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When you think about transforming your business, what activities first come to mind? If “buying new technologies” is high on your list, then you’re not alone. The conversation about business transformation has become almost synonymous with technology acquisition. Walk into any boardroom and you’ll hear leaders discussing AI implementations, cloud migrations and automation platforms as if these tools alone will fundamentally change how their organizations operate.
But here’s what we at IA have learned after years of helping organizations with their transformation efforts: The most successful changes are process-led and technology-enabled, not technology-driven.
This distinction matters more than you might think.
What is the technology-first trap?
Organizations consistently fall into what I call the “technology trap”: the belief that purchasing new software or implementing cutting-edge systems will automatically transform their business. I’ve watched ERP implementations fail not because the system didn’t work, but because organizations tried to do a “lift and shift,” applying complex technology onto broken or poorly understood processes. I’m seeing AI initiatives that promised revolutionary insights deliver minimal value because teams lacked the foundational skills to ask the right questions, and interpret and act on the output.
These failures share a common thread: They prioritized the tool
