*How we’re on a mission to empower IT Leaders to deliver stakeholder engagement with confidence and impact*

The Go-Live Illusion:
Why 70% of Tech Transformations Miss Their Business Case

It is 10 PM. You are preparing for tomorrow’s steering committee, staring at a dashboard that is technically green but operationally red. Your system is live, the code is stable, yet only a fraction of your users are logging in, and the CFO is already asking pointed questions about the ROI. If this scenario sounds familiar, you are facing the single biggest risk in modern digital transformation: the gap between technical readiness and user readiness.

Technical readiness does not equal user readiness. In this inaugural episode of “A change in conversation”, we explore why ignoring stakeholder dynamics leads to expensive shelfware, cost overruns, and reputational damage for program leaders. We outline how to shift from "change management theatre" to engineered adoption that secures your investment, moving beyond the technical "go-live" to ensure actual business value is realized.

The Expensive Reality of the "Soft" Side

If you have spent your career in IT, you know the drill. You are trained for the technical side – project plans, system architecture, data migration. That is your sweet spot. But in today’s landscape, you are expected to manage something completely different: getting dozens of stakeholders across different cultures and departments to actually want to use what you have built.

The industry statistics are sobering. 70% of enterprise tech transformations fail to meet their business case goals. We are talking about $66 billion in annual cost overruns, where the average software project exceeds its budget by 27%.

Crucially, most of these failures are not technical. The systems usually work fine. It is the people who don't.

When we ignore the human dynamics of technology change, the financial consequences are immediate and measurable. Expensive licenses sit unused as shelfware. People stick to costly manual workarounds – spreadsheets and shadow IT – instead of adopting standard procedures. Helpdesk tickets pile up months after go-live because users simply do not understand why they had to change in the first place.

But beyond the corporate P&L, there is a personal cost. When a program stalls, the reputation of the leader behind it is questioned. We have seen careers stall because excellent technical leaders failed to navigate the complex web of stakeholder resistance.

Three Mistakes That Kill Adoption

After supporting dozens of tech implementations, we have identified a pattern. The successful 30% of programs treat stakeholder engagement with the same rigor as technical engineering. The rest tend to make three critical mistakes.

The project team abdicates ownership. Too often, stakeholder engagement is handed off to external consultants or system implementers who do not understand the organization's specific reality. These external parties may bring templates, but they rarely understand the informal influence networks that actually drive decisions. When they leave, the knowledge leaves with them, preventing the organization from building internal capability.

Communication ignores cultural reality. Generic "change management" communications often fail because they do not speak the language of the organization. If you are rolling out SAP S/4HANA across 80 countries, a one-size-fits-all message from HQ will likely trigger "Not Invented Here" syndrome in local markets. If you step into cultural landmines you didn't know existed, you can torpedo a project before it starts.

Adoption is treated as an anecdote, not data. In the technical stream, you track bugs, latency, and uptime with precision. In the human stream, too many leaders rely on guesswork – checking if people seem "happy". This is insufficient. You need to track stakeholder engagement like you track technical milestones. Without data, you cannot identify resistance triggers early enough to mitigate them.

From "SAP Guy" to Transformation Leader

Let’s look at a practical example. We worked with a Program Director – let’s call him Klaus – at a global chemical company. Klaus was a brilliant technical mind with 15 years of SAP experience, tasked with a complex migration from ECC to S/4HANA.

Initially, Klaus was confident in the architecture but nervous about the human dynamics. He faced resistance from plant managers who feared disruption and local teams proud of their legacy customizations.

By applying a structured framework to the human side – what we call the Change Playbook – Klaus shifted his approach. He mapped the real decision-making networks in each region. He stopped relying on generic updates and started crafting value messages that resonated with specific local needs.

The result was not just a successful go-live. Klaus evolved. He went from being the "SAP guy" to a strategic partner for the executive board. He learned to present on change readiness with the same authority he used for technical readiness. Most importantly, he built this capability internally, reducing reliance on external support for future rollouts.

Engineering Adoption

The philosophy of COSYN’s Change Playbook is simple: Stakeholder issues are predictable. If you know where to look, you can identify hidden concerns and resistance triggers weeks before they threaten your ROI.

We do not believe in "change management theatre." We believe in equipping technical leaders with the tools to manage human dynamics systematically. Whether you are a CIO, an IT Director, or a Program Lead, your success is no longer measured solely by the code you deploy. It is measured by the behaviors you change.

Key Takeaways for IT Leaders

Adoption is the only ROI metric that matters. A technically perfect system that isn't used is a failed investment. Tech adoption beyond go-live is the true measure of success.

Stakeholder resistance is a financial risk. It leads to cost overruns, shelfware, and extended hypercare periods. It must be managed as a risk, not an HR "nice-to-have".

Technical readiness ≠ User readiness. Green lights on a technical dashboard can hide deep resistance that will surface immediately post-launch.

Own the capability. External consultants cannot navigate your internal culture as well as you can. Building internal competence in stakeholder engagement ensures sustainable success.