Why Technology Adoption Is Failing South African Organisations
A digital adoption platform in South Africa is no longer a nice-to-have. It is one of the most commercially important technology decisions an organisation can make. Here is why. An email lands from the CEO or CIO. “Exciting news!” it promises. “We have just implemented a great new sales and marketing system. You will find it extremely helpful. Your line managers will send out some instructions soon. Please start using it as soon as possible.
Sounds familiar? What do you suppose the take-up will be?
Digital transformation has produced a flood of technology options. Worldwide transformation spending is on track to reach $3.4 trillion by 2026. After that, it will continue accelerating at a 21% compound annual growth rate, reaching $6.78 trillion in cumulative spending by the end of the decade.
Yet, up to 70% of digital transformation programmes either only partially succeed or fail outright. An enormous amount of annual spend is wasted. According reputable source estimates, the global figure is as high as $900 billion annually.
There are other signs of poor technology adoption. Meta-studies confirm the paradoxical problem with information and communication technologies in the workplace. Organisations design them to boost collaboration, efficiency and productivity. In practice, their pervasiveness creates an overload factor instead.
Technology overload has a formal definition: it is the point at which adding new technology generates diminishing marginal returns. On a more human level, consider the stress of trying to remember a password. The average person manages around 100 of them. Trying to recall one simply to download a payslip from the company’s ERP system illustrates the problem precisely. Technology should enable tasks. Instead, it often makes employees feel frustrated and cognitively overloaded.
What Is a Digital Adoption Platform and How Does It Work?
Bridging the Technology Know-How Gap in South African Organisations
A Digital Adoption Platform (DAP) integrates directly within other software systems and applications. It provides prompts and real-time answers to guide users through the software. DAPs steer employees around applications, offer contextual tips and personalise the experience to meet individual users’ frequent requirements. Critically, all of this happens in the flow of work, not in a separate training session.
Intuitively, given some of the problems per the indicators above, DAPs are much needed.
Given the technology adoption challenges described above, DAPs are clearly needed. In the US alone, organisations spent over $100 billion was spent on corporate training and development last year. That is roughly the size of Meta’s global revenues. However, 72% of this went on staff salaries and outside services such as travel. The result is wasteful and inefficient. Established psychology research on the forgetting curve confirms the scale of the problem: organisations forget 50% of training within 24 hours and 90% within a month.
Traditional training and L&D methods are therefore increasingly ineffective. In addition, implementing them places a significant burden on the organisation’s resources. DAPs reduce reliance on training professionals and IT support teams. They create learning moments in the flow of work rather than in sporadic, scheduled sessions. From onboarding through to continuous upskilling, DAPs have a practical role at every stage of an employee’s journey.
The Hidden Cost of Poor Technology Adoption in South African Organisations
Software or Shelfware? The Adoption Gap Costs More Than You Think
For many companies across the world, even global, enterprise-size businesses, the implementation of new tools and systems can be disruptive. In practice, their uptake may be slow, incomplete, or sometimes simply never happens. As a result, implementation of the C-suite’s digital vision and strategy is lagging. “Almost without exception,” says Riyan Silochan, Managing Executive at LRMG, “feedback we get from clients’ leadership is that they are unhappy with the rate of adoption.”
One blue-chip South African enterprise has 22,000 people using between 12 to 40 different applications every day depending on their role. The annual cost of these systems and applications is in the hundreds of millions of rands. Yet the company does not know whether 10% of employees actually use them or, still problematic but somewhat more hopefully, whether the proportion is more like 40%.
In addition to enabling user adoption, cutting-edge DAPs such as MyGuide and Oracle Guided Learning also generate information to fill in this blank. They provide many other insights to give a better understanding of where end users are struggling with the company’s systems and applications. As a result, a parallel benefit of DAPs is that they improve and support data-driven strategic decision-making.
