How to develop a global standardized adoption framework

This article is based on a presentation given by Giso at our Customer Success Festival, Amsterdam in 2024.

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With businesses tackling complex processes and embracing digital transformation, it’s not enough to simply provide software solutions – true success comes from ensuring customers derive measurable value from their investments.

This is where adoption becomes a game-changer.

As someone who has spent years shaping customer success strategies at Siemens, I’ve witnessed the challenges and opportunities that come with driving adoption in industries as diverse as automotive, aerospace, and manufacturing.

In this article, I’ll take you through the approach we’ve developed at Siemens to scale adoption and deliver value, even in the most complex customer environments.

We’ll explore:

The structure of Siemens’ customer success organization
The development of our global Adoption Framework
How we address adoption challenges in traditional industries
The tools and processes we use to measure and report on success
How we’re setting the foundation for scalable, customer-centric growth

By the end, you’ll see how a structured approach to adoption can transform customer relationships and drive lasting impact.

Building strategy and operations for customer success

Today, my role at Siemens focuses on strategy and operations within customer success, a division I had the privilege of initiating.

I pitched the need for an operational backbone to our directors, emphasizing that without a dedicated function managing the operations of customer success, scaling would be nearly impossible.

While our team is still relatively small, this early formalization is a crucial step toward creating a mature, scalable model.

The adoption challenge in traditional industries

Adoption is a term that’s frequently mentioned but often misunderstood. In traditional engineering companies, like those we serve – think Boeing, BMW, and others – adoption is a multifaceted and challenging process.

Unlike simpler scenarios where adoption might involve monitoring the consumption of features, we deal with customers immersed in intricate processes like designing, developing, and manufacturing cars, planes, and other complex products.

Driving adoption in such environments requires addressing questions like “how,” “when,” and “whom.” It’s not just about encouraging usage but about embedding our solutions into the customer's workflow in a way that delivers measurable value. This makes change management an essential component of our strategy.

The importance of change management

Change management, in this context, is about creating what I call a “landing strip” for our solutions.

It’s about ensuring that the customer’s team can start consuming the software effectively, integrating it into their operations, and ultimately realizing its value. This process is far from straightforward and involves navigating complex organizational structures and processes at the customer’s end.

Our focus is on helping customers transition from simply owning our software to actually leveraging it as a driver of innovation and efficiency in their business. This requires a nuanced approach tailored to their specific needs and challenges.

Introducing the adoption framework

To address these challenges, we’ve developed an adoption framework designed to provide structure and clarity to our efforts. It’s a work in progress, reflecting both the struggles we’ve encountered and the progress we’re making.

This framework is our guide for ensuring that adoption is not an afterthought but a well-planned and executed process that aligns with the customer’s goals.

Navigating complexity in Siemens' digital industry software

Working at Siemens means navigating a vast and multifaceted organization. With 425,000 employees globally, Siemens operates across various business units.

You may be familiar with Siemens Healthcare or Mobility, which handles trains and related infrastructure. My focus, however, lies within Digital Industries Software (DISW) – the division dedicated to software innovation. It’s here that our customer success efforts reside.

Within DISW, we operate as a centralized software unit, often referred to as a "software silo." This division alone employs 25,000 people, and in fiscal year 2023, we reported $5 billion in revenue, including $1 billion in annual recurring revenue (ARR).

While ARR signifies a shift toward subscription-based business models, Siemens is still in the midst of a significant transformation. Historically, we’ve sold software on a perpetual licensing model, and transitioning to subscription-based offerings involves complex changes – not only in our products and pricing but also in renegotiating contracts with customers.

This transformation is no small feat, yet it’s inspiring to work for a company achieving double-digit growth while leading the industry. DISW serves an extensive range of customers, spanning industries and scales – from global giants to smaller enterprises.

Our software portfolio reflects this diversity, encompassing numerous products acquired over time, further adding to the complexity.

The complexity of serving customers across the lifecycle

The complexity of our portfolio mirrors the complexity of the industries we serve. Siemens' offerings cover the entire product lifecycle, from the earliest design and requirements stages to manufacturing and ongoing servicing.

For instance, in the automotive sector, our software supports every stage of a car’s lifecycle, from concept design to production and beyond. And it doesn’t stop there; our portfolio integrates seamlessly with Siemens’ broader hardware solutions, including motors, sensors, and programmable logic controllers (PLCs).

This breadth of offerings means our approach to customer success goes far beyond tracking the consumption of specific features or functions. Instead, we engage with our customers at the process level, helping them achieve value realization—the ultimate goal of any software implementation.

This focus on value creation is critical, given the intricacies of the workflows we support, whether they involve designing cutting-edge vehicles, optimizing industrial plants, or innovating in high-tech manufacturing.

Why complexity demands a new approach to customer success

The sheer complexity of Siemens’ offerings and customer needs requires us to adopt a highly tailored approach to customer success. With multiple products, diverse customer requirements, and intricate processes to address, a one-size-fits-all model simply doesn’t work.

