Driving Digital Adoption For Impactful Transformation And Growth
Exploring How Far Digital Adoption Platforms Have Come In Scaling Digital Transformation and Enterprise-Wide AI
A Forrester Consulting Thought Leadership Study, September 2025
Organizations are rapidly modernizing legacy systems and investing in applications that are relevant to their ecosystem. Decision-makers seek to optimize cost, enhance both employee and customer experience, and improve visibility and adoption across their software investments. Yet, many find themselves trapped in a costly paradox: Despite massive investments in software, the expected business value remains elusive — ineffective adoption alone are costing mid-sized firms an average of $10.9M annually. The relentless pace of change creates persistent challenges for users, hindering the adoption and integration of enterprise platforms and tools.
Digital Adoption Platforms (DAPs) have been a critical lever to bridge this gap. Beyond being merely tools for user guidance, modern DAPs drive measurable outcomes by embedding intelligent support, automating complex workflows, and unlocking insights to optimize application use. Especially in this era of AI acceleration, DAPs provide the guidance and guardrails for enterprises to scale AI responsibly and effectively.
In May 2025, Whatfix commissioned Forrester Consulting to evaluate the state of digital adoption strategy and implementation in enterprises. Forrester conducted an online survey with 335 respondents from IT, HR, customer experience (CX), business strategy, change management, and product management across APAC, Europe, and North America to explore this topic. We found that most organizations remain in the early or moderate stages of DAP maturity, underleveraging its potential as a strategic enabler for key business outcomes. This study explores the evolving role of DAP and why advancing DAP maturity is essential in driving successful digital transformation and AI enablement.
Key Findings
- Application adoption is often overlooked, creating a critical gap between ambition and execution. Organizations are focused on delivering unified digital experiences and scaling AI across the enterprise, yet they frequently overlook the foundational need to ensure that employees can effectively adopt and use new technologies. Only 27% of decision-makers said their organization considered digital adoption initiatives to be a critical priority for effective transformation.
- Most organizations are still in the intermediate stages of digital adoption maturity. Only 17% of decision-makers noted their organization has reached the proficient stage of maturity, while many tend to lack clear strategies, governance structures, and ownership of their DAP initiatives. Consequently, digital adoption is often treated as a standalone initiative, impeded by organizational silos (40%) and a lack of understanding around how to effectively leverage DAPs (36%).
- New-age DAP partnerships must rise to the challenge of enabling strategic integration and scale. These challenges include configuring and deploying DAPs (41%), skill gaps in operating them (34%), and integrating them into existing systems (33%). Amid rising investments across software categories, decision-makers seek DAP partners that offer seamless integration (33%), robust security (32%), scalability and customizability (31%) to effectively support their organization’s digital transformation initiatives.
Consulting Team:
Alicia Choo, Market Impact Consultant
Aneesh Ahuja, Associate Market Consultant
Siding Wang, Market Impact Consultant
Contributing Research:
Forrester’s Technology research group
Enterprises are anchoring their long-term strategy on two transformative pillars: digital transformation and AI. These initiatives are viewed as essential to driving competitiveness and innovation. Yet at the heart of this strategy lies a critical disconnect — the ability for employees and customers to effectively use and embrace new technology is being overlooked. Despite bold investments, enabling effective digital adoption remains an afterthought, ultimately impacting ROI and employee and customer experiences.
In surveying 335 decision-makers on their digital adoption strategy, we found that:
-
Digital transformation continues to be a top strategic priority, and AI is now recognized as a critical driver in accelerating progress and innovation. Accelerating digital transformation (34%) is the leading business priority, closely followed by creating seamless and unified digital experiences (33%) (see Figure 1). In parallel, enterprise-wide AI enablement is gaining traction. Thirty-two percent of decision-makers cited that as one of their organization’s strategic business priority, and 33% identified AI integration and adoption as a critical IT imperative at their organization (see Figures 1 and 2). Notably, data and AI transformation is now considered the most important component of the broader digital transformation agenda.1
This growing emphasis on AI signals a shift from modernizing systems to building intelligent, adaptive enterprises. This evolution must go hand-in-hand with enhancing digital and application experiences for both customers and employees, which remain key organizational priorities.
