Improving Employee Engagement and Adoption to Drive Revenue

Internal Communications and Change Management Matter to Results

With the rise of SaaS platforms, many industries have changed the way they price and monetize their technology, changing to seat-based or utilization-based pricing. It’s not about the initial sale, it's about stickiness. Sales and marketing must focus on the solution being effectively integrated into the daily lives of the end-users to drive revenue. 

In health tech, engagement-based solutions depend on employee adoption to drive revenue. You work and work to land the enterprise sale, and navigate their benefits ecosystem, but then must depend on their team’s ability to roll it out to their employees. This is where the real challenge lies. Without proper adoption, even the most innovative health tech solutions can become underutilized tools. 

Even in medical device sales, success depends on utilization and compliance. One medical device salesperson shared that they discovered the multi-million dollar robotic surgery solution they’d sold sitting in an unused room, gathering dust. This scenario underscores how selling the product is only the beginning. If your users do not change their workflow and get comfortable with your solution, you cannot grow major accounts.

Effectively marketing and driving employee adoption often involves navigating a range of complex challenges. These challenges can vary widely depending on the industry and the specific SaaS solution. Here are some obstacles that we routinely encounter:

• Single digit utilization
• Lack of a strong corporate sponsor
• No clear "what's in it for me?"
• Trickle-out vs. true product launch

Beyond initial sales, helping your enterprise customer manage the people side of change has become a crucial step to tech adoption and revenue growth. This involves not only securing leadership buy-in and aligning the new technology with corporate goals but also actively engaging employees at every level. Training sessions, feedback loops, and continuous support channels are essential to help users transition smoothly and embrace new technology. With this strategy, you set the stage for sustainable adoption, maximizing both the immediate and long-term value.

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How can I improve the utilization of engagement-based solutions?

Enterprise sales come down to the 90-day roll-out plan. Speed your customer discovery to understand their employee base and internal communications channels. Tap into existing channels with ready key messages and templates to deploy segmented, specific education.

Key strategies to focus on include:

• Omnichannel: employees need to hear it more than once—from their direct managers, employee newsletter, SharePoint or other employee portals.
• Personalization: Understand and segment your audience with key messages that resonate.
• Customer personas & customer journey: Identify your ideal target users and understand their pain points and communication preferences. Design UX, marketing and multi-stakeholder roll-out plan to meet each segment where they’re at. You’d communicate 401k benefits to 30-year tenure employees differently than fresh college grads—this applies to every engagement-based solution.
• Corporate sponsor: Ensure you’ve helped to build a vision with your customer, who knows how your solution aligns with their corporate goals.

How can I drive demand in my accounts?

One lab instrument company we work with, in preparation for a new product launch (2.0), needed to drive demand by increasing current utilization of the existing technology. University research labs have a transient user base by nature, with new student users each semester. Self-serve user education can drive awareness and usage while driving down customer service costs.

Like this instrumentation company, consider:

• Direct mail to existing accounts—QR code sticker for existing system, with product launch announcement for new product
• QR code leads to an easy-to-navigate self-service customer portal with videos and FAQs
• Marketing automation post-sale to deliver micro-training videos that anticipate their learning needs at each stage of adoption

How can change management practices drive SaaS solutions revenue?

You likely have a compelling ROI for enterprise customers--healthier employees, for example, mean more productivity, and lower insurance rates. At a personal level, though, the case goes beyond logic. We know what we should exercise, lose weight or improve our mental health. Change management can help employees take action and embrace a SaaS-based engagement solution.  The classic ADKAR model can help you understand the barriers to adopting new behaviors: 

Awareness: Raising employees' awareness of the importance of the issue.

Desire: Overcoming defensiveness and discomfort to want to change. 

Knowledge: Educating employees so they're armed with what they need to do to change.

Ability: Employees have the skills and access to the tools they need to change. 

Reinforcement: Feedback, rewards and recognition to make the change stick. 

In enterprise-based SaaS sales, change management is left up to the employer, but you can make it easier for them by anticipating likely barriers and providing ready communications to overcome them. 

What are the signs that additional support or adjustments are needed to improve employee adoption?

Most enterprise solutions achieve only single-digit engagement, while best-in-class are seeing 20-30% utilization. Other warning signs for low employee adoption include: 

• Low traffic (or no metrics) for an employee portal like SharePoint
• Lack of internal education or internal communications (irregular or no employee newsletter, no recurring internal benefits webinars or other communications vehicles) 
• Overburdened, under-resourced HR department 

Our change management team can streamline employee readiness for embracing new processes and SaaS platforms. Book a 30-minute meeting to tackle your employee adoption challenges and discover effective strategies to boost engagement. Partner with us to make change easier!