The Adoption Gap: Why Digital Products Fail in 2026

Most enterprise organisations increased their technology investment in 2025. Many added AI tools to the platforms they already had. Some launched new digital products that had been on the roadmap for years.

And yet, according to WalkMe’s 2026 Global Study of 3,750 enterprise leaders, employees are now losing 51 working days a year to technology friction. That is up 42 per cent in a single year, despite record investment.

This equates to two months of productive time lost per employee each year due to technology intended to support them.

This is not an AI problem. It is not a procurement problem. It is an adoption problem. And it has been building quietly for years.

The metric that exposes the underlying issue.

Gartner’s annual global survey found that only 48 per cent of digital initiatives across the enterprise meet or exceed their business outcome targets. In software engineering specifically, only 35 per cent of leaders report significant ROI from AI tools in the development lifecycle.

These numbers are not the result of bad technology. The tools work. The platforms exist. The investment has been made.

The failure is in the gap between deployment and adoption. Between a product going live and a product being used. Between a tool being available and a tool becoming indispensable.

That gap has a cost. WalkMe’s 2025 report put the figure at $104 million in lost revenue per enterprise in 2024 due to underutilised technology and inefficient workflows. One in seven employees now outright rejects new workplace technology when it is introduced. 39% describe themselves as reluctant users. If your product has already launched and usage is lower than expected, a Product Audit can tell you why.

These are not disengaged employees. They are people who were handed tools that were not designed to work the way they actually do.

Why the adoption challenge has intensified in 2026

For the past two years, the volume of available technology has accelerated faster than most organisations’ ability to embed it. AI has significantly lowered the barrier to creating tools a theme we explored in detail in AI in 2026: From Experiment to Enterprise Value. The result is that many businesses now manage adoption throughout a large, fast-growing stack rather than a single product.

Adding new tools without fully integrating previous ones increases friction. Stalled pilots leave behind partial implementations that require ongoing maintenance. Launching products without adoption plans adds to the 51 lost days.

The Deloitte finding from earlier this year captures it well: 85 per cent of UK organisations have increased AI investment over the past 12 months, yet the majority of business leaders believe that between 21 and 50 per cent of the value in technology they have already bought remains untapped. The scale of this problem in financial services is explored in our piece on why UK businesses are wasting £50–70 billion on ineffective technology

Despite increased investment, less value is being realised. The gap continues to widen.

A common misdiagnosis among organisations

When adoption is low, organisations often respond by treating it as a communication issue: sending additional training emails, running more workshops, producing how-to videos, or appointing change champions.

While these interventions can be helpful, they commonly address symptoms rather than the underlying cause.

Low adoption is rarely a communications failure. It is usually a product design failure that becomes visible after launch. The product was built around assumed workflows rather than real ones. Features were prioritised by internal stakeholders rather than validated with the people who would actually use them. Onboarding was designed as a task to complete rather than a journey to follow.

By the time adoption issues become apparent, the product is already live. Modifying the product is costly, and changing user behaviour is even more challenging.

Adoption must be considered a design decision

The organisations that consistently extract value from their digital products share one characteristic: they treat adoption as a design constraint from the first day of the project, not a challenge to address after go-live. This is central to how Sonin approaches every Discovery engagement.

In practice, this means asking different questions at the start. Not just: what does this product need to do? But: who particularly needs to use this, under what conditions, with what existing habits and constraints, and what would make them choose it over the thing they are doing today?

These questions should be addressed during Discovery, before wireframes, architecture decisions, or budget commitments are made. a useful illustration of what this looks like in practice. The platform was built offline-first from the ground up, not because offline capability was a nice technical feature, but because the people who needed to use it work within environments having unreliable connectivity. Designing for adoption meant designing for the real conditions of use, not the assumed ones. The result is a platform that sits at the operational core of the business, processing a significant and growing proportion of its day-to-day activity. That is not software. That is infrastructure.

The structural challenges revealed at launch

Even when a product is well-designed, adoption can still stall. Not because the product is wrong, but because no one owns what happens next.

Go-live often marks the end of most delivery relationships. The team disbands, the commissioner moves on, and the product, which required significant time and investment, begins to lose momentum.

This occurs not due to technical failure, but because there is no clear ownership of the next phase.

We have written separately about the two roles that every digital product needs in place before it goes live: the Deliverer, who commissions and oversees the build, and the Successor, who drives adoption, builds internal momentum, and owns the product’s continued development. The gap between those two roles is where strategic value goes to die, and it is explored in full in Why Go-Live Is the Beginning of Your Product Strategy, Not the End.

Organisations that succeed identify the Successor before product launch, define the handover process, and view go-live as a milestone within a longer journey, not the conclusion of a project.

What the organisations winning on adoption do differently

Three consistent patterns emerge among organisations that derive significant value from their digital products.

First, they start with the behaviour change they want to create, not the technology they want to deploy. The product is defined by what users need to do differently, not by what the business wants to build.

Second, they maintain internal ownership of the product post-launch. The Successor role exists, is named before go-live, and is given what they need to be effective. They have a direct line to the development team and a mandate to keep iterating.

Third, they view the product as an ongoing investment, treating it as a platform with a roadmap rather than a project with an end date. For example, Connells Group’s product is now involved in transactions for approximately one in ten homes sold across the UK. This scale was achieved by dedicated ownership and continuous development.

The 2026 question is worth asking now

If your organisation is planning to build a digital product this year, or has launched one that has not achieved expected usage levels, adoption must be your primary focus.

Not: can we build this? The answer is almost always yes.

Not: should we add AI? That depends on whether it serves the people who will use the product.

But: who will actually use this, under what conditions, and what would make them choose it every day?

This question determines whether a digital product becomes a valuable business asset or an expensive lesson. It is the question Sonin asks at the beginning of every engagement, not at the conclusion. For context on how this fits into the broader value a digital product can deliver, see our framework piece on the three value horizons of technology ROE, ROI and ROF.

Talk to Sonin about adoption

If you are approaching a new build and want adoption designed in from the start, a Discovery Session is the right place to begin. If you have a product that launched and has not yet reached the usage levels it should, a Product Audit will tell you why.