A report came out a few weeks ago with a number that stopped me cold: companies spend six times more on services than on the software itself.
Six times.
That ratio tells you everything about what’s actually hard in technology adoption. The installation? Easy. Getting people to change how they work? That’s where the money goes.
I see this pattern everywhere. Organisations treat the software purchase as the main event. They budget carefully, negotiate contracts, plan deployment timelines. Then they install the system and consider the project complete.
That’s when the real work starts.
The Visibility Problem
Here’s why organisations keep making this mistake: people costs are hidden.
Your technology budget gets shared openly across departments. Everyone sees the £100,000 purchase. It feels significant because it’s visible and discretionary.
But your people costs? Those are confidential. Buried in departmental budgets. Treated as fixed overhead rather than the variable investment they actually are.
This visibility gap creates a dangerous illusion. You think you’re spending on technology when you’re actually spending on people time, people behavior, and people resistance.
The spend on technology itself is tiny by comparison.
What Actually Happens After Installation
Most organisations focus on the quickest installation possible. Deploy the system, check the box, move on.
The project ends when the technology goes live.
That’s backwards. 70% of digital transformation initiatives fail to meet their objectives. Not because the technology doesn’t work, but because changing people’s habits is genuinely difficult.
We all struggle to change our own habits. Now multiply that across an entire organisation and add culture change on top.
Culture change means shifting how people feel about their work, their organization, their customers. That requires inspiration, vision, and clarity. It’s a hearts and minds challenge.
Habit change can be more tactical, but it still takes time and consistent support.
The 50-50 Split
Look at AI tool adoption. Organizations enable their teams with Copilot or ChatGPT licenses. Everyone has access.
What happens? About 50% of employees use the tools regularly. The other 50% don’t touch them at all.
That split reveals something important: when people have a choice, habit change is hard. When they don’t have a choice (like when you switch off the old CRM), habit change happens fast.
The reluctant half will tell you they don’t have time. That’s not actually the issue.
The real barriers are fear, lack of confidence, and comfort with existing methods. Some resistance comes from legitimate concerns about privacy or environmental impact. But often, skepticism masks insecurity.
People say “I don’t have time” when they mean “I don’t know how” or “I’m afraid of looking incompetent.”
What Actually Works
The most effective approach I’ve seen is showing people specific examples from their own teammates.
Not what Google or Apple is doing. What the person sitting three desks away accomplished.
When someone sees a colleague save hours using a new tool, that creates real motivation. It’s tangible, relatable, and immediately relevant.
The other approach that works is clarity about expectations. “Your job now includes using this technology.” Direct, simple, no ambiguity.
But here’s what doesn’t work: treating this as a training problem.
Organisations do a training session and consider it done. That’s not how you change behaviour.
Real change requires ongoing support. Weekly or monthly upskilling that never stops. You’re helping people leverage the tools you’re already paying for them to use.
Think about that logic. You spend money on technology but won’t invest equally in helping people use it effectively. That $1.73 trillion in IT services spending exists because organisations keep making this mistake.
The Resource Question
When I suggest ongoing coaching and support, people ask: where does the time come from?
Fair question. Someone has to run those sessions. Someone has to coach people through the change.
Here’s the thing: you’re already spending the money. You already have the people. The cost isn’t additional budget for new headcount.
The cost is redirecting attention and priority.
It’s deciding that helping your team leverage a $500,000 system is more important than whatever else is filling their calendars. It’s making change management an actual job responsibility, not an afterthought.
Most organisations allocate only 10% of transformation budgets to change management. Then they wonder why adoption fails.
The technology works fine. Your people just aren’t using it.
Reframing Success
We measure the wrong things. Did we install it on time? Did we stay within budget? Did we complete the deployment?
Those are project management metrics. They tell you nothing about whether anyone actually changed their behaviour.
The real question is: three months after launch, are people still using the new system, or have they quietly reverted to Excel?
Installation takes days. Behavioural change takes months or years.
Technology is easy and cheap to deploy. People time, people behavior, and people resistance—that’s where the real cost lives.
That six times multiplier isn’t a bug. It’s the system telling you what’s actually hard.
Listen to it.
