In Part I, we noted that this is not the first time we tackled the driving of technological advances, having preciously tackled the issue back in 2014 in our 3-part series (Part I, Part II, and Part III) where we noted that any organization that wanted to excel in Supply Management had to master the three Ts: talent, transition (not process) and technology and focussed in on technology in particular. However, not much has changed since we last tackled the subject — new technology adoption in the majority of organizations is still low, and even though 47.3% of the world’s population was online last year, we’re not sure the same statistic holds true in the business world.

And while we can’t say for sure why technological advance is slow and adoption of new technology solutions is low in an average platform, we are pretty sure that it has something to do with the fact that, especially where the older generation is concerned, especially for the older generation, they’ve heard the same old story hundreds of times before — it’ll make your work faster and better and your life easier. And, over the years, they’ve tried dozens of systems that made this claim, but few, if any, have delivered and most that delivered some still had drawbacks. At this point, any talk of trying a new solution just fills them with dread. And that’s not a great starting point for anything.

So you have to not only get past the dread and the suspicion and the outright animosity but get the key stakeholder, who, in this case, is a primary user, to an open state of mind where she is ready to try it and, hopefully, not only see how it will make her daily life easier, but like it.

And this is more than creating great tech with a great UX (which the doctor has been writing a lot about lately across the S2P cycle because just creating a system that works isn’t enough anymore), it’s creating great messaging that gets the message across. And this is as much psychology as it is marketing and definitely more psychology and marketing than technology.

Think about early adopters. Why do they adopt? Theories iclude:

• they like the social status it brings them
• they like to be the expert on new technology … and adopting new tech allows them to do the product research they need to be the expert
• they want to solve their needs before their peers to stay ahead of the crowd

So, if you are targeting early adopters, you need to keep this in mind and have messaging to drive these points home. And that’s sometimes easier said than done … as run of the mill messaging will be something your target audience has probably heard a dozen times before. So, be creative.

Any other ideas to drive technological adoption?

SI tackled this subject back in 2014 in our 3-part series (Part I, Part II, and Part III) where we noted that any organization that wanted to excel in Supply Management had to master the three Ts: talent, transition (not process) and technology and focussed in on technology in particular. But, as we also noted, the technology element hasn’t changed much in the last decade. Consider the public defender‘s recent “story about technology” over on Spend Matters UK where he talked about a business dinner a few years ago (and by a few years, he means the conversation took place this decade) a company’s representative noted that none of the Executive Board in the firm had a computer in their office. Not only did they not have computers, or laptops, but they didn’t even use e-mail! Their PAs printed off all their emails for their bosses who wrote longhand or dictated responses for the PAs to type and send off. The company, not unexpectedly from the doctor‘s viewpoint, just went into receivership, and as far as the doctor is concerned, any company that doesn’t keep reasonably modern may soon face the same fate.

But driving technological advances is still hard. We still have an older generation that doesn’t like or trust technology and we still live in an age where over half of the world’s population has never used the internet — something most of us take for granted as part of modern daily life. (In 2017, the global population reached 7.558 Billion but the number of people who went online in the year was estimated at only 3.578 Billion, or 47.3% of the total population.)

So what do we do? Obviously we have to focus on adoption, but there’s multiple aspects to adoption. First of all, you need to

1. get people to try it and then you need to
2. make sure what you ask people to try is so easy, obvious, good, and valuable to them that they want to use it … so much so that after a few weeks they would get mad if you tried to take it away and have them do it the old way.

We’re finally at the point where #2 is becoming a reality where many of the best S2C/P2P/S2P platforms are really focussing on the user experience, taking cues from the best B2C and C2C sites and applications and giving users an experience that is fun and natural to them. But sometimes getting them to try it is hard. Remember, especially for the older generation, they’ve heard this story hundreds of times before — it’ll make your work faster and better and your life easier. And, over the years, they’ve tried dozens of systems that made this claim, but few, if any, have delivered and most that delivered some still had drawbacks.

If they’ve been burned over and over, and are fearful of any new technology, how do you get them to try it with an open mind and find something that will work … great? Because if they don’t even try it, they won’t adopt it, and there’s no point trying to convince their boss to buy it.