Figure 1
Top Five Critical Business Priorities For Organizations
Accelerate digital transformation Create seamless and unified digital experiences Enable enterprise-wide AI adoption Optimize operations by using data-driven insights Enable more effective ROI on technology investments
Note: Only showing responses for “Critical priority”.
Base: 335 decision-makers with responsibility over an organization’s digital adoption strategy
Source: Forrester's Q2 2025 Digital Adoption Survey [E-64111]
Figure 2
Top Five Critical IT/Digital Transformation Priorities For Organizations
Improve security and privacy Integrate AI and increase adoption of AI by employees Improve IT capabilities to enhance customer experience Improve IT capabilities to enhance employee experience Ensure cost optimization of IT software
Note: Only showing responses for “Critical priority”.
Base: 335 decision-makers with responsibility over an organization’s digital adoption strategy
Source: Forrester's Q2 2025 Digital Adoption Survey [E-64111]
- Investments in digital transformation and AI are being undermined by poor user adoption. Organizations currently allocate 28% of their annual budget to digital transformation efforts. Over the next 12 months, 76% of decision-makers plan to increase this investment, underscoring the continued focus on digital transformation.2 Despite these bold ambitions, the importance of digital adoption is being overlooked. The ability to effectively adopt and use technology is foundational to both digital transformation and AI enablement — but only 27% of decision-makers consider digital adoption a critical priority. This exposes a fundamental disconnect between strategy and execution. The consequences are tangible: A mid-sized organization employing 1,000 employees loses an estimated $10.9 million annually in productivity due to ineffective digital adoption practices.
- Optimizing software costs and maximizing ROI is critical to sustaining and scaling digital transformation. As digital ecosystems become more complex, organizations face increasing pressure to ensure their application stack delivers measurable value. Enabling effective ROI (29%), ensuring cost optimization of IT software (32%) and optimizing operations with data-driven insights (30%) are the top business and IT priorities. Achieving these outcomes depends on successful digital adoption, as underutilized or poorly-adopted software undermines both cost efficiency and ROI. This makes digital adoption a key focus, driven by both efficiency and user adoption goals. To drive efficiency, organizations seek to improve data-driven decision making (18%) and foster a culture of efficiency (14%). To encourage adoption, key priorities include enabling seamless technology adoption (14%) and building operational efficiency through better adoption of core applications (10%).
-
DAPs are critical enablers of successful digital transformation. DAPs play an increasingly pivotal role in ensuring the success of organizations’ digital transformation initiatives. As DAP adoption matures, organizations move their focus beyond foundational applications — such as enterprise resource planning (ERP) and customer relationship management (CRM) — to encompass AI, productivity platforms, and data analytics tools. This highlights the need for more advanced adoption strategies and capabilities.
At the same time, organizations expect their DAPs to deliver crucial business outcomes, primarily to enhance the impact of digital transformation (19%) and increase adoption of AI applications (16%). This underscores the critical role of DAPs as enablers of their key priorities.
While the strategic intent behind digital transformation and AI enablement is clear, the ability to realize these ambitions hinges on how mature the organization’s digital adoption capabilities are. To decipher the current state of digital adoption practices, platforms and capabilities, the Digital Adoption Maturity Index takes a closer look at practices enterprises have implemented, and their effectiveness at scale.
Understanding where organizations stand today, and how their behaviors, structures, and outcomes differ across maturity levels, is essential to close the gap between potential and performance. Despite growing recognition of DAPs as critical enablers, many organizations remain in the early or intermediate stages of maturity, limited by scale, governance, and impact.
- Digital adoption is built upon eight key competencies. Digital adoption maturity is not solely defined by the stage of implementation, but by how deeply and strategically a DAP is embedded across the organization. The eight competencies identified in the Digital Adoption Maturity Index represent the key building blocks for achieving sustained impact, scalability, and alignment with broader business goals (see Figure 3). They are important as they address the strategic (i.e., sponsorship, ownership, vision), executional (i.e., scope, utilization, governance and measurement), and people and competency (i.e., talent) elements required for effective digital adoption. Organizations that advance across all eight are better positioned to deliver consistent value, drive transformation, and continuously adapt in an increasingly digital landscape.
