Tonia Maneta, Chief Marketing Officer, Bizzdesign
Despite bold ambitions and billions in spend, 88% of digital transformation initiatives fall short of their original goals. Even among high performing organisations, there’s a persistent 30% gap between strategic potential and actual delivery.
The challenge isn’t a lack of vision or technology. It’s a persistent disconnect between strategy and execution that undermines even the most promising initiatives.
And the stakes are only rising. Consumer expectations have shifted permanently toward more personalised, always-on experiences. Digital-native competitors are rewriting the rules in traditional industries. And regulations around AI governance, sustainability, and data privacy are tightening faster than many anticipated. For marketing and growth leaders, this shift isn’t abstract — it impacts how we engage customers, build trust, and stay competitive in markets where the rules are changing fast.
But it’s not all downside. The organisations getting it right are unlocking meaningful competitive advantages in data-driven growth, faster innovation cycles, and deeper customer engagement. And CIOs are responding: more than 88% plan to increase investment in AI, with 91% increasing spend on GenAI despite broader budget pressures.
So why are so many still getting it wrong?
Take AI adoption, for instance. Business teams, eager to innovate, often move faster than IT can govern. They launch pilots, experiment with tools, and build solutions in isolation. The result is a patchwork of shadow initiatives that fragment efforts and dilute results.
And AI isn’t the only place where misalignment shows up. In many organisations, IT budgets mainly go toward maintaining legacy systems and fighting fires. What’s left for innovation barely moves the needle. The result? Costly redundancies, mounting technical debt, and innovation efforts that run parallel to – rather than with – business priorities.
Operational risk compounds the issue. Without clear visibility into how business processes depend on technology, data, suppliers, and other critical systems, organisations remain vulnerable to disruptions, whether from a cyberattack, compliance failure or supplier breakdown.
The organisations getting it right aren’t perfect – they’re aligned.
Successful transformation isn’t about deploying more technology, rather, it’s about aligning all the moving parts of the digital business so teams can act decisively, execute faster, and measure what matters.
That alignment rests on three foundations.
First, linking technology decisions to business strategy. IT investment must flow toward initiatives that drive measurable business value, not just keep legacy systems running. This requires shifting the portfolio focus from maintenance to innovation, building a leaner, more agile technology base that supports growth and long-term competitive advantage.
Secondly, creating enterprise-wide visibility. Organisations need a shared, real-time view of their digital ecosystem that spans business processes, technology dependencies, data flows, and third-party relationships. This transparency makes it possible to manage change across the entire value chain, identify high-impact use cases for AI, and drive continuous improvement rather than isolated wins.
Thirdly, embedding resilience and governance from the start. Transformation can’t succeed if it’s fragile. Understanding critical dependencies across systems, suppliers, and processes allows organisations to anticipate risks, ensure compliance, and neutralise threats before they escalate. This makes transformation secure, scalable and future-proof.
The organisations succeeding in digital transformation share a common trait: they’ve figured out how to move fast without breaking things.
Their teams, initiatives, processes, and technology work in sync because they’ve built the connective tissue that enables alignment.
This isn’t about perfection, rather it’s about having the right visibility, the right governance, and the right shared language between business and IT. When those elements are in place, transformation stops feeling chaotic. Innovation becomes focused, risk is contained and momentum builds.
In an era of constant disruption, alignment is more than a strength. It’s what makes transformation flow. It’s how strategy connects to execution — and vision turns into value.
