April 29, 2026
The software vendor promised 40% efficiency gains. Twelve months later, you're sitting at 8%. The assumption is that something is wrong with the tool, the configuration, or the users. So you bring the vendor back in, push for another round of training, and keep waiting for the gains to show up.
It rarely works. Not because the software is broken, but because the diagnosis is wrong.
In my experience, software platforms get you about 60% of the way there, sometimes less. We can all think of examples. The reporting isn't quite right. The export function is limited. The way the dashboard summarises the numbers you actually care about misses the mark. The list goes on. That gap is not a bug. It is the nature of buying something built for the average of every customer, then asking it to fit your business exactly.
Here's the reframe: software is the last 40%, not the first.
The people selling it to you want you to believe the tool is the answer. It isn't. Remember, those people are paid to sell the product to you. And look, I am the first one to get excited about a new shiny tool. I get it. But excitement is not a strategy. The answer is a process clean enough, and an organization ready enough, that the software has something worth running on top of. When you buy before you build readiness, you automate the mess faster and call it a transformation.
The businesses that get technology right aren't the ones with the biggest platforms. They're the ones that cleaned up the process first, decided who owns adoption, and defined what success looks like before a single license was signed.
Process before tools. Every time.
Thanks for reading,
Sarah