Talent leaders should also consider that if employees have a suboptimal relationship with the company’s technology, this will negatively influence their engagement. The Great Resignation and Quiet Quitting are symptoms of an enormous problem: lowly engaged or disengaged workforces cost the global economy $7.8 trillion in lost productivity. Encouragingly, the reverse holds true: companies with engaged employees achieve on average 14% productivity improvements and 23% better profitability than their peers.
In fact, a few simple sums confirm why a DAP is a platform for productivity. Daily, 22 minutes is the average amount of time people spend at work trying to figure out how to use the applications they need. Not too much of a problem? In reality, it adds up: two hours a week, close to eight hours a month, 80-plus hours a year. That is the equivalent of 10 working days for each employee. Do the maths applicable to the size of your workforce to understand the company’s overall loss of productivity.
Digital Investment ROI: Getting Real Returns From Technology in South Africa
After years of updates, bolt-on applications and customisation, many systems have become genuinely difficult to navigate. When complexity becomes overwhelming, people revert to what they know. This is sometimes useful. However, when it becomes an ingrained habit, it actively stifles change and leads to poor outcomes. DAPs overcome this tendency. Rather than allowing users to take default options that bypass the potential gains within tools and applications, DAPs guide users to navigate them fully and use them to their real potential.
"The cost of not having users interact with an application goes beyond the wasted or excess spend involved in its installation and annual licensing cost. It's also an opportunity cost. What could the entire company's employees be doing better, and how much more could they accomplish by using it?"
Organisations across every industry are working to stay competitive by adopting digital technologies. However, using technology fully is what separates organisations that get real value from their investment from those that simply spend money on systems that employees barely touch. If an organisation is serious about digital transformation, a Digital Adoption Platform will be far more effective than even the most energetic email from the CEO.
LRMG offers a range of DAP solutions for South African and African organisations. To explore how a digital adoption platform can accelerate your organisation’s digital transformation and build a genuinely technology-capable workforce, contact Riyan Silochan through our contact page or on RiyanS@lrmg.co.za or +27 87 941 5764
Frequently Asked Questions: Digital Adoption Platforms in South Africa
What is a Digital Adoption Platform (DAP)?
A Digital Adoption Platform (DAP) integrates directly within other applications and systems. It provides real-time, contextual guidance to help employees use software effectively without leaving the application. DAPs offer walkthroughs, tooltips, task prompts and personalised support in the flow of work. They reduce the need for separate training sessions, cut IT support demand and accelerate the time it takes employees to become proficient with new technology.
Why do digital transformation projects fail in South Africa?
Research shows that up to 70% of digital transformation programmes either fail outright or only partially achieve their goals. The primary reason is poor technology adoption. Organisations invest heavily in new systems but underinvest in helping employees actually use them. Without deliberate adoption strategies, employees revert to familiar habits, new systems become expensive shelfware and the transformation investment produces minimal commercial return.
How does a digital adoption platform improve employee productivity?
Employees spend an average of 22 minutes per working day struggling to navigate the applications their jobs require. Over a year, that is more than ten full working days of lost productivity per person. A digital adoption platform eliminates this friction by guiding employees through software in real time, reducing errors, cutting support requests and shortening the time it takes people to reach full proficiency with new tools.
What is the difference between a DAP and traditional training?
Traditional training is delivered in sessions that are separate from the work itself. Research on the forgetting curve shows that 50% of training content is forgotten within 24 hours and 90% within a month. A digital adoption platform delivers guidance at the exact moment an employee needs it, inside the application they are using. This in-the-flow-of-work approach significantly improves retention, reduces the burden on training teams and creates continuous learning rather than periodic knowledge injections.
How does LRMG help South African organisations implement digital adoption platforms?
LRMG offers a range of digital adoption platform solutions, including MyGuide and Oracle Guided Learning, for South African and African organisations. LRMG’s approach covers the full implementation lifecycle: needs assessment, DAP configuration, employee onboarding, usage monitoring and ongoing optimisation. With nearly three decades of experience in talent technology and partnerships with over 800 organisations across Africa, LRMG helps clients close the gap between technology investment and real business performance.
