What was the business problem(s) that your organization / project was facing, and why did you choose a digital adoption strategy to help you solve it?
When Syneos Health merged, we needed to quickly ramp employees onto new systems and processes. Additionally, confused end users would often fill out forms inaccurately, which required effort to clean up the data. It was not the first time Syneos Health had deployed WalkMe on an application, but there wasn’t a true owner or expert and there was room for improvement. I wanted to ensure this new implementation was successful and we could measure the impact. In the past year, I was able to develop and implement an innovative solution and demonstrate the value of WalkMe to senior leaders and obtain approval to stand up a Center of Excellence team (COE). I worked with the business owners to understand their problem, to build a solution that would: increase data quality, reduce rework of our billable employees, increase user adoption and reduce user frustration with our core systems. Additionally,reduced the training required to obtain access to the application. I was a new developer to WalkMe. I took the initiative to find out everything that I could about the tool. This included attending the training offered at WalkMe University. The WalkMe support and assistance from my account managers was critical to my success for everything WalkMe. In addition, the online chat support functionality within the WalkMe editor, is a level of support that I have never seen offered on a 3rd party application and was not only innovative, it also contributed to my success with both of my application builds.
How did you use WalkMe among other strategies to address your challenges?
I designed and implemented a WalkMe experience, but the piece of my strategy that ensured I was most strategically addressing my challenges was through a focus on Insights analytics. When I first discovered WalkMe Insights, I took the initiative to learn everything that I could about insights, the first person at my company to do that. This was key to determining the value of WalkMe to measure application usage, return on investment (ROI) as well as where our users were struggling. Working closely with my account team, who provided me a template for determining ROI, coupled with the insight data I obtained for my application, was a catalyst to understanding the value of the tool. I presented the ROI and value of WalkMe to three different groups at Syneos Health, each with different levels of detail. I was able to show that for the two critical applications I worked on realized some very impressive ROI. First, we saw a 5 million dollar return on investment, on one application in one year, due to implementation of validation rules, which resulted in lower support tickets, increased data quality and increased employee, client satisfaction. Second, we experienced a 100K return on investment realized on one application, in one year. This was due to replacing all paper job aids and converted them to in-application learning guidance, onboarding tasks for new users along with resources and validation rules. This resulted in a 75% reduction in required training, users gaining faster access to the system.
How does your digital adoption strategy, especially in regards to WalkMe, impact or benefit your end-users?
Syneos Health’s digital adoption strategy was used to benefit our end-users by accelerating learning and reduce or eliminate support tickets by providing proactive assistance immediately (within the application), while promoting a culture of self-reliance. Faster access to application due to reduced training. Increased system adoption using guidance and access to key resources within the application. Implemented validation rules which saved the employee countless hours and frustration due to rework. Increased user satisfaction by giving them the tools they need to succeed.
How does your digital adoption strategy, especially in regards to WalkMe, impact or benefit your team?
Our digital adoption strategy pivoted from being siloed and ineffective to being strategic and holistic. With this change in our strategy, it allows our team to operate in a way that is more impactful for the business. By getting approval to create a WalkMe Center of Excellence (COE) team, we are now able to:
- Provide centralized oversight, training & sharing of best practices & lessons learned.
- Improve ROI for current applications that are currently under-utilized by reviewing business process & offering suggestions for enhancements.
- Remove barriers to entry & enable the effective use of WalkMe across all divisions of the enterprise.
- Create a central vetting/intake request process. o With the help of team members, develop and facilitate a WalkMe training program for SME’s (subject matter experts).
- Develop standards for user experience, content building and metrics
- Require each application to review Insights and provide a quarterly ROI for their application to senior leadership.
- Determining a licensing arrangement that best suits Syneos Health’s needs
- Improvement in metrics in four main categories: Tickets, Data Quality, Business Performance, Training
How has your digital adoption strategy, especially in regards to WalkMe, helped your organization better achieve its mission goals / values?
In order to achieve our company’s mission, our employees must be able to leverage all the systems and technologies to effectively do their jobs, and WalkMe helps us do this. When I started, I was just impacting WalkMe on one application. However, through my efforts to champion and create a WalkMe Center of Excellence, I am now able to expand the scope of WalkMe and improve the WalkMe implementations, to have an even greater benefit on the business and our ability to achieve our mission. After obtaining approval to build the Center of Excellence team, I have reviewed the insight analytics and determined ROI for all other applications currently using Walkme at Syneos Health. I have identified which applications are under-utilized and where improvements are required. This also includes meeting with application owners to review, learn and train them on insight analytics, ROI requirements and areas for improvement. In addition, my team and I are working with other application owners that want to implement WalkMe providing centralized in-house support. This includes guiding them through the intake process, discussing their solution and creating a business and use case submission for approval. Trained team members on WalkMe building, shared knowledge, lessons learned and they are now confident builders that will allow me to focus my time on building out the COE. Building out the better user of WalkMe to Syneos Health.
How has the success of your digital adoption strategy helped to change the perceptions or attitudes of your stakeholders?
Through my implementation of WalkMe, I was able to completely change my stakeholders perception of what was possible through digital adoption. When it was previously implemented, stakeholders didn’t pay much attention to it, and only thought of it as another training tool. However, after presenting the value of WalkMe to the key leaders at Syneos Health, they were surprised by how much we could accomplish and the business impact we were able to have. Because of this, I was able to get approval for my recommendation to create a WalkMe Center of Excellence (COE) team. After obtaining approval to build the Center of Excellence team, I have reviewed the insight analytics and determined ROI for all other applications currently using WalkMe at Syneos Health. I have identified which applications are under-utilized and where improvements are required. This work will allow for additional applications to be added at Syneos Health.
More about Syneos Health
Syneos Health (Nasdaq:SYNH) is the only fully integrated biopharmaceutical solutions organization. Our company, including a Contract Research Organization (CRO) & Contract Commercial Organization (CCO), is purpose-built to accelerate customer performance to address modern market realities.
