3 Ways to Get the Best ROI from investing in iPads

By Ashley Furness, Guest Blogger and Market Analyst for Software Advice, a research site.

Dimensional Research recently reported an impressive 78 percent of employers planning to deploy tablets across their organization in the next year (83 percent of which chose the iPad). But oddly more than half have yet to define a clear implementation strategy.

“We talk to companies all the time where they literally purchased iPads for their team with no idea of what they were going to be doing with them,” said Matthew Suggs, vice president of enterprise sales at Mediafly Inc., a company that develops iPad sales tools.

With all the hype around the iPad, it’s easy to imagine the device as some sort of silver bullet for increasing sales. But unfortunately, an iPad alone won’t be a game changer for your team. Like most technology investments, a clear rollout strategy is needed to ensure management gets the most bang for their buck. So this week, I set out to find experts top tips for getting the most from their Apple upgrade.

1. Monitor and Adjust Usage

SAVO Group Senior Marketing Director Dan Schleifer said sales management should articulate clear usage goals for their iPad-equipped team and use the results to measure effectiveness. This “governance plan” should monitor such sales activities as deals closed, training materials opened and competitive analyses viewed. In the case of a new product launch, this information will ensure the team is correctly focusing their outside sales efforts. These events are often company’s biggest revenue growth initiative of the year, but also frequently fail in the field due to low adoption.

2. Go Beyond PowerPoint

The iPad’s vivid display is one of its most powerful assets. But UpSync Sales Vice President Gary Galush said just using the device to run standard PowerPoint presentations is a “missed opportunity.” His company– and solutions from MediaFly and Showpad– provide easy-to-use and deploy apps for making and sharing sales presentations in the field. These can draw on images, videos, PDFs, HTML 5 and other digital assets that are most relevant to client.

“It’s all about delivering the your brand’s message based on that specific customers’ needs,” said Meghan Lopresto, vice president of multichannel marketing and sales force analytics for The Cement Bloc.

3. Invest in a Custom Solution

Ease of use is one of the biggest drivers in ensuring your team will use their iPad for more than reading the newspaper. Many companies make the mistake of launching an app that handles one business problem, while other functions are still performed with varying tools.

“Companies that build a bunch of disparate apps find it’s not sustainable, then have to rebuild one platform and end up spending way more then they should,” Excellis Interactive Marketing Director Molly Maple said.

7 Steps to Ensure Software Adoption (A Software Adoption Manifesto)

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just buy a new tool and not have to do anything else to have your team use it and produce dramatic improvement in performance? Unfortunately, members of the team are already busy and having them do anything different takes effort on their part and yours. Resistance within the organization- especially the user base- and poor management of the process are the two biggest reasons software implementations fail to produce their intended results.

However, the effort is well worth it as it can dramatically:

• Increase sales
• Improve predictability / forecast accuracy
• Enhance sales efficiency and effectiveness
• Drive team effectiveness

The following process helps people rapidly embrace the adoption of new tools and methods. Missing any of these steps slows progress and increases time and cost. Though this process largely sequential, some steps can occur in parallel.

1. CREATE URGENCY

• Identify user needs and how you help them do their job faster, easier , better
• Understand competing pressures area

Obstacles:

• Dismissing the approach because, “we tried it before and it didn’t work”
• Organizational arrogance
• Complacency due to lack of visible crisis, low performance standards and insufficient feedback perpetuates clinging to the status quo
• Thinking steps in this process can be skipped
• Not clarifying how the tool solves the problem and improves results

2. GATHER SPONSORSHIP

• Put together a leadership team with enough power to lead the change process
• Ensure the sponsorship group works together toward a common objective

Obstacles:

• Underestimating the challenges in engaging adoption and the importance of a strong, guiding coalition
• Trust issues among members of the sponsorship team
• Not addressing conflicting metrics, goals and agendas
• Cultural issues, including arrogance and the “not invented here” syndrome

3. DEVELOP A VISION AND STRATEGY

• Create a vision to guide the effort
• Develop strategies for achieving the vision
• Optional: establish a pilot group for testing and fine-tuning the approach
• Establish clear metrics and how / when they will be measured

Obstacles:

• Underestimating the importance of having  and selling a clear vision and reason for the change… and the role it plays in helping to direct, align and inspire action
• Failing to emphasize the value of individual and team learning for on-going success
• Cultural issues, i.e. taking short cuts or insufficient focus on any one initiative

4. COMMUNICATE THE OBJECTIVE

• Communicate the intended outcome and why you are excited about it
• Use every vehicle possible to constantly communicate
• Make sure sponsors and managers model the expected behavior

Obstacles:

• Not clarifying what each person needs to do, the support they will get and how performance will be measured
• Thinking you have communicated enough
• The sponsorship / management teams don’t examine their actions / “walk-the talk”
• Leadership loses enthusiasm for this project and moves on to the next new idea

5. ENSURE ACTION

• Have people use the new tools
• Remove obstacles that undermine adoption
• Encourage and reward risk-taking and nontraditional approaches
• Provide needed support and promote learning
• Monitor progress and act quickly to improve adoption

Obstacles:

• Allowing barriers and breakdowns to block use of new methods and tools
• Failure to examine existing systems and create new ones that support the vision and eliminate those that don’t
• Insufficient leadership engagement to generate broad based action
• Resistance to change and fear of undesirable consequences

6. PUBLICIZE SHORT-TERM WINS

• Measure performance and identify “wins”
• Engage management to enable success of the new approach
• Visibly recognize and reward people who achieved wins and made them possible

Obstacles:

• Failing to focus on short-term wins
• Lack of celebration, acknowledgement and rewards for those who achieve the wins
• Without feedback, the team assumes no progress has been made

7. BROADEN ADOPTION AND CHANGE

• Articulate the connections between new behaviors and organizational success
• Use increased credibility to change systems and procedures that don’t support the change
• Reinvigorate the process with new initiatives and change agents
• Hire, promote, and develop people / leaders who can implement the needed changes

Obstacles:

• Declaring victory too soon
• Not leveraging the progress already made to broaden adoption
• Failing to connect specific new behaviors and attitudes with improved performance
• Lacking the necessary leadership and management capabilities

You need this kind of process to ensure you get your intended results from new software tools!

This was informed by John Kotter’s Leading Change.