After hearing their feedback, we compiled a State of Digital Adoption report, which is a comprehensive look at the digital challenges organizations currently face, how digital adoption is used to mitigate these challenges, and why the right digital strategy is an operational requirement. The findings provide a benchmark for your business’s digital efforts and insights into how they can optimize their software investment.

The State of Digital Adoption report covers a range of topics, including enterprise digital spend, the application awareness gap, employee digital dexterity, and digital transformation KPIs. From the report, we think the key takeaways are the following:

67% of enterprises are under significant pressure to accelerate digital transformation. Large enterprises spend more than $100 million annually on digital transformation and software enterprises aren’t aware of more than half of the applications deployed on their networks. 78% of organizations have in-house employees to manage digital tools and enterprises plan on investing close to $10 million to improve employee digital dexterity. So, what can we do with this information?

Learn how to maximize your digital strategy

One of the most prevalent themes we saw in the report is that increased digital spend doesn’t always improve organizational digital transformation. Many enterprises end up investing in software that doesn’t perform as expected, which leads to additional costs to meet digital goals and technology frustrations amongst employees.

It found a lack of uptake of digital technology means enterprises overspent by more than $32 million in order to reach their strategic goals. Yet they cannot guarantee that employees will fully use the technology at their disposal, and so maximize its value.

60 percent of enterprises say that change management programs are “no longer fit for purpose,” while 70 percent could not identify exactly who is responsible for managing the adoption of new technologies in their organization. Enterprises plan to spend more than $30 million addressing these challenges in the next three years. The right approach could greatly reduce almost $100 million in costs caused by organizations’ inability to fully realize the value of their technology investments.

Technology is the lifeblood of organizations, with most saying it’s more important than a head office. Yet by failing to make full use of the resources at their disposal, enterprises are constantly subjecting themselves to needless losses. Whether it is projects failing to meet expectations, an inability to maximize the value of application investments, falling behind on strategic goals, compensating for employees’ lack of digital dexterity or employee churn caused by frustrations with technology, the costs all add up. Every enterprise has the potential to take full control of its digital investments, but they need the right approach in order to do so.

With enterprises planning to invest $31.36 million in increasing the use of digital technologies over the next three years, the right approach will have a major impact. We can see that there’s the potential to save tens of millions in costs and to free up employees’ time so that they are happier and more productive. If enterprises can strategize effectively, coordinate with external partners, and most importantly, understand what and where they need to coordinate their efforts in order to increase adoption, they will be able to maximize the value of the $4.4 billion invested in IT every year.

Written by Ofir Bloch, RVP, Strategic Positioning at WalkMe.