Red Hat Empowers Associates with a Digital Adoption Platform
When I sat down to speak with Stephanie about her experience with digital adoption and how Red Hat utilizes WalkMe, I was struck by her unwavering respect for their employees. In fact, this point was made clear when I noticed and then clarified, that Stephanie referred to her team-members across the organization as “associates” and not “employees.” In order to maintain the inspiring company culture that Red Hat has created, I will use the term “associates” throughout this article as well.
We are incredibly proud to call Stephanie a partner in digital adoption. Her Realize Live session will be available for registered attendees. This is a sneak peek of her WalkMe for Red Hat story.
When traditional training doesn’t cut it
Stephanie Welsh is the Sr. Director, IT Strategy & Enablement at Red Hat. The culture there is unique and it begins with their product itself. Red Hat is the world’s leading provider of enterprise open source solutions, using a community-powered approach to deliver high-performing Linux, cloud, container, and Kubernetes technologies.
A community-powered approach is the same idealogy that permeates their digital adoption strategy, and under Stephanie’s leadership, they have implemented WalkMe to bridge the gap between associates and software.
Before WalkMe, Red Hat was using very traditional training and change management techniques and they hadn’t yet evolved in their approach to engaging their associates within the software experience. The main reason this became a problem, was that the company was growing quickly, and the traditional training methods were simply not scalable. Beginning to implement WalkMe was their first activity to address training, specifically for the sales department.
When Red Hat’s CIO saw the capabilities of the Digital Adoption Platform, the Digital Adoption Team moved over to Stephanie’s department, IT Strategy & Enablement. WalkMe is now used across a number of apps in various business units and is currently being developed to be deployed as part of Red Hat’s transition to Workday®.
The challenge that IT now faces is not how to address adoption issues among their associates, but rather how to keep up with the demand for WalkMe! Even without a formal launch or mandate that WalkMe be used across Red Hat, requests for engagement with the Digital Adoption team are outpacing their ability to keep up! This is a great way to see the true performance and success of a product – the demand for WalkMe is abundantly clear and it’s coming from the users themselves.
Meet users where they are
Stephanie shared that the number one benefit of having a DAP (digital adoption platform) is the ability to meet the needs of the associates where they are. The in-app guidance and automation prevents users from needing to pause their work to find a solution elsewhere but rather allows them to receive help in real-time and navigate through the problem. It saves time, resources, and precious IT support.
Stephanie’s goal is to create a digital experience for the associates that is the most effective and allows for the least amount of friction. Software engagement should be an easy and pleasant experience that enables users to learn and improve along the way.
A DAP is also proving to aid Red Hat tremendously in their continuous training and onboarding of both new employees and new software platforms. With a workforce of almost 15,000 people, scalability is a major factor in their digital adoption solution.
Stephanie stressed the importance of visibility into digital usage and adoption and how beneficial it has been to have the WalkMe insights. For leaders attempting to solve their own digital adoption challenges, she advises finding the people that will champion new and exciting tools, because when there are people who are passionate and excited about an initiative, it will be accepted and understood more quickly and successfully.
Choice is a cornerstone of Red Hat’s culture, so associates are very vocal about which tools are working and which are not. It was amazing to hear how WalkMe “sells itself” again and again among Red Hat associates, and we’re proud to bridge the digital gap for them, meeting them where they are, and enabling them to continue to provide their incredible service to their customers.
