Authored by:
- Jared Brock | Co-Founder and Director of Technology, NovoAuxilia
- Dan DeFranco | Director of Solution Marketing, Infor Distribution
If you've spent any time around enterprise software implementation, you’d know the typical ingredients for a "successful" project: good planning, good project management, solid gap analysis, and a great project team. You’d also know that success is often boiled down to being on time and on budget, before you move on to the next thing. But I'm going to suggest a different approach, and it might surprise you.
I've been helping clients implement enterprise solutions for over a decade, and while the “ingredients” above are always important and their metrics do matter (especially to your leadership), what is equally important but often overlooked is user adoption. User adoption is the hidden variable that turns an otherwise "green" project into a true success with actual value.
Today’s user adoption challenge
We tend to think an enterprise software implementation project is successful when it's done on time and on budget, but we don't usually anticipate what happens next. In six months, updates might be pushed to change delivered workflows. In eight months, some of the folks on your project team may have left for greener pastures. In 12 months, the rest of your project team might have retired and you've managed to hire a few promising new people. But who are they learning from? Is there anybody left to tell them not just what to do, but why? Entropy is at work, and things can fall apart.
Sometimes, it’s worse: you have a core group of people who love the system, but for everybody else—the people in the stockroom, running in the lot, and packing the trucks—they don’t like it or know how to use it. Now what?
In an age where the risk of implementing niche technical configurations is dropping, there's no reason to tolerate a system that doesn't empower every type of user. Success is what happens after the go-live, and it's in the hands of all users—not just the select few who are all-in.
Communication is key
There is a better way. When users at all levels of your organization feel empowered and knowledgeable about the system, you build greater operational resilience, even in moments of crisis. Consistent communication is the backbone of user adoption. When your users know when a system update is coming, what to expect from it, or what is changing in a commonly used feature, they will become familiar with the routine. Everybody, from your drivers to your finance analysts, will feel more prepared and confident to utilize the enhancements.
Consistent communication might consist of regular email notifications with notes about upcoming features, bug fixes, or alternative procedures. It could also be a robust and easily accessible internal knowledge base. Instead of workarounds your users aren't telling you about, clear communication throughout the product lifecycle makes using that product the path of least resistance.
Best practices to drive user adoption
So, what is user adoption? For most organizations, it means their people use the system as actually intended: long-term, evolving over time, on their own, and without resorting to old workarounds. That may feel like a tall order, but if brought in early and properly communicated, I promise it isn't.
In our experience with distribution organizations, we’ve found success when we approach user adoption in two parts:
1) During the implementation project:
Continuous hands-on exposure. This should begin early in the project and be broad in model and scope, not just a single in-person training delivered eight months before the go-live. Users need to be on the platform to get accustomed to it, and they need to see how things change over time as the project evolves to be invested in the end state.
2) Post-go-live:
- Durable processes that are easily understood through an intuitive user experience. It’s essential to choose a solution that fosters rapid user adoption.
- Reference materials and onboarding processes. When a new employee is hired 18 months after the go-live, they must get similar exposure to that of those who received it during the implementation phase. Then, they need to be able to absorb the institutional knowledge that your team has built on their own since the initial implementation.
With that in mind, how do you set up your organization and its users for success?
- Projects should be structured and solutions built in ways that minimize complexity, simplify workflows, and provide good checkpoints.
- Clear reporting is also important. A good implementation partner should be able to help by bridging product knowledge with industry knowledge. That’s the only way to be successful—there are no shortcuts here.
- The solution also needs to encourage user adoption. The user interface must be intuitive, the data models need to closely track business processes, and these processes need to be stable.
- Information needs to be available, accessible, and up-to-date. That could mean an internal knowledge base, help articles on your helpdesk platform, or materials on each department's Microsoft SharePoint.
Infor CloudSuite Distribution accelerates user adoption
That's why organizations love the comprehensive Infor CloudSuite™ Distribution solution. The design is clean and intuitive; clutter is minimized, and the deliberate use of color helps guide users in the right direction as they move through processes. Most importantly, the user interface is consistent across updates, giving users plenty of time to learn the changes without being overwhelmed.
The user interface is a critical factor in increasing user adoption, as it’s one of the few common elements between the experience that your controller has with the system and that of your delivery driver. The interface needs to elevate and empower both. While product functionality, sensible data models, and reliable, quick processing are important, they produce diminishing returns when nobody can find their way around the interface.
Key elements that encourage user adoption in Infor™ CloudSuite Distribution include:
- Role-based workspaces: Specific to distribution roles (e.g., supply chain director, chief financial officer (CFO), purchasing manager, inventory manager, and service manager) that personalize the Infor CloudSuite experience for each user. They show only the tasks and insights relevant to their role, which speeds up onboarding, reduces resistance, and improves day-to-day productivity.
- Industry Process Catalog (e.g., order to cash, demand to plan, procure to pay, plan to inventory): The processes are prebuilt using best practices, so users aren't learning a system and a process that doesn’t match their needs at the same time.
- In-app learning and educational resources: Infor Adoption Accelerator embeds step-by-step guidance, tooltips, reminders, and real-time validations directly inside Infor CloudSuite’s workflows. This in-context guidance shortens the learning curve and drives consistent, accurate task completion from day one.
- Infor Industry AI: You can easily adopt new innovations across artificial intelligence (AI), AI agents, analytics, and automation. This is because Infor’s advanced technologies and AI are grounded in business and industry context, and built on the Infor Industry Cloud Platform, where customers deploy AI up to 30% faster than their peers.
Explore user adoption strategies with Infor
There's a lot to unpack when it comes to user adoption and many ways to tackle it. Whether you're considering a journey with Infor CloudSuite Distribution or your implementation is well into the rearview mirror, there's always an opportunity to improve user adoption.
To learn more about how Infor CloudSuite Distribution can put you on a path towards successful implementation with accelerated user adoption, join us for the following webinar:
Why ERP Projects Stall After Go-Live, and How to Plan One That Doesn't
October 28, 2026, 1:30 PM EST
Register here