Analyst(s): Keith Kirkpatrick
Publication Date: March 5, 2025
WalkMe’s 2025 State of Digital Adoption Report reveals that enterprises lost $104 million in 2024 due to underutilized technology, while 75% of employees struggle to use AI effectively. Despite rising AI investment, firms risk transformation debt without proper digital adoption strategies.
What is Covered in this Article:
- Enterprises lost $104 million in 2024 due to underutilized technology and inefficient workflows.
- 75% of employees report difficulty integrating AI into their daily work processes.
- Despite 79% of executives feeling confident in AI strategies, only 28% of employees feel properly trained.
- WalkMe’s digital adoption insights show firms underestimate actual tech usage by 1,600%.
- Companies using three or more digital adoption best practices achieve 85% ROI on transformation efforts.
The News: WalkMe’s 2025 State of Digital Adoption Report (DAP) reveals a widening gap between AI investment and workforce adoption. While enterprises push forward with digital transformation, many fail to ensure employees can effectively integrate AI into their workflows. This disconnect leads to underutilized software, inefficiencies, and missed ROI. Without a structured digital adoption strategy, companies risk transformation debt, where technology investments fail to deliver their intended impact. Addressing this challenge requires a focus on workforce enablement to maximize AI-driven productivity.
AI Ambitions vs. Reality: WalkMe Report Exposes Enterprises’ Digital Waste
Analyst Take: AI adoption is facing a pivotal moment. While organizations are pouring significant resources into AI and digital transformation, the real challenge lies in getting employees to embrace and effectively use these technologies. WalkMe’s 2025 State of DAP report reveals a staggering reality: despite a 64% increase in AI investments for 2025, enterprises lost $104 million in 2024 alone due to poor technology adoption and inefficient workflows. According to the survey, the issue isn’t the lack of investment, it’s the failure to ensure employees can successfully leverage AI tools. Without a structured digital adoption strategy, companies will continue struggling with low ROI and mounting transformation debt, limiting AI’s true impact.
The $104 Million Annual Enterprise Loss: Understanding the Cost of Poor Adoption
Enterprises are expanding their digital toolsets at an unprecedented rate, yet many of these investments fail to translate into real business value. WalkMe’s research highlights that in 2024 alone, companies lost $104 million due to ineffective software adoption, inefficient workflows, and failed IT initiatives. The root cause is underutilized enterprise software designed to enhance productivity, which is often left unused, underutilized, or misunderstood.
Productivity losses remain a persistent issue, with employees wasting an average of 36 working days per year dealing with software frustrations. Despite these setbacks, businesses continue accelerating AI investments. Large enterprises plan to increase digital transformation spending by 45% in 2025, but without a well-defined adoption strategy, these investments will likely lead to further financial losses and operational inefficiencies. Companies must recognize that technology alone doesn’t drive value – its adoption does.
The 1,600% Tech Visibility Gap: A Major Hindrance to Digital ROI
A major finding from WalkMe’s report is the massive disconnect between what executives believe their companies are using and the reality of their tech stacks. Leadership estimates their organizations manage 37 enterprise applications, yet in reality, the average company operates 625 applications, including 172 AI-powered tools. That’s a 1,600% miscalculation, highlighting a dangerous tech visibility gap.
This lack of awareness leads to wasted software investments, redundant applications, and inefficient digital environments that dilute AI’s transformative potential. Additionally, many employees adopt unapproved AI tools without IT oversight – so-called shadow AI adoption – further complicating governance and security. Without a robust digital adoption strategy, enterprises will continue grappling with software sprawl, fragmented workflows, and declining productivity.
AI Adoption Requires Digital Enablement, Not Just Investment
WalkMe’s findings expose a fundamental disconnect between executive expectations and employee experiences with AI adoption. While 79% of executives are confident that their AI initiatives will succeed, only 25% of employees feel that AI tools actually improve their efficiency. This gap between leadership optimism and workforce reality creates a major roadblock for organizations aiming to maximize AI’s potential.
