The Technology Adoption Life Cycle

Introduction I had an interesting week discussing a variety of topics related to the Technology Adoption Life Cycle. From Wikipedia: The Technology Adoption Life Cycle model describes the adoption or acceptance of a new product or innovation, according to the demographic and psychological characteristics of defined adopter groups. The process of adoption over time is typically illustrated as a classical normal distribution or “bell curve.” The model indicates that the first group of people to use a new product is called “innovators,” followed by “early adopters.” Next come the early and late majority, and the last group to eventually adopt a product are called “laggards.” Although all of topics described below fall into the broad category of enterprise systems, the tone and content of the conversations could not have been more diverse. These conversations underscored the disparate relationships among organizations, end-users, and technology. (Side note: Interestingly enough, I had these conversations via three different methods: blog, phone, and email.) The objective of this post is to stitch these all together under one unifying question: Who’s most likely to be on the left of the curve? To simplify matters, I’ll place all organizations into three categories: The Struggling Organization The Self-Sufficient Organization The Adventurous Organization The Struggling Organization Yesterday, I spoke with David Carr of Carr Communications about my book. David used to be the senior editor at Baseline Magazine and now is a freelance editor, writer, and web designer. We talked about challenges that organizations face implementing new systems and why so many projects fail to hit their marks. He was particularly intrigued by my mention of Shane Jeweler’s struggles with SAP.







I also had a nice chat with Sarah Runge, author of the forthcoming book “Stop Blaming the Software – Corporate Profiling for IT Project Success.” Sarah was kind enough to send me a few pages focusing on organization’s pre-implementation challenges: the difficulty of gathering comprehensive system requirements during project discovery the dynamic nature of requirements the inevitable scope creep and resultant problems during IT projects My conversations with Sarah and David concerned issues that organizations have plagued both clients and vendors for years and continue to manifest themselves during many (if not most) major IT projects. In terms of the Technology Adoption Life Cycle, for obvious reasons, organizations that have historically struggled with enterprise systems will rarely—if ever—be on the left of the curve. The Self-Sufficient Organization I continued to support two of my clients upgrading from Lawson version 8 to 9. Previous implementation issues and future enhancements to the product could not be less relevant now (as well as in the short- and mid-terms). Both clients are going live in a few weeks and the focus is very much on what needs to happen to continue paying employees, running financial reports, and the like. Only after the dust settles will “future enhancements” be broached. In terms of the Technology Adoption Life Cycle, organizations “getting by” are usually reluctant to take the lead on a new but largely untested technology. In fact, in both cases, neither organization really wanted to upgrade its applications. Lawson is decommissioning version 8 of the software in the near future. The Adventurous Organization I exchanged emails with a Lawson client in the midst of the vendor’s first implementation of the recently announced Enterprise Search. She had nothing but praise for the application’s integration with Microsoft Office. The ability to essentially google all things Lawson (tables, reports, fields, reports, etc.) will make her job much easier. Finally, I found myself in the middle of an interesting debate on Vinnie Mirchandani’s Deal Architect on whether organizations were ready for Web 2.0 services, SOA, and other “left of the curve” technologies. Opinions varied but all responses reminded me of Nelson Mandela’s quote: “Where you stand depends on where you sit.” In terms of the Technology Adoption Life Cycle, organizations with sufficient financial and human resources and a compelling business need are more likely to implement a largely untested technology, especially if the vendor is willing to work with the “beta client” by providing free or heavily discounted resources in order to promote the implementation as a successful case study. This is the case with the Lawson client implementing Enterprise search. Conclusion The common theme from all of my conversations this week is that organizations that have had problems implementing and maintaining their systems are much less likely to be early adopters. In other words, financial, human resource, and political reasons place the vast majority of organizations squarely in the middle of the curve. When walking is a challenge, it’s hard to imagine running.