As Customer Success Manager (CSM), my clients often request that I provide ‘tough love’ and look to me for product adoption guidance. In one recent meeting, the VP of Digital Marketing said, “It feels like we’ve purchased a sports car, but we still only have our learner’s permit!”

When it comes to product adoption, no one team can own the transformation. Here’s a checklist for defining and managing a path to value:

Assess the Current State

To understand the current state, it’s important to establish baselines for measuring future outcomes. This starts by:

• Establishing an internal champion for the technology
• Auditing the current level of product adoption and marketing maturity
• Identifying current challenges, pain points and gaps
• Evaluating program performance results and benchmarks against industry verticals
• Validating the goals, objectives, and KPIs tied to the technology

Expand Product Knowledge

Over time, stakeholders may change and knowledge gaps may impede program innovation. Ongoing training and enablement are both key to successful product adoption by end users. To elevate product awareness with all stakeholders, time should be designated quarterly towards:

• Reviewing product roadmap updates and innovations
• Assessing feature enhancements that deploy with each release

Set a Path to Value

To advance product adoption and program maturity, teams will need guidance on what they can aspire to achieve with the technology. Recommendations should keep careful consideration to questions such as:

• Does this address a pain point?
• What’s the expected outcome and business impact?
• What’s the anticipated level of effort?
• Will this deliver results that support a KPI?
• How soon can value be realized?
• What’s the ROI and why should this recommendation be prioritized?
• Will this require any additional investments in people, process or technology?
• Are there any other dependencies?

Establish Accountability

A Success Plan serves as a joint-execution proposal that defines an action path for all prioritized recommendations and establishes accountability for all stakeholders. The success of technology solutions will be at risk without an internal champion that owns the path to value and transformation. The champion does this by:

• Partnering with the CSM
• Validating priorities
• Socializing the plan with Executive Sponsors and securing buy-in
• Assigning ownership for each strategy
• Setting milestones and deadlines
• Committing resources for implementation
• Providing access to training and enablement
• Facilitating quarterly reviews with Executive Sponsors and Business Process Owners to review progress, refine and re-prioritize the plan as business needs change over time
• Celebrating successes

Most of my clients acknowledge that marketing systems are complex and no one team can own the transformation. The path to value is truly a joint cross-functional effort rooted in alignment, accountability and a shared commitment towards achieving transformational business outcomes.

Can you relate? Don’t be left feeling guilty for under-utilizing the tools you have, and ask for help if you need it, especially if you have access to subject matter experts that can lend a hand

Oracle’s Customer Success Advanced Services, for example, are here to guide your success with your Oracle SaaS solution. Their team is 100% focused on helping customers achieve faster value and realization of business objectives. Don't be afraid to reach out. 

The entire customer experience needs to be considered to create a positive business outcome. Find out what you can do to better engage your customers and win them over with personalized content by reading "Go Further with Customer Experience Optimization."

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