With all the talk about the cloud, you’d be forgiven for thinking that on-premise solutions had gone out of fashion entirely. However, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Many businesses that operate with sensitive information, such as banks, government organizations, and other tightly regulated sectors, never fully embraced the cloud.
In addition to the security-focused businesses that had to keep things on-prem, we’ve also recently seen the emergence of what has been termed “cloud repatriation.” The reasons for the trends are complex and include compliance, performance, and cost concerns.
Experts suggest the future of IT infrastructure deployment and management will involve a more hybrid approach. Others suggest that the return to on-prem is about the expiration of COVID-19-era contracts.
The pandemic saw a massive shift towards remote work, which exacerbated the trend toward the cloud. It also led to a surge of importance in digital adoption platforms (DAPs) as businesses tried to replicate in-office productivity during stay-at-home orders.
Notably, some organizations — namely those committed to on-prem for security and regulatory reasons — were shut out of these innovative ways to onboard and train employees because these services were delivered over the cloud. However, thanks to Usetiful’s digital adoption solutions for on-premise software, all that is about to change.
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| Image by DC Studio on Freepik |
What are on-premise digital adoption solutions?
DAP solutions are almost exclusively delivered as cloud-based services. These solutions include a range of tools for onboarding, such as product tours, checklists, tooltips, and more. There are good reasons for this, including accessibility, scalability, cost-effectiveness, and automated updates and maintenance.
While this works for the most part, it leaves out companies that are reluctant to work with other software vendors due to security concerns. This situation is unfortunate because DAPs have emerged as a solution to employee and user behavior changes, particularly around learning to adopt new software tools.
The ongoing digital transformation has touched every industry, including finances, government, healthcare, legal sectors, and businesses that rely on intellectual property, such as automotive, aerospace, and naval industries. These organizations are under as much pressure as other sectors to quickly and fluidly onboard team members and ensure they can adopt and use digital tools competently.
There is a clear need for a DAP solution for businesses that can’t afford to let a cloud vendor into their tech stack for security and compliance reasons. The right tool can unlock the benefits of DAP tools, such as streamlined onboarding, faster time to productivity, increased employee engagement, and lower training costs.
Thankfully, Usetiful is here to provide that much-needed service.
How does Usetiful work for on-prem onboarding
Here is a simple step-by-step guide that details how offline and on-premise organizations can use Usetiful to serve their employees with dynamic and engaging onboarding content.
Content creation & storage
Here is how to design the content via the Usetiful platform before exporting it to your on-prem storage.
Usetiful is a cloud-based onboarding solution. As such, users can build their onboarding content on a secure web-based platform. Usetiful is also no-code, meaning even nontechnical team members can use the WYSIWYG editor to make slick, professional onboarding content via a drag-and-drop interface.
Once the content has been created, Usetiful users can manually export the script from the online platform.
The exported file can then be securely stored in a local repository within the organization's on-prem infrastructure.
Integration and delivery
Once the Usetiful script is stored on the local repository, it’s available to use on-demand, even for offline users. The script is designed to integrate seamlessly with the target software and poses minimal disruption to your existing systems. All the onboarding content that was created in the first step is loaded directly from the repository, ensuring total security.
Additionally, with the right setup at the context creation stage, organizations can still deliver contextual onboarding content to their employees. For example, the onboarding content that is pushed toward the user can be based on where they are within the target software or even the specific actions they are taking.
Similarly, organizations can build onboarding content based on attributes like user roles, departments, or experience levels. This approach ensures that onboarding assistance is highly personalized and relevant to each user or the parts of the application or tasks they frequently use.
Clearly, teams that use on-prem infrastructure are particularly security-conscious. As such, one of the key aspects of the Usetiful on-prem solution is that it gives these organizations complete control over their sensitive data.
When teams employ the Usetiful script, they can do so with confidence that no user data, reports, or analytics are transmitted to Usetiful or any external servers. What’s more, any generated data remains within the organization's environment, ensuring that privacy and regulatory compliance are observed.
Of course, this approach to data security has been built into Usetiful’s cloud-based onboarding platform from day one. As a European digital adoption platform, Usetiful is committed to GDPR.
As part of its privacy promise, Usetiful:
Do not track information about the organization's website users or end-users.
Uses zero-knowledge design to minimize exposure to user data.
Stores all user information with the EU, ensuring compliance with GDRP.
Do not share user information with third parties, regardless of their location.
Other features for on-prem teams
There are a couple of other interesting features that teams need to know about when they’re designing onboarding content for on-prem setups.
For starters, Usetiful’s white-labeling features mean organizations have full control over how their onboarding content looks and feels. The script can be configured with brand colors and font, ensuring a seamless experience.
Additionally, teams can share links to the onboarding content and work collaboratively together on the Usetiful platform to create content that works for everyone. Finally, teams can implement version control to deliver different iterations of onboarding content across their organization, ensuring consistent and unified content that is tailored toward different roles or departments.
Final thoughts
Businesses running on-prem software were previously excluded from the benefits of digital adoption platforms. However, thanks to Usetiful, they can save developer resources by using a flexible no-code tool to create onboarding content that helps employees quickly learn and adopt their tools. Create an account today to see how Usetiful can help you drive product adoption, employee engagement, and overall productivity.