Learning to Maximize Change Management Strategies with Deloitte Consulting LLP
As the leading provider of human capital and business transformation consulting, Deloitte works with some of the world’s largest enterprises to optimize their change management strategies. That’s why I was so excited to interview Lee Merovitz, US Leader, Change Services Practice at Deloitte Consulting LLP to discuss their approach to digital adoption and how they guide their clients when it comes to DAP implementation and use.
Excerpts from our conversation are below:
Hi Lee, thanks for taking the time to speak with me. Can we start off with just a broad overview of Deloitte’s approach to digital transformation and change management?
Sure. We take a data-driven approach to change management. As we’ve improved our data-collection capabilities, we’ve rolled out our change strategy called “Transformation Intelligence,” which enables our clients to gather the data needed to invest properly in their change management program.
First, we’ll work with our client to understand their transformation ambitions. In the current market, digital transformation is often an overused term. Not every change is truly transformative. One of our missions is to help our clients understand the true scale of their ambition vs. their willingness to change (i.e., the change propensity of the user population). The delta between those values helps us to understand how much they need to invest in a change program.
If you have an ambitious change management program, you’re potentially establishing a new operating model and are looking to implement new ways of working on top of your digital platform. Alternatively, if you’re simply upgrading technology, and you have a digitally native population, or you have a high turnover population, the way you’re going to invest in that change program will be different. We look to help our clients understand what is the scale of what they can do, and what is that customized change program that we need to provide.
By using all that data, we help our clients set up the right change management programs. Almost every change has a significant digital or technological component. Digital adoption platforms drive that data orientation as part of your solution.
The analytics that I can pull from a tool like WalkMe helps me enable that front-end planning. Furthermore, having the information at my fingertips allows me to design the right change interventions for the client to make sure that we’re properly managing that change.
Digital transformation is a very broad term. Do you find that your clients often don’t know what they want, or they haven’t really fleshed out their digital transformation plans?
Yes and no. Certainly, we have a lot of clients that ask us to help define their digital transformation strategy. However, our clients often come to us with something more defined, and they may call it digital transformation, but it’s not really a capital T “transformation.” It could be as simple as “we’re upgrading our app,” or “we had Workday before, and we want to move to an upgraded version.”
And if you’re just upgrading technology, perhaps all you need is a digital adoption platform that can help you understand how to click through the system, because your processes are largely staying the same. The change is within the user interface. But for a capital T “transformation,” a tool like WalkMe is powerful. It’s part of a well-balanced transformation program, where you’re working with a client to design tailored interventions to help people understand different ways of working and cultural interventions.
I think that’s what it often boils down to. It’s not enough to onboard a DAP. You have to flesh out your expectations and be in the know about what you want and what your goals are.
Could we talk a bit about your internal digital transformation process?
In 2019, we started looking into how we can improve the user experience across our enterprise applications while reducing onboarding time and increasing self-service. And that’s when we started using WalkMe to help optimize user experience across our various applications all over the world.
WalkMe can enable digital adoption at scale. It has powerful analytics as I mentioned, but it also has the capability to drive quick and easy deployment across a myriad of applications.
Due to the scale of our usage, one of the initial actions we took was to create a center of excellence to build and deploy these solutions across our ecosystem. Currently, we have 14 team members to manage digital adoption across 90+ applications for about 165,000 employees.
I think the idea of creating a center or excellence needs to be emphasized. I get the feeling that many businesses onboard a DAP and expect it to manage itself.
I completely agree. A DAP is super powerful, but in the context of a larger change management or digital transformation program. When we’re speaking with clients about digital adoption, we essentially tell them that DAP is one of the things we can bring to you, but it needs to be part of a larger program.
We’ve been able to develop a wide spectrum of client services so we can help to strategically advise our clients when it comes to DAPs and WalkMe, including the importance of establishing their own centers of excellence. We also help them envision the art of the possible so they can utilize WalkMe functionalities beyond walkthroughs.
Additionally, our clients have found value in our ability to offer them managed services by helping them to maintain their strategies and keep their DAPs up to date.
What’s the most noticeable effect of using DAP for Deloitte?
I’d say that we’ve felt the effects of DAP in two areas. The first is from an onboarding perspective, namely the ease with which we can get people comfortable with applications without creating separate web-based training. The main benefit of DAPs are for the user who needs guidance on how to click through an application or to understand the effects of a software update. With DAPs, we can seamlessly provide users with that guidance.
The second major effect is through providing employee self-service; various features we use, including Walkthroughs, ActionBots, and ShoutOuts, have led to a notable decrease in support tickets. WalkMe has provided our employees with the ability to troubleshoot their problems. And when they can’t, the chat function provides them with a level-one support tool directly in the system.
Lee, thank you again for taking the time to speak with me. I really enjoyed learning about Deloitte’s digital adoption approach.
My pleasure.