Executives often focus on AI’s role in performance analytics and automation, envisioning it as a driver of strategic decision-making. However, employees face daily implementation challenges, training gaps, a lack of risk-detection tools, and poor software integration support. This misalignment leads to frustration, low adoption rates, and stalled transformation efforts. For AI to deliver measurable business outcomes, companies must align their investments with structured workforce enablement strategies.
Digital Adoption Best Practices: The Key to ROI on AI Investments
WalkMe’s report highlights that organizations implementing structured digital adoption strategies achieve significantly higher returns. Enterprises incorporating three or more digital adoption best practices see an 85% ROI on AI and digital transformation investments, compared to just 22% ROI for those without a formal strategy. Companies that fail to invest in employee enablement and structured adoption frameworks will struggle to generate meaningful ROI from AI-driven transformation. Key adoption best practices include:
- Training employees to use AI and enterprise software effectively.
- Evaluating and measuring how employees engage with digital tools.
- Unifying application experiences to streamline workflows.
- Deploying process automation to provide real-time support.
- Creating AI adoption content to boost engagement and drive consistent usage.
- Using a DAP to manage and optimize AI software implementation.
- Measuring user engagement to track effectiveness.
Bridging the AI Adoption Gap: What Enterprises Must Do Now
With AI adoption at a tipping point, companies must take decisive action to avoid transformation debt. WalkMe’s report clarifies that investment without execution leads to wasted resources. To drive real change, enterprises must prioritize structured digital adoption strategies that empower employees, eliminate the 1,600% tech visibility gap by optimizing software governance, and track adoption success while refining training programs and driving engagement.
Businesses establishing a robust digital adoption framework will outperform competitors, unlocking higher ROI, improved workforce productivity, and long-term AI transformation success.
Final Thought: AI Success Depends on People, Not Just Technology
The 2025 State of DAP delivers a clear message: AI transformation will only succeed if companies focus on digital adoption strategies. As WalkMe CEO Dan Adika puts it: “Technology alone doesn’t deliver results – people do.”
The future of AI-driven business success depends not just on software investments but on an organization’s ability to equip, train, and empower employees to use AI effectively. Companies that embrace digital adoption best practices will lead the next era of AI success, while those that neglect them will continue to lose millions to inefficiencies and untapped potential.
What to Watch:
- The report’s findings may prompt enterprises to implement stronger governance frameworks to manage the growing number of AI applications and reduce security risks.
- Organizations could prioritize structured digital adoption practices to maximize ROI on AI investments and improve employee efficiency.
- The increasing visibility gap in enterprise technology stacks may lead businesses to invest in better tracking and optimization of software usage.
- The growing demand for AI-driven digital adoption platforms may push vendors to enhance real-time training, workflow automation, and AI-powered assistance.
See the complete press release on WalkMe’s 2025 State of Digital Adoption Report and AI readiness gap on the WalkMe website.
Disclosure: The Futurum Group is a research and advisory firm that engages or has engaged in research, analysis, and advisory services with many technology companies, including those mentioned in this article. The author does not hold any equity positions with any company mentioned in this article.
Analysis and opinions expressed herein are specific to the analyst individually and data and other information that might have been provided for validation, not those of The Futurum Group as a whole.
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Author Information
Keith has over 25 years of experience in research, marketing, and consulting-based fields.
He has authored in-depth reports and market forecast studies covering artificial intelligence, biometrics, data analytics, robotics, high performance computing, and quantum computing, with a specific focus on the use of these technologies within large enterprise organizations and SMBs. He has also established strong working relationships with the international technology vendor community and is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and events.
In his career as a financial and technology journalist he has written for national and trade publications, including BusinessWeek, CNBC.com, Investment Dealers’ Digest, The Red Herring, The Communications of the ACM, and Mobile Computing & Communications, among others.
He is a member of the Association of Independent Information Professionals (AIIP).
Keith holds dual Bachelor of Arts degrees in Magazine Journalism and Sociology from Syracuse University.