Instead, our efforts are centered on deeply understanding our customers’ workflows and embedding our solutions into their operations in a way that generates measurable value.

This context sets the stage for the development of our adoption framework, which is designed to bring clarity and structure to these efforts. It’s about moving beyond traditional notions of adoption and ensuring our solutions integrate seamlessly into our customers’ processes, helping them innovate and thrive in increasingly complex industries.

Building the foundation for customer success at Siemens

The evolution of customer success at Siemens is a journey of growth and transformation. Starting small, we’ve made significant strides in structuring our approach and laying a solid foundation to scale.

Let me take you through how we’ve organized ourselves to meet the challenges of serving a diverse and complex customer base.

The structure of customer success

Currently, our team consists of about 60 individuals, and we’ve established a clear organizational structure to drive our efforts forward.

Here’s how it’s set up:

1. Strategy and operations

This department, officially established just a year ago, is where I work. Led by a director, this team focuses on standardizing processes and defining best practices. Our key responsibilities include:

Operating procedures and standardization: Establishing clear processes, playbooks, and dashboards.
Definitions and metrics: Setting standards for terms like “CSM sentiment,” “red accounts,” and calculating the customer health index (CHI).
Customer journey design: Mapping out how customers interact with our offerings throughout their lifecycle.
Analytics and program management: Leveraging data to drive insights and managing large-scale initiatives.

This foundational work ensures that our customer success efforts are consistent, measurable, and scalable.

2. Zones and customer success managers

This is the frontline of customer success, where our Customer Success Managers (CSMs) work directly with clients. The zones are structured to align closely with the needs of the business, ensuring that customers receive personalized and effective support.

3. Customer advocacy

Although still a small department with just two or three members, customer advocacy is a crucial component of our strategy. Advocacy is often underestimated, but its potential extends far beyond creating success stories. It encompasses:

Co-marketing: Partnering with customers to share joint successes.
Co-design and co-development: Collaborating on product innovations tailored to customer needs.
Co-research and co-investment: Working together to drive mutual growth and success.

We’re just beginning to explore the possibilities of advocacy, but its role in fostering deeper relationships and driving value for customers is clear.

4. Partner management

Another critical area is partner management, which supports our vast network of 4,000 global partners. With the shift toward subscription-based sales, our partners need to adopt a customer success mindset, including managing renewals and delivering value.

We’ve launched a large-scale program to enable and educate our partners on these principles, ensuring they’re equipped to succeed in this new landscape.

5. Customer experience

The customer experience team focuses on gathering and utilizing insights from customer surveys and feedback. Their work informs improvements in how we introduce new products, ensuring we deliver more value and better experiences than ever before.

Laying the foundation for future growth

Although we are a small team within Siemens’ 24,000-strong digital industries software division, our vision is ambitious. Over the next three years, we aim to grow to a team of 500 CSMs and Value Creation Managers (VCMs).

To achieve this, laying a solid foundation is essential. Like building a house, without a strong base, scaling becomes impossible.

By formalizing processes, building robust advocacy and partner programs, and continually focusing on customer experience, we’re setting Siemens up for long-term success. The journey is just beginning, but the groundwork we’re laying today is critical to realizing our vision.

Driving transformation through strategy and operations

In the world of customer success, strategy and operations play a crucial role in creating the foundation for growth and transformation.

At Siemens, we’ve made significant progress in formalizing this function to support the day-to-day operations of our customer success efforts. Let me share what we do and how this work is reshaping the way we engage with customers.

The role of strategy and operations

Our team in strategy and operations is responsible for a wide range of initiatives that are vital for customer success.

Some of our key focus areas include:

Framework deployment: Establishing a standardized, global framework for customer success across all business units.
Customer listening: Gaining insights from customer feedback to inform decisions and improve experiences.
Onboarding and training: Creating structured programs, including role plays and business simulations, to equip CSMs with the skills and confidence needed to work effectively with digital customers.
Operational intelligence: Improving data hygiene and reporting capabilities to enable data-driven decision-making.
Process standardization: Aligning all teams – sales, presales, marketing, and services—around a unified process for subscription-based business models.

The customer success framework

One of our most significant achievements over the past year has been the development of a common framework for customer success.

This framework introduces:

New roles and responsibilities: Defining clear ownership of customer success activities across teams.
Artifacts and processes: Standardizing tools and workflows to ensure consistency.
A unified approach to customer lifecycle management: Transitioning from an internal lens (land, adopt, expand, renew) to a customer-centric perspective that reflects the customer’s journey.

This framework sets the foundation for a new go-to-market process tailored to a subscription business model. It’s not just about internal alignment – it’s about creating a shared language and methodology that resonates with customers and integrates seamlessly across all functions.

Enabling digital transformation with digital threads

To address the complexity of our software portfolio, we’ve developed digital threads – prescriptive solutions designed to enable digital transformation for our customers. These threads package our diverse solutions into cohesive offerings that help customers transition to new business models.

By using digital threads, we can identify opportunities for growth, cross-sell, and upsell, while also providing customers with clear pathways to achieve their goals.

