Published on the 06/03/2025 | Written by Heather Wright

For many, it’s a costly fail…

Enterprises are struggling to turn their AI and digital transformation investment into results, wasting millions of dollars in the process due to underutilised technology and inefficiencies, with increasing tech stack complexity further hampering success.

That’s according to a report from digital platform provider and SAP subsidiary, WalkMe, which shows a stark disconnect between the amount invested into AI and tangible value achieved – and between that investment and employee readiness.

“When looking at the most impactful digital adoption best practice, building content that boosts engagement with applications ranks highest in terms of ROI delivered.”

“While some organisations successfully use AI to simplify operations and increase productivity, many grapple with ‘transformation debt’”, the 2025 State of Digital Adoption report, which surveyed 3,700 senior business leaders and line-of business employees globally, including more than 200 in Australia and 150 in New Zealand, and mined usage data from 1.5 million users on the platform, says.

It claims large enterprises lost $104 million in 2024 due to underutilised technology, disjointed strategies, poor productivity practices and low adoption. That comes against a backdrop of booming AI investment – which is forecast to surge 64 percent this year.

While 79 percent of executives surveyed were confident of achieving AI transformation goals, just 28 percent of employees fell adequately trained, and just 25 percent can use AI to work more efficiently – and as we all know, you only get value from technology when people actually use it.

“This readiness gap proves that without strategic adoption, AI investments often fail to deliver meaningful business value,” WalkMe cofounder and CEO Dan Adika says. “While AI is transforming enterprise ambitions, its success hinges on people.”

The report argues that without effective digital adoption strategies, such as training, process automation for proactive support, custom content to boost application engagement and evaluation and measurement of technology use, AI investments are likely to fail to make their intended return.

Organisations which embrace three or more digital adoption best practices, however, can achieve an 85 percent ROI on digital transformation investments, the report claims. Even a single digital adoption best practice can result in nearly tripling ROI from 22 percent to 64 percent.

“When looking at the most impactful digital adoption best practice, building content that boosts engagement with applications ranks highest in terms of ROI delivered.”

Increasing complexity of enterprise tech stacks is also called out in the report, along with what WalkMe says is a widening ‘visibility gap’ in software usage, with enterprises failing to keep track of the applications they onboard.

While executives believe an average of only 37 applications are in use at their organisation, identity management systems show the average number is actually 625, with that gap  hindering organisation’s ability to manage software investments and properly support digital transformation.

Around 43 percent of enterprises tech stacks have grown more complex in the last three years, with just 36 percent becoming simpler.

This dichotomy reflects different approaches to managing technological changes, the report says, with some organisations adding new capabilities while maintaining legacy systems, while others are using technologies such as AI to streamline and simplify operations.

The visibility gap is only set to grow, too, the report warns, with large enterprises projected to increase their application portfolios by 26 percent this year.

AI tools are adding to the complexity for many: They now account for 28 percent of enterprise application, but organisations are struggling with integrating them while maintaining productivity and control.

“How can organisations effectively optimise their technology investments if they lack the visibility into what applications are actually being used and how? The answer is, of course, they can’t,” says Adika.

Instead, enterprises must first discover precisely which applications are in use across their organisations before meaningful productivity gains can be realised.

“It’s the most basic first step in setting up each individual employee, team, and business unit for success using the technology tools that are already being paid for.”