Figure 3
Digital Adoption Maturity Is Built Upon Eight Core Competencies
Whatfix-TLP-Figure 3.svg
Source: Forrester's Q2 2025 Digital Adoption Survey [E-64111]
-
The market is currently in a transitional phase of digital adoption maturity. Organizations are assessed and categorized into four maturity levels: emergent, formative, structured, and proficient. These stages represent a progressive model of digital adoption maturity: Organizations in the emergent phase have foundational implementations in place; those in the formative phase are establishing structures and processes; while organizations in the structured phase are expanding and systematizing efforts aligned with business outcomes; and organizations in the proficient stage have implemented advanced, scalable, cross-organizational programs.
The majority of organizations (34%) are in the formative stage, reflecting some progress beyond initial adoption. Meanwhile, 16% noted that their organization remains in the emergent stage, while 33% said their organization has advanced to the structured stage, while only 17% shared their organization has reached the proficient stage, where DAPs are leveraged as strategic enablers of digital transformation (see Figure 4).
Figure 4
Digital Adoption Maturity Distribution
Stage 1: Emergent Stage 2: Formative Stage 3: Structured Stage 4: Proficient
Base: 335 decision-makers with responsibility over an organization’s digital adoption strategy
Source: Forrester's Q2 2025 Digital Adoption Survey [E-64111]
-
Behavioral and structural differences between these maturity levels are significant. At the emergent stage, DAP implementations are generally functional and show early promise, but their scope and impact remain limited. While adoption spans across applications (66%), integration into end-to-end workflows is much lower at 30%, resulting in fragmented and siloed efforts. Despite this, organizations in the emergent phase tend to pursue complex use cases like workflow automation (72%) and AI (70%) without having foundational capabilities in place. Ownership tends to be hybrid (77%) or distributed (21%) across departments, which contribute to inconsistent execution and outcomes. At this stage, organizations are still shaping their DAP strategy, governance structures, and alignment with business goals, so utilization remains limited and business value is not yet fully realized. To advance to the next level of maturity, organizations in the emergent phase should establish centralized ownership and foundational frameworks.
Organizations at the formative stage have typically realized early impact from their DAP implementations and are focused on becoming more effective. Cross-application adoption increases significantly compared to those in the emergent phase (85% vs. 66%), but integration into end-to-end workflows remains low at 26%. These organizations are also beginning to apply DAP across customer- and employee-facing use cases with more balance (61% and 67%), but adoption remains limited, with most having just 25% to 50% of their applications utilize it. Ownership shifts from siloed departments to multi-team collaboration, and sponsorship becomes more centralized compared to those in the emergent phase (35% vs. 9%), signaling a move toward unified governance. Although governance structures like a Centre of Excellence/Enablement (COE) are not yet in place for these organizations, significant progress has been made to understand the requirements and prepare for it compared to those at the emergent phase (39% vs 19%), and support from DAP specialists is growing in comparison (43% vs. 26%). Investment in analytics to track guidance usage is also rising more than those in the emergent phase (38% vs. 26%), but deeper insights into optimizing user experience are still lacking. Overall, organizations at the formative stage demonstrate meaningful progress in execution and enablement, but require stronger cross-functional collaboration, governance, and analytics to unlock greater DAP potential.
Organizations at the structured stage experience more effective and scalable DAP implementations. Adoption is widespread across applications (96%), with growing support for both employee-facing (52%) and customer-facing (72%) use cases, signaling a shift toward delivering value across both internal and external user journeys. However, workflow integration remains notably low at 28%, indicating that integration is often limited to isolated applications instead of user journeys. Ownership at this stage becomes more centralized compared to organizations at the formative stage (44% vs. 35%), and organizations have a DAP vision that is better defined with more aligned roles and responsibilities (49% vs. 37%). Compared to organizations in the formative stage, more organizations in this stage also establish a clear and actionable roadmaps for DAP initiatives (50% vs. 35%), develop policies and frameworks to manage DAP content (55% vs. 31%), and begin evaluating or building COEs. While organizations in the structured phase are starting to realize tangible impact, they should invest in dedicated talent and advanced analytics to allow them to scale adoption and reach the next level of maturity.
