Digital Friction and Ways FlowMo Can Help

Digital Friction

Gartner defines digital friction as the unnecessary effort exerted by employees using technology for work. Digital friction can lead to decreased productivity and workflow which in turn can affect moral and profits. FlowMo can help alleviate digital friction in your workplace.

Reasons for Digital Friction

There are several reasons why digital friction emerges in a workspace, but let's focus on a few.

Too Many Applications and Poor User Experience

Companies spend a lot of money acquiring the right tools, but sometimes even the best tools can be overwhelming. If employees aren't trained properly in the applications they may not use the right tool effectively and come away with a negative experience. You can refer to our related blog post about SaaS sprawl fatigue that goes over a similar problem.

Communication

Another reason for digital friction is the numerous ways to communicate within a single work environment. There are work emails, Slack, in-app messaging systems, etc. Both the volume of communication that is required for the modern work environment and all of the different applications for employee communication can lead to frustration, confusion, and digital friction.

Top-Down Decision Making

Like we stated above, companies are always looking for the right tools to make their employee's work smoother and increase profits. However, this can lead to a top-down decision making where employers are introducing new software to their employees and the employees aren't able to keep up with the changes, which again leads to a negative user experience and decreased moral.

How FlowMo can help

FlowMo can help with your organization’s digital friction by training employees hands on in the applications your company uses. Let's go back to our individual reasons and provide an example of where FlowMo could help.

"Too Many Applications and Poor User Experience"

Let’s say you just acquired Asana, a project management SaaS. This is a great tool but can be overwhelming to someone brand new to it. Effectively training staff in new tools is one of the best ways to reduce digital friction. You could build a FlowMo walkthrough overtop any SaaS platform, and you can view our walkthrough example of how to filter an Asana project board by highest priority.

"Communication"

Let’s say you know a trick to sync your Asana tasks to your Outlook calendar and email, but others in your organization don't know it. There are many small tricks that come with experienced SaaS users, and you can share those with others in your organization by personally building the walkthroughs in the SaaS platforms. By linking Asana with your outlook email and calendar, you are spreading that vital piece of communication across platforms in order to better stay on top of work. Check out our walkthrough here.

"Top-Down Decision Making"

One great thing about being an Admin in FlowMo is you can track your employee's progress and personally assign them walkthroughs and skill sets to complete. Admins can take charge of employee training to make sure everyone is on the same page and can use the tools properly. You can check out our documentation on how to add users as an Admin, change their info, share walkthroughs and skill sets, and navigating to the Admin page.

Recap

We went over the meaning of digital friction and gave some reasons that digital friction exists in the workplace. We also went through case by case of how FlowMo can help your digital friction strain.

You can download the FlowMo chrome extension here is you haven't already.

If you have any questions, comments or want to request a demo, you can contact us here.