AstraZeneca's prescription for digital adoption success

To empower employees with the right technology and maximize the ROI of the company’s IT spend, AstraZeneca launched a squad-based global digital adoption strategy.

Ahead of PEX Network's All Access Digital Adoption 2023 event, Steve Bloodworth, AstraZeneca's senior director of digital marketing technology adoption, shared some insights with us. 

PEX Network: How does digital adoption fit into larger digital transformation and business transformation objectives at AstraZeneca?

Steve  Bloodworth: According to recent research, nearly half of digital transformation value is unrealized and roughly 30 percent software spend is duplicative. With 80,000 employees around the world, for companies like AstraZeneca, the financial implications of these issues can add up fast.

As part of the Commercial IT team, we support the sales and marketing functions of our brand teams by building awareness around the different technology solutions we have available.

With over 130 markets around the world, our technology footprint is very large and complex. Our regional teams need to operate fast and in a way that best suits their market. As such, it is essential that our platforms and products are flexible enough to support a wide variety of technology, including third-party solutions. 

If technology is not solving a specific customer problem, we should not be investing in it. 

With the larger goal of improving profitability, my team is responsible for increasing awareness, adoption and usage of technology as well as ensuring the solutions we implement align with the needs of our customers. If technology is not solving a specific customer problem, we should not be investing in it. 

We are also increasingly focused on improving our operating leverage by introducing technology that not only has clear fixed costs, but delivers exponentially more value as usage rates increase. Technology that, when scaled, does not increase in cost per person but unlocks more customer and business value instead.

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PEX Network: As you rolled out AstraZeneca’s digital adoption program, did you encounter any resistance?

SB: Yes and no. As the creation of the team was part of a larger restructuring, some people were used to how the old team did things and were reluctant to embrace a new way of working. Others were simply not aware of what we did and how we could help them.

To help build awareness we deployed internal omni-channel marketing campaigns. Similar to our omni-channel marketers, we use data and insight to target people through digital channels. We also meet with stakeholders face-to-face to help them understand what is in it for them, address any concerns they may have head-on and establish ongoing lines of communication. 

Since the day our team was announced, however, we have received an influx of people proactively reaching out to us and asking for help. This has actually created some problems because we have a small team and have to prioritize our projects based on business impact. As every team thinks their project is the most important, stakeholders are sometimes disappointed when we tell them they will have to wait 

PEX Network: What are some of the major benefits of your digital adoption strategy?

SB: Over the past three years, we have been focused on embedding squads, also referred to as “pods,” to promote a more cross-functional, agile way of working and driving digital adoption.

Before, when our customers set out to get a digital campaign built, executed and out of the door, the process was very slow, inefficient and siloed.  

In 2021, we tested out a four person agile marketing squad to accelerate this process. The idea was to enable the customer to do absolutely everything they needed to do in order to use the technology, build new tools and operationalize them. 

We started to see results right away. For example, in just one day we were able to correct a content error that, in the past, would have taken 3 weeks and 20 people to fix. Once we improved the experience for internal customers, they became our best advocates and were instrumental in embedding and scaling digital adoption into the larger organization. 

Fast forward to 2023, each team has increased to twenty people and they are responsible for delivering end-to-end campaigns in 13 of our major markets. 

Once we improved the experience for internal customers, they became our best advocates and were instrumental in embedding and scaling digital adoption into the larger organization. 

When you give people accountability and train them to use the right technology, the results can be transformational. For example, we worked with one team to identify and train the best-fit people to use a new analytics software solution. Within the first two weeks of using this tool, the team was able to spot a major issue with their paid ads and saved over $1 million by addressing it right away.

In terms of how things are changing from a technology adoption point of view, for the past six months we have been focused on foundational work such as setting up new processes and building a digital adoption playbook.

The playbook includes a five step process around alignment, prepping, promoting, educating, launching, reinforcing and optimizing digital adoption strategies. We have recently shared the playbook with our customers to get their feedback and begin the process of standardizing digital adoption across the different teams we work with. 

We are continuously supporting teams in preparing for new technology launches and upgrades. Right now we are focused on getting people actively engaged and trained before the technology rolls out. 

To support these goals, we have implemented a digital adoption platform and are already using it to enhance some especially painful HR and procurement processes. However, we are still working on scaling it across the entire enterprise. Going forward, deployments of our digital adoption platform will be much more controlled and deliberate to make sure we are really unlocking all of the value we can from it.

PEX Network: how do you measure the ROI or success of digital adoption?

SB: This is something we are still building out and looking to standardize more. Adoption rate, as you may expect, is something we pay close attention to. We also analyze daily and monthly users to understand how, when and why they are using technology. 

We are also building out some user satisfaction scores for each of the products we use to gain a deeper, more holistic understanding of the employee digital experience. This connects back to talent retention because if technology is difficult or frustrating to use you can lose people. 

One thing we try to do is combine quantitative results with qualitative feedback to create promotional content for our team. To build excitement around new technology, we share customer testimonies and proof points that emphasize the benefits of working with us such as improving the digital experience, increasing efficiency and reducing costs. 

We are also trying to move away from some of the vanity metrics our internal customers ask for. For example, the number of customer visits to all of our websites vs. the cost of setting them up. We will still provide that information but, at the same time, we are educating leadership teams to embrace more impact measurements. 

We are starting to show them how the technology we use enables engagements like comments, shares, sign-ups and identifying where somebody has actually taken action and achieved their goals.

In terms of long-term goals, eventually, we would like to expand into optimizing the digital experience of patients. Instead of calling a contact center, we would like to offer them the choice of a purely digital experience that is easier, faster and more satisfying for them to use. By reducing call volume, it would also enable the people in the contact center to focus on higher value activities. 

PEX Network: If you could give those just starting out just one pearl of wisdom, what would it be? 

SB: Do not exclusively use your best people on pilots. You need to test new products and strategies on your “normal” team members. The people who most accurately represent the skill level and experience of the majority of people on your teams to gain a realistic understanding of whether or not it will be successful long-term. If your pilot works with representative people, it will work with anybody in your organization.

I would also say that digital adoption is about more than just the technology, it is about people, leadership and empathy. Digital adoption is a never-ending cycle of making sure you have the best talent using your technology to deliver transformational results. If you overlook the culture component, you will not be able to sustain results. 

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