At the proficient stage, DAP implementations are intentional, scalable, and reproducible. Adoption extends across nearly all applications (98%) and into workflows (54%), covering both employee-facing (84%) and customer-facing (58%) scenarios, which reflects maturity in both breadth and depth of use. DAP is not only deployed but actively used across more than 50% to 75% of their applications. Ownership is centralized at 47%, the highest compared to ownership in other stages, and typically supported by a dedicated COE and clear leadership, with 70% appointing a single champion and sponsor. Compared to those in earlier stages, organizations in the proficient stage are significantly more structured: 58% have established actionable roadmaps (vs. 40% at the structured phase), 54% have clearly defined specialist roles (vs. 45% at the emergent phase), and 51% possess advanced analytics capabilities (vs. 19% at the emergent phase). This enables them to continuously optimize user experience and maximize business value through data-driven insights. Organizations in this phase must recognize that digital adoption is a continuous journey. While they have established foundational structures, the next challenge lies in optimization and scale. To advance further in their journey, organizations in the proficient stage must master more complex workflows — an area where only 54% have achieved DAP integration — and prepare for the next frontier of digital maturity. -
Maturity directly correlates with business impact. More mature organizations consistently report better outcomes, smoother user experiences, and more effective digital transformation. In contrast, organizations in the emergent phase struggle to achieve these outcomes despite prioritizing improvements in user experience, employee productivity, and faster adoption of tools like CRMs and ERPs (see Figure 5). They often underutilize key DAP capabilities such as application performance analytics, user behavior, and adoption insights, process and journey automation, and do not build role-defined product instances. These limitations highlight a significant performance gap for organizations in the emergent phase compared to those in the proficient phase, who are better equipped to leverage DAPs strategically and at scale (see Figure 6).
While organizations in the proficient phase are more successful at aligning DAP with business goals, they still face challenges in driving employee adoption of AI applications, where only 33% reported that their organization effectively achieved this outcome, despite its strategic importance. Although organizations in the proficient phase outperform less mature peers in addressing AI-related challenges, significant gaps remain to fully realizing AI’s potential. Meanwhile, Emergent organizations face even more fundamental barriers, such as low awareness and understanding of AI use cases, making it even harder to leverage DAP for AI enablement (see Figure 7).
To unlock the full potential of DAPs, organizations need to continuously review and improve the maturity of their digital adoption programs and narrow the gap between potential and performance.
Figure 5
Effectiveness Of DAP In Achieving Business Outcomes By Maturity Level
Click to see data by stage
[CONTENT]
Note: Showing only responses for “Very effective”
Base: 335 decision-makers with responsibility over an organization’s digital adoption strategy, including 53 from organizations in the emergent stage, 115 in the formative stage, 110 in the structured stage, and 57 in the proficient stage
Source: Forrester's Q2 2025 Digital Adoption Survey [E-64111]
Figure 6
Top DAP Functionalities With The Biggest Gaps Between Organizations In The Emergent And Proficient Phases
Click to see data by stage
[CONTENT]
Note: Showing only responses for “Very effective” between respondents from organizations at the emergent and proficient phases.
Base: 335 decision-makers with responsibility over an organization’s digital adoption strategy, including 53 from organizations in the emergent stage, 115 in the formative stage, 110 in the structured stage, and 57 in the proficient stage
Source: Forrester's Q2 2025 Digital Adoption Survey [E-64111]
Figure 7
Top AI Objectives That Highlight The Five Biggest Gaps Between Organizations In The Emergent And Proficient Phases
Click to see data by stage
[CONTENT]
Note: Showing only responses for “Very effective” between respondents from organizations at the emergent and proficient phases who ranked these objectives within their top five.
Base: 335 decision-makers with responsibility over an organization’s digital adoption strategy, including 53 from organizations in the emergent stage, 115 in the formative stage, 110 in the structured stage, and 57 in the proficient stage
Source: Forrester's Q2 2025 Digital Adoption Survey [E-64111]
To continue advancing their DAP maturity, decision-makers need to address key challenges that hinder their organization’s digital adoption efforts. Overcoming these barriers requires an enterprise-wide approach that integrates DAPs into the fabric of their organization’s digital transformation.
