The News Release: WalkMe™, the leading Digital Adoption Platform and one of the fastest-growing software companies globally, announced today the launch of its Digital Adoption Center (DAC), which unlocks crucial business intelligence for CIOs and business leaders looking to make data-driven business decisions, maximize ROI across various business processes and improve the bottom line. The launch of the DAC is supported by WalkMe’s first Out-of-Home (OOH) advertising campaign that positions the company as the ally CIOs need to build strategy and lead successful digital transformation efforts.

With business processes today no longer being platform-specific, CIOs seek full visibility into usage and performance metrics across the many platforms that feed every business process. WalkMe’s DAC provides full visibility and insight across key business technology platforms, helps to monitor employee engagement with various business systems and raise efficiency, productivity and performance across the organization. Armed with detailed insights on ways to improve technology adoption, CIOs and technology leaders can drive strategic decisions that increase employee productivity, recapture wasted spending and create revenue growth. Read the full news release from Yahoo Finance.

Analyst Take: This story caught my attention because it brings a question to the surface that I have been asking myself for a while. Do we need a platform to manage Digital Transformation? Perhaps asked another way, do I need a platform to manage my platforms?

Do CIOs Need a Platform to Manage Platforms?

Perhaps the right question is, do companies need to be able to put an ROI on digital transformation investments. It seems like the answer should be emphatically yes, but it is also easy to argue that companies have largely been reacting to market pressure to digitize without a ton of clear understanding of app sprawl, adoption and success metrics. In short, which apps are cutting the mustard?

When it comes to the current market place, what are the applications that manage adoption and success of tech investments? Sure there are tools to manage and deploy apps in the cloud, to meter usage of CPU resources, to manage customer service and sales, to provide analytics from various data sources and even analytics within tools to provide visibility into how an individual application is being used. However, what about an application to look at ALL of an enterprises applications? There really isn’t much out there and that seems to be the precise location for WalkMe to insert itself into the conversation.

Why CIOs

One question that immediately came to mind for me is, why CIO’s? If you have read any of my thought leadership on Digital Transformation , you will know that I don’t believe that the CIO or any individual role is solely accountable for successful digital transformation. With the most successful transformations being about people, process and technology delivering modern experiences via a strong goal oriented culture, it is easy to forget that tech enables transformation, but isn’t in itself the purpose of digital transformation.

Having said that, the CIO sits in a perfect role to bridge the technology with a company’s go to market as well as internal operations. This is where investments often stall. If tech leads by procuring an app specific to solve a problem, often the BU doesn’t buy in because tech doesn’t full understand the need, or politics and culture gets in the way. However, if the BU’s run off and make shadow IT investments, it leads to a lack of organizational cohesiveness and ultimately there ends up being too many apps for too many business units and experiences are jeopardized both internally and externally. This is exactly what a CIO can organize with the right tools, and that needs to start with a wrapper around the user environment and all of the applications to make them easier to use, manage and understand ROI. WalkMe seems to be on the right track here.

Note: I do see CDO’s as a potential key player in this as well. I am thinking that WalkMe was considering the commonality of a CIO versus the more sparse CDO when designing and targeting the product for this particular launch.

Final Verdict, To WalkMe or Not to WalkMe?

I believe that WalkMe is at the early stages of becoming a much more widely talked about company. While there certainly isn’t a shortage of analytics tools, this is the first time that I’ve really seen a company lean into positioning a platform in this manner. It feels like every company promises “Digital Transformation” as a byproduct of spending money on its product, solution or service, but as an enterprise grows into having ERP, CRM, HCM, Collaboration, Analytics, Social and in most cases a few of each, how in the world can a company transform without a solid hold of which tools are performing and which are not?

Meanwhile, the CIO isn’t the only role that needs to be accountable to digital transformation activities, but in terms of an executive that is well suited to bridge business and technology, the CIO and/or a CDO certainly fits the bill.

I think it is time that companies start to get their proverbial digital environments in better order. It’s positive to see a company like WalkMe step up to the challenge of taming app sprawl and building a better way to clearly recognize which applications are carrying their weight while also making sure employees are able to quickly and easily identify and leverage their capabilities.