9 Statistics All Digital Adoption Leaders Should Know (2023)

Businesses today are pursuing digital transformation with increasing urgency. If they’re not, they should — soon, “late bloomers” will be too far behind to catch up.

The inclination to add new digital tools & platforms with the hope of gaining an edge in the race for digital transformation makes sense. But, as you contemplate the state of your own digital transformation efforts, ask yourself, is your digital adoption strategy up to par?

Dive Deeper: Your Digital Transformation Will Fail Without a Digital Adoption Strategy

What is digital adoption?

Glad you asked. Digital adoption is the missing link in your digital transformation. While digital transformation is the process of adding and upgrading your technology, digital adoption refers to your users’ ability to fully maximize the full range of the software’s capabilities.

Digital transformation aims to enable greater efficiency, more innovation, and a better customer experience. Digital adoption is the key to actually making that happen. After all, if your users can’t actually use your digital tools as they are intended, all of those goals will never reach their full potential.

9 digital adoption statistics to prove its worth

While you’ve long known the importance of driving your digital transformation forward, many business leaders have not yet realized the equal importance of a solid digital adoption strategy.

The following statistics highlight the benefits of adding new technological capabilities — such as data and analytics platforms, automation, and AI — but to also ensure users can efficiently and productively perform on them.

These nine stats will hammer it home.

1. According to McKinsey, data-driven organizations are 23 more times likely to acquire customers. Those organizations that martial their data to produce better insights develop a better understanding of how to find and keep customers happy. However, unless users can use these tools efficiently and correctly, they could face problems with compromised data integrity. In that case, mistakes, unhappy customers, and frustrated employees will keep the goal of acquiring new customers out of reach.
2. Accenture found approximately one-third of workforce development nonprofits currently use analytics and 82% percent of leaders in these organizations say analytics have increased capacity by more than 10 percent (with 83% of nonprofit workers saying it made them more efficient). Again, the realized benefits of increased capacity are only possible to achieve with
3. While virtually all business leaders agree digital transformation is critical to a competitive business strategy, 27% of executives believe digital transformation is a matter of survival. Unfortunately, successful digital transformation is not possible without digital adoption.
4. According to Deloitte’s third annual RPA survey, 53% of survey respondents are beginning their “RPA journey.” Among respondents who are implementing RPA now, 78% plan to invest even more in the next 3 years. While automation technology is designed to take over human processes, human users must still be able to interact with it effectively in order for it to be efficient.
5. Existing AI can boost business productivity by up to 40%. But this is only true under the assumption that users can interface with the technology effectively.

Breaking down the numbers

Despite these numbers, many digital transformation leaders overlook the importance of ensuring full-range usability of their software.

This is often the result of a focus that is too narrow — you might know which tools are necessary for achieving your long-term goals, but you’re ignoring the short term challenges of onboarding new technology and changing existing processes.

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Which technologies demand a digital adoption strategy?

The short answer is all of them.

In 2018 IDG’s State of Digital Business Transformation it states that big data/analytics (58%), mobile technologies (59%), private cloud (53%), public cloud (45%), APIs (40%) were the top technologies already implemented by enterprises.

With regards to future developments, the same study found that AI (39%), machine learning (34%) and IoT (31%) are the top three technologies to be integrated into business environments in the future. Each of these technologies is ranked high because of the potential return on investment that they can deliver — under the assumption they are used correctly.

In the realm of big data, just a 10% increase in data accessibility can result in over a $65 million increase in net income for a Fortune 1000 company. But that 10% jump is only achievable if the company achieves digital adoption.

IoT devices are also delivering similar returns as well. Of the businesses that have deployed IoT devices, 94% have already seen a return on their investment. Whether you’re incorporating an AI platform, big data analytics or IoT devices you’re broadening the horizons of what is possible in your industry.

Digital adoption is within reach — with the right support

If one thing is clear about digital transformation, it’s that there are dozens of technologies that can bring modern enterprises sizeable returns. Being open to new technologies grants an opportunity to develop new processes. Cloud services, big data, IoT and AI all have the potential to help your employees excel and unlock new possibilities.

But these returns won’t be fully realized without achieving digital adoption. Unless your users can actually use your digital tools to the fullest capability, they won’t benefit from the advanced features. The tools will go underutilized or unused completely, and your software investment will sink.

With the right approach to digital adoption and a solid solution, you can empower your users to increase efficiency, productivity, and minimize the growing pains of digital transformation.