Greisy Flores, Senior Global Product Manager of the Digital Adoption Platform at Nestlé, speaks to us about the implementation of WalkMe, how this has helped employee engagement and how this has, ultimately, has affected Nestlé’s Digital Adoption Strategy.
Greisy Flores is the Senior Global Product Manager of the Digital Adoption Platform at Nestle. Her role involves developing and managing different IT products that can aid Nestle employees, keeping a razor-sharp focus on the user experience to ensure positive business outcomes.
Can you tell us about your career journey so far?
My career started in manufacturing. I worked for Coca-Cola right out of college and in 1995 I was hired by the Perrier Group of America, which would ultimately become Nestlé Waters. I spent several years in manufacturing and warehousing before going to work at the corporate offices as a Business Analyst. That is where I made the switch to IT, around 2002.
After some challenges with IT training, I became very interested in finding new ways for our employees to learn how to use technology. Eventually, after a bit of persuasion, my manager created a new position in the team which I used to develop a new learning and training approach. That is what led me to my current position.
Can you tell us a bit more about Nestlé, how it started and its mission?
Nestlé is the Good food, Good life company. We unlock the power of food to enhance quality of life for everyone, today and for generations to come. Our history began in 1866, when German-born pharmacist Henri Nestlé developed a breakthrough infant food by combining cow’s milk, wheat flour and sugar for consumption by infants who could not be breastfed to tackle high mortality rates.
In 1905 the company he founded merged with Anglo-Swiss, to form what is now known as the Nestlé Group. For over 150 years, we have been applying our expertise in nutrition, health and wellness to help people, families and pets live happier, healthier lives. We constantly aim to push the boundaries of what is possible with food, beverage and nutritional health products to promote better health, greater accessibility and affordability, effortless preparation, protection of our natural resources and enjoyment.
How did the Center first come about and what are its main aims?
The team and programme started in 2016 with a focus on Performance Support. When I created the Technology Learning Center the goal was to embed learning in the workflow and make it easier for people to learn how to use technology. We didn’t realise it right away, but we were also creating a new mindset. People were learning to use new technologies and applications the same way they were learning anything else, in classrooms using PowerPoints and without hands-on practice. There was also no way to measure the effectiveness of technical training nor were we able to measure the impact it had on productivity.
What were some challenges you found when creating the Technology Learning Center?
The main challenge was overcoming old ways of thinking, which is still hard.
First, I had to convince the right people in the organisation that even though they were investing in digital tools to collect and analyse data and to execute business processes, it was not enough. They needed to allocate resources and invest money into digital adoption and digital adoption solutions.
The second challenge is that, in many companies, digital adoption is the responsibility of the employee, or the user of the technology. It is up to them, after only a few hours of training, to know all about the application including the advanced features. They are also expected to keep up with new releases and changes to the applications. When something doesn’t work, each application has its own support process, adding even more complexity. The burden is on the user. We needed to break that paradigm. We needed to say no, the responsibility of adoption usage is with the application owner, not with the receiver of the application.
What is WalkMe and why did you choose to implement its Digital Adoption Platform?
WalkMe is a cloud-based Digital Adoption Platform that helps organisations like Nestlé to accelerate their Digital Transformation and better realise the value of their software investments.
The reason for choosing WalkMe is because our IT organisation is becoming a Product-based organisation, which means that IT Product Teams are responsible for the adoption of their products. The paradigm shift is exactly what we needed, when we needed it.
We chose WalkMe for its ability to provide visibility into how employees are using our technologies and for us to take action to improve user experiences and productivity, which are key to improving adoption.
How has the implementation helped the Center and your Digital Adoption Strategy?
The WalkMe implementation is helping us in a lot of ways. It has helped the Digital Adoption Center elevate our purpose from being a Technology Learning Center to a Digital Adoption Center.
The Digital Adoption Platform gives us analytics and insights into user behaviour in the systems which increases business acumen. It helps us create contextual help that guides the user and helps them complete digital tasks, even on their first try, making onboarding of new technologies much easier and reduces time to competency.
How has technology changed training in the workplace?
Data! We now have real data about how users are using the different applications. We can see where they are struggling, jumping out of the workflow and not completing tasks. This level of insight helps us focus our resources and create the right content.
Data also brings visibility to the full tech stack and to the level of use and engagement people are having with technology. One thing is clear, there is no digital transformation without people. We need them to adopt and use the new tools and processes to improve productivity and our job is to build solutions that make it easier for them to do that.
The average person goes into about eight applications per day and a company can have as many as 200 applications. Even if every single application was perfect, the user still has to change gears every time they go from one to another. That costs time and a lot of mental energy. That’s another benefit of WalkMe – it maintains the user experience and prevents navigation burnout.
The last thing is contextual help, which keeps an employee’s focus. If I’m in an application and trying to get something done, when you click on the WalkMe button, you’re given exactly what you need to complete the task and nothing else. That level of focus – where you don’t have to search for what you need helps to improve productivity and employee engagement. It then allows people to move on and do real work. Amazing stuff happens when people have enough time away from the computer to talk to each other and think about innovative ideas. We want to free up as much time as possible from the mundane so that people can do the things that matter.
How can training and development assist in employee engagement?
The results that we get are due to people’s behaviours, it’s the way that we act; the choices we make. Our behaviours are a result of our experiences – it’s our mindset.
What WalkMe does is allows us to make the user interaction with the new software easy and stress free. This empowers the employee. Next time they have to learn a new system, they are more likely to not fear or resist it. Once this happens a few times, they will then think, ‘Hey, I am tech-savvy. I got this!’ When you start feeling that way you become much more positive about your job, you’re much happier and feel like you’re accomplishing things. Engagement is going to go up.
Sometimes, it’s hard to see the connection between a good user experience with an application and feeling great about what you do every day. But it is there.
What would be your advice to other C-levels looking to improve their training processes, or enhance their Digital Adoption Strategy?
Your customers are important. You work hard and invest big in creating the best customer experience because you know that it matters. Well, the employee experience is just, if not more, important because without your people adopting and using applications to their fullest potential and realising their benefits, digital transformation will always just be a goal. This is especially important during the past few years when the pandemic accelerated the need for companies to enable their employees to work remotely using technology. And remember to shift from making people technology savvy with training to making technology people savvy with WalkMe’s Digital Adoption Platform.
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