that, Danny?

[00:11:00] Collaboration through a unified tool is possible

Danny: Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think also we forget it’s just the tool to do it.

You need to collaborate. And everybody’s using different solutions, support product people onboarding. So they’re using different solutions. They’re not communicating, quite frankly, because it wasn’t a unified tool to allow them to do it. Now, it’s possible. It’s not necessarily that they want to do the bare minimum.

It’s, it is up to now, there wasn’t an off-the-shelf solution that could meet all of their requirements, and that’s why Strategic Alliances is a collaboration of two companies getting to that vision. And each vision is unique to each vendor.

Rick: I think traditionally this whole world of software implementation training was always an afterthought.

 I’ve seen so many project plans over the years where we’ll have 400 items and one item at the bottom says, train the trainer. Right? We’re gonna train someone who’s never seen this application to go and train 300 users on this application. It’s, it’s a fallacy. it never, ever worked. So I think finally, We’re getting to a point where companies are saying That’s not good enough.

[00:12:00] Information silos are disappearing, following the Microsoft vision

You know, education, user adoption. We gotta get people working this because traditionally everybody kind of worked in silos in an office, right? We had Excel spreadsheets, we had applications, and we had the ERP system sitting over here. Everybody kind of did their own thing, but I think now we’re moving everything to the cloud.

We’re following this Microsoft vision. And all these applications are coming together so there’s no more silos and hopefully no more spreadsheets of information out there. So I think organizations are seeing, well, if we’re gonna get to the cloud and we’re gonna get this productivity to a point where we want it, then we’ve gotta make sure everybody’s rowing in sync and and understands how to use this technology.

So gentlemen, thanks for today. I just wanna know if you have any closing thoughts. Digital adoption now and really in the future. What have we got coming up?

Daniel, let’s start with you. 

[00:13:00] An over-abundance of new technology for people to learn

Danny: Look, you know, I was trying to remember a quote from a Microsoft conference, virtual conference event that took place, and I had to go back into my emails and I pulled it up.

So the quote was, 86% of Fortune 500 companies are using power apps, right? The, the message was that there’s going to be more apps created in the next year or so than all the apps that exist currently.

And I’m thinking to myself, when I hear this quote, you know, from an empathetic point of view, my gosh, what it means for the end users.

That’s a lot of new technology that people have to learn. So I’m very optimistic towards the future when related to, to digital adoption because there’s going to be a user experience that I never got to have when I was working in my previous jobs and had to learn a new ERP. So I think technology is meeting how the world is changing and organizations are going be greatly poised to meet and live up to this digital transformation that they have to do.

Rick: Okay. Thanks Joachim. Any closing?

[00:14:00] Profit-sharing model for strategic alliances helps businesses stay current and evolve

Joachim: I think that that the role that we’ve taken with with the strategic alliances and the idea that we need to be strategic around this, so adoption with the company, it’s not, you know, normally when we get in there they tend to say, okay, what’s this gonna set me back?

And we say, look we are trying to do a profit sharing model with you because it’s actually something that gets us in the very distant future. To keep current with your needs and, and the way that you see the, the business evolving. And that initially is like, okay, thank you. I’m already married.

I don’t want to do that. But after a couple of of months, it really gets down to, okay, we can see that we can drive that vision forward with you, and we can see that it is a constant effort to get there. It’s not about delivering a product and saying, thank you so much. We, we are doing that successfully with a lot of clients.

And a lot of technology, but in order to really deliver the values you need to be strategic with the company, with the vendor that creates the software in order to get that to function in, in an ideal scenario.

Rick: Okay, gentlemen, thank you for joining us on Digital Adoption Talks, and I’m sure we’ll be back to you in the future to find out more about digital adoption and cloud software.

Thank you. Bye for now. Thank you. Bye.