Lost Investment
In the late 1990s, many believed that creating a website was enough to change the rules of the game. Valuations of companies that owned nothing but a .com domain name swelled. Even a published scientific study found that adding this extension to a company’s name alone was accompanied by a stock price increase of more than 70% during the ten days surrounding the announcement, regardless of its actual business activity. Then the bubble burst, leading some to think the internet was a passing fad. However, what followed proved that the flaw was not in the technology itself, but in the assumption that it alone could create value. Those who succeeded did not simply add the internet to their businesses; they rebuilt their businesses around it. This experience was not unique to the internet; it has repeated with every major technological wave. Technology changes what is possible, but organizational performance only improves if procedures, roles, and business models are redesigned, and technology is tailored to serve that purpose.
This is the challenge facing artificial intelligence today. In a survey conducted by IBM, which included 1,000 CEOs worldwide, 83% stated that the success of AI depends more on adoption than on reliance on the technology itself. This work has a name in management literature: “change management.” It is not a fleeting step nor an optional activity preceding the launch of technology; rather, it is a two-dimensional path. An internal dimension prepares employees, work procedures, and the institutional environment, while an external dimension prepares beneficiaries for changes in service channels and delivery methods.
However, this aspect is often the first to be cut from plans, because what is easy to measure is technical delivery, not people’s readiness. In a Grant Thornton survey involving 950 business leaders, half believed that strategy is the primary driver of return on investment, yet nearly 80% admitted they lacked a complete and implemented strategy. The result is purchased tools and unchanged procedures, yielding intangible effects. The same issue appears during the execution phase. In a survey of more than 1,200 leaders, three out of four stated that their institutions lose up to 5% of their annual revenue due to slow decision-making and delayed implementation. 35% of them attributed this to bureaucratic decision-making processes—organizational and human barriers, not technical ones. In service institutions, these losses are not measured by revenue, but by service time and beneficiary satisfaction.
When a new system is launched but employees continue to apply the same paper-based transaction procedures, the flaw is not in the system, but in the fact that no one explained to them why the procedure changed. The solution requires less in financial allocations and more in planning discipline. Every technical project plan must, from day one, include a readiness assessment, an analysis of the change’s impact on affected groups, a communication plan that explains the “why” before the “how,” an enablement and training program with user guides and support points during the transition period, and indicators that measure adoption rather than merely confirming delivery completion. Furthermore, a named official must be responsible for change management, accountable for it in monitoring reports.
The advantage no longer belongs to the first to acquire the tool, but to the one who absorbs it fastest. A tool is purchased by decision, but adoption is built by plan. Those who content themselves with adding technology to their existing procedures will achieve the same results at a higher cost and with shorter-lived enthusiasm. The battle is not won in server rooms, but in employee behavior, work procedures, and the leadership’s conviction and pioneering role in driving change.
Dr. Dhafer Adel Al-Huwail
