Every company has one. An elephant in the room. Nobody talks about it. But it eats your budget, kills innovation, and slows everyone down. Looking the other way does not solve a thing. Be brave, take the heat and the pain, and take action if the well-being of your customers and company comes first.
Big budgets, big ambitions… big silence
Digital transformation often comes with big investments. And big interests. But when things go wrong, we’d rather look the other way.
The reason is often very human:
Avoiding shame.
Not wanting to be the black sheep.
Fear of losing your job.
Egos that become more important than the company’s future.
But by doing so, you’re hurting your business.
Doing nothing is a very expensive choice
There are 3 scenarios:
1. Do nothing / Pretend it’s not there
- Spend hundreds of thousands on licenses
- With zero customer or business value in return
- Because the technology is not being used
- And… old systems are often extremely expensive to maintain
There’s a reason people say: better to stop halfway than get completely lost.
The fastest ROI? Switch things off
2. Clean up
- Switch off unused, expensive systems — frees up budget immediately
- Look carefully at overlap between tools
- Turn off the weakest one — frees up budget immediately
- Invest in value-driving, user-friendly tools your people actually like to use
Want to make a giant leap? Build a foundation first
3. Clean up and build a future-proof tech stack
- An IT strategy with a layered architecture
- Marketing owning its own marketing technology
- Built on a solid foundation that supports core business processes
- Room to experiment and deliver customer value and competitive edge
So… what’s the elephant in your room?
