Digital Adoption FAQs

What are the stages of technology adoption?

Technology adoption can be divided into three distinct stages: identification, implementation and continuation. By understanding and following these three stages, your organization can then plan your technology adoption strategy thoroughly.

Identifying a need should be the first stage of any technology adoption. Companies or specific individuals (you’ll know them as your internal software sponsor) identify a need for improvement in work processes. They’ll then research how innovative technology could help meet that need, often gathering insight from employees into current use, and seeing how this could be improved. Once the sponsor has built a case for the new technology, they’ll share the vision and planning with their leadership team, who will sign off budgets, if needed.

This brings us to the second stage of technology adoption: implementation. This is where you’ll speak to your internal teams about the new software plans and begin the rollout. This should also be when training starts to take place, and you continue to gather employee feedback on how they’re getting to grips with any new processes.

And the final – arguably most important – stage of technology adoption, is continuation. The software has been fully rolled out. In an ideal world, your staff should be fully confident in using it. But, crucially, if technology adoption has been followed correctly, they’ll know why they are using it, and understand how the tech adds value by making their day-to-day work more seamless.

While adoption might feel and sound like it is something that is achieved with a natural end point, it’s actually an ongoing process. As the name suggests, continuation means that your business should continue to monitor and make improvements – whether in line with software updates, organizational needs or feedback from your people on how they’re finding using the tech.

The continuation stage can be tricky to reach, as you may find people are resistant to change or don’t fully understand why they need to use this new software. That’s why it’s really important you create a watertight plan for encouraging software adoption in your company. Want to learn more? Read our blog post on how to plan for successful technology adoption.