Though purchases should always be an objective decision, human beings are just that: human beings. We’re swayed by emotion and imagination, which quickly turn purchases into subjective decisions. This can be especially true when decision-makers considering the purchase of a large technology investment are wooed by a demo scenario.

The promises offered by a demo scenario, however, are only as good as a company’s ability to utilize the technology to make them a reality. Failure to achieve a high adoption rate by employees means technology could go underutilized—falling short of its ability to deliver the kind of return-on-investment leadership was looking for in the first place. 

While this scenario can be a common one, it doesn’t have to be. Full utilization—via a high adoption rate—offers a range of benefits for any company, but especially for orthopedic medical device manufacturers in an industry undergoing digital transformation. Here are three key reasons why a high adoption rate is key to maximizing your investment in technology. 

#1. It frees resources to work smarter and create real change. 

If you’re choosing a solution that will help you realize such key benefits as inventory control, visibility, and automation, you should ensure maximum adoption rates. When your full operations and field forces are on the same platform, using the same single source of truth, you light up your blind spots, reduce bottlenecks, automate time-consuming processes, and truly free resources. As a result, you can focus staff on doing what only people can do, and let the system do the rest. 

That means your sales force can spend more time building relationships, pursuing new contracts, and closing more sales, rather than wrangling inventory. It means your operations team can spend more time solving problems before they arise, and less time putting out the daily fires of chaos and answering routine questions (did my stuff ship?, what is the price for x,y, or z?). 

#2. It can help reduce errors—and risk. 

Digital tools reduce the potential for (and reality of) human errors, which can be costly. Consider the consequences of dealing with pricing discrepancies, contending with recalls and chain-of-custody crises, or placating an angry surgeon who was promised a kit but who doesn’t have it—and whose surgery can’t go on as scheduled. 

By reducing errors through high adoption of a system that offers automation, visibility, and a single source of truth, you reduce the risk that can hamper your business growth.  

#3. It improves organizational performance to unlock next-level growth. 

With a high adoption rate, your workforce gets more out of a system. As in the first example, your team has more time to focus on only the work humans can do. When more and more of that kind of work happens, new innovation helps fuel firm growth—which, of course, can mean a higher ROI on not only your investment in technology, but in your R&D and product development, too. 

Ensuring a high adoption rate

Field of Dreams may be the only instance in which “if you build it, they will come,” pans out. As you can imagine, a high adoption rate doesn’t happen by itself. Best practices for rollout, communication, and training go a long way toward fostering high adoption rates. For any rollout process, it’s important to: 

• Develop a strategy
• Provide training, from web-based to customized based on scale, workforce size, and situational complexity
• Consider phased duration to minimize disruption
• Develop assets and resources and make them available to the field
• Assess and adjust to ensure maximum efficiency and support
• Having a partner who has been through it, seen everything that can happen, and helped deal with the inevitable objections to change

ImplantBase is a leader in digital transformation for the orthopedic implant industry. Its platform provides manufacturers of every size with a unique cloud-based solution that transforms how the business operates on every level and across your critical functions of finance, sales, and operations. That means bringing automation—and revolution—to scores of mission-critical business processes, so that your team can stop flailing in chaos and start driving improved performance. 

If you’re ready to embrace the future, ImplantBase can help. Give us 30 minutes to assess your performance and help you determine a roadmap to digital transformation—and you’ll see why our adoption rate is 97%.