What is adoption rate? Sometimes called the usage rate, attach rate, acceptance rate, or compliance rate, it is everything for your deployment. It is the rate at which your users are actually doing what you set out for them to do.

If you want to know whether your project has succeeded or failed, measure the adoption rate. The results will not be ambiguous:

• If it’s low, you lose – And it won’t get better. Post-adoption rates of 50% or less always decline. Support services are swamped, core functions and operations are interrupted. The organization is forced to run in dual mode: the “old way” plus the “new way.” Management sees the project as a loss and pulls the plug.
• If it’s high, you win – And this good news improves with age. In many successful cases, 90% adoption is reached by trainees the day after training—and increases from there. Every element works, and fixing the minor glitches typically takes the 90% rate to 96% or higher.

Set the Bar High

Defining your adoption-rate target requires courage and tenacity. Set the bar high at the beginning—90% plus—and make sure it stays there until the end. Stand your ground against the worriers who’ll ask “Do we really need 90% adoption to call this a success? Isn’t that a little unrealistic?”

Just tell them that a major cause of deployment failure is the willingness of management to lower the target to meet actual results.

90%+ is Realistic

Today’s software and hardware work very well. Demand that your vendors prove performance before you launch. After that, adoption rate is a matter of user behaviors post-launch. 90%+ is the right target and it is absolutely realistic.

The proper training—and only the proper training—will deliver these user behaviors every time.