Integrating customer success into the framework

Customer success activities plug directly into this overarching framework, encompassing:

Success planning: Collaborating with customers to set and achieve their goals.
Adoption and nurturing: Ensuring customers derive value from their solutions.
Value management: Measuring and demonstrating the impact of our solutions.
Risk and renewal management: Proactively addressing challenges to maintain long-term relationships.

This integration ensures that customer success isn’t a siloed function but a core part of Siemens’ go-to-market strategy.

The challenges of change management

Transforming an organization as complex and established as Siemens requires significant change management.

Many employees have been operating in the same way for decades, and shifting to a new model involves rethinking roles, processes, and customer engagements. I often refer to this as “positive friction.” It’s the inevitable push and pull that comes with change, but it’s also the engine of progress.

For me, persistence is key. My nickname within Siemens is the “pit bull” because I don’t give up. It would be easy to opt for a simpler challenge in a smaller organization, but I find the complexity of Siemens to be a rewarding test of resilience and determination.

Building something great requires laying a strong foundation, and I believe the work we’re doing now will enable us to achieve incredible things in the future.

The next step is to train and educate the broader organization on this new framework and process. It’s about helping everyone – from sales to services – understand what customer success is and how it contributes to our shared goals.

Change isn’t easy, but by staying focused and committed, we’re creating a customer success function that’s not just a fit for Siemens but also a model for the industry.

Building scalability with the adoption framework

One of the key components of driving successful customer engagement at Siemens is the Adoption Framework, a structured, scalable approach designed to help customers integrate our solutions into their workflows effectively.

This framework is not just a tool; it’s a philosophy that ensures consistency, fosters scalability, and creates a common language across all business units.

Let me walk you through its core elements and how it enables us to deliver value at scale.

What the adoption framework is and why it matters

Adoption isn’t just about assigning a CSM to ensure a customer uses a product. It’s about creating a “landing strip” for change – a foundation that prepares customers for transformation. This includes setting up users, fostering strong communication, and ensuring internal backing within the customer’s organization.

However, the journey to adoption comes with challenges, particularly for customers in traditional manufacturing industries with complex processes and products. For example, many customers don’t recognize the importance of adoption early in their lifecycle with us.

Highlighting the need for adoption services at the land phase—when a customer is first subscribing to or purchasing our software – is critical to overcoming these challenges.

The adoption framework in detail

Our Adoption Framework incorporates several key components:

1. Adoption lifecycle

Adoption is a journey, starting from early planning and extending to full adoption success. We control and measure the maturity of adoption throughout this lifecycle, ensuring that progress is trackable and actionable. This lifecycle approach includes:

Early planning: Addressing change management early, ensuring the customer is set up for success.
Rollout: Coordinating a structured introduction and usage of the software.
Full adoption: Ensuring the software becomes an integral part of the customer’s processes.

2. Standardized tactics and campaigns

We’ve built a library of 60+ adoption tactics, all digitized and organized into a standardized format. These tactics include checklists, templates, workbooks, and other tools that CSMs can use to guide customers. They are also configurable, meaning tactics can be combined into adoption campaigns tailored to specific customer needs.

For instance:

Technical advocate development: Engaging with technical stakeholders to build advocacy within the customer’s organization.
Corporate scaling: Helping customers expand adoption across their global operations.

3. Reporting and control

We’ve developed tools to monitor adoption progress and identify risks. For example:

Adoption metrics and performance metrics (AM, PM): These track both the customer’s business improvements and their adoption of our software. By monitoring metrics such as certifications achieved, system usage, and process improvements, we can identify adoption hurdles and address them proactively.
Risk identification and resolution: With real-time reporting capabilities, we can act quickly to resolve challenges as they arise.

4. Integration into success planning

The Adoption Framework plugs seamlessly into our broader success planning process. Success Planning serves as the architecture for overall success, while adoption planning is its execution. Together, they create a cohesive strategy to drive value for our customers.

Enabling scalability and localization

Scalability is at the heart of this framework. By standardizing tactics and digitizing processes, we’ve created a model that can be replicated across customers and regions. For example:

Localized tactics: Using AI, we’re able to translate tactics into local languages, such as Japanese, enabling better engagement with customers worldwide.
Tailored campaigns: Each adoption campaign can be customized based on the customer’s unique needs, allowing for flexibility within the standardized framework.

Delivering measurable value

Ultimately, the adoption framework helps us demonstrate value to our customers. By tracking adoption and performance metrics, we provide clear, actionable insights.

For example, in a truck design department, we tracked both metrics over a year, showing how improved business processes aligned with increased software adoption. This approach not only reinforces the value of our solutions but also builds trust and confidence with our customers.

A foundation for growth

The adoption framework is a cornerstone of our customer success strategy. By addressing change management, standardizing processes, and ensuring measurable outcomes, we’re setting our customers – and ourselves – up for success.

Change is never easy, especially in large, complex organizations. But with persistence and a clear vision, we’re building a model that scales, adapts, and delivers tangible value. This is the challenge that excites me most, and I’m committed to seeing it through.