- Digital adoption is siloed and strategically underleveraged. Organizational silos (40%) and a lack of understanding on how to effectively use DAPs (36%) are top business challenges stalling digital adoption (see Figure 8). This points to a deeper, systemic issue: Digital adoption is often perceived as an isolated initiative instead of a cohesive, enterprise-wide strategy. These strategic barriers are compounded by executional challenges such as difficulties in configuring in-app guidance (41%) and a shortage of necessary skills (34%) (see Figure 9). As result, many DAP deployments fall short of their potential, limiting impact and reducing ROI.
Figure 8
Top Five Business Challenges In Driving Digital Adoption
Organizational silos with conflicting priorities Lack of clarity on where and how to use DAP effectively Difficulty in measuring ROI of digital adoption initiatives Ineffective change management strategies to support Risks of unintended negative outcomes
Note: Showing sum of responses that ranked the above challenges within their organization’s top three challenges.
Base: 335 decision-makers with responsibility over an organization’s digital adoption strategy
Source: Forrester's Q2 2025 Digital Adoption Survey [E-64111]
Figure 9
Top Five Challenges When Using A DAP
Click to see data by stage
[CONTENT]
Note: Showing sum of responses that ranked the above challenges within their organization’s top three challenges
Base: 335 decision-makers with responsibility over an organization’s digital adoption strategy, including 53 from organizations in the emergent stage, 115 in the formative stage, 110 in the structured stage, and 57 in the proficient stage
Source: Forrester's Q2 2025 Digital Adoption Survey [E-64111]
- Organizations are hitting the AI adoption ceiling. Although 76% of decision-makers ranked the integration and adoption of AI as a high or critical priority, many face major obstacles in scaling AI adoption. Top challenges like the inability to maintain AI oversight and governance (34%), difficulty integrating AI features into workflows (33%) and lack of skills (30%) are stalling progress — even amongst organizations in the proficient phase. There is a growing gap between ambition and execution, which demands new tools, approaches, and capabilities.
-
DAPs can unlock the full potential of AI. When effectively leveraged, DAPs play a critical role in overcoming these barriers. DAPs have been at the forefront of integrating automation and AI into enterprise workflows to streamline user effort and enhance software experiences. Many DAPs now include native Robotic Process Automation (RPA) capabilities and are expanding their use of AI features such as copilots, builder assistants, and bots to deliver personalized and contextual guidance.4 This bridges the gap between AI capabilities and practical business outcomes, which helps organizations embed AI more effectively into day-to-day operations while driving user engagement, operational efficiency, and responsible AI governance.
DAPs bridge the gap between AI capabilities and real-world application by improving visibility of experience gaps in enterprise applications and identifying opportunities for automation and actionable insights on workflows, which helps organizations leverage AI more effectively in their daily operations. - Growing tech investments are driving interest in DAPs as essential tools for maximizing ROI and optimizing costs. Organizations are increasing their investment in their tech stack while they continue to adopt new applications and modernize legacy systems. Over 75% of decision-makers plan to increase spending across all software categories in the coming year, with a strong focus on analytics and business analytics (84%) and IT/security solutions (82%). Alongside this growth, enabling ROI on tech investments (79%) and optimizing cost of IT software (82%) remain top priorities.
- DAPs are increasingly seen as essential tools to realize the value of these investments. Advanced DAPs provide actionable insights on license utilization, redundant applications and journeys, and individual feature adoption. This helps to identify opportunities to optimize application spending and ensure a better ROI for internal applications.5 Decision-makers also prioritize specific DAP capabilities, including customizable app guidance by both technical and non-technical users (85%), multiformat content export (81%), and robust analytics and reporting (79%).
- To unlock greater efficiency, organizations are prioritizing DAP partners who support and are better aligned with their digital adoption goals. With more robust DAP capabilities improving digital adoption, decision-makers believe employees could gain an average of 14 hours in efficiency each week. Organizations are actively seeking strategic DAP partners who can provide seamless integration and deployment (33%), robust security, governance, and compliance standards (32%), as well as scalability and customizability (31%) to achieve their digital transformation goals. Organizations in the emergent phase prioritize strong vendor support and services (42%) in their vendor selection criteria. This focus aligns with their key challenge, which is the lack of skills to implement and operate DAP solutions — making external expertise and support essential.
Enterprises are investing heavily in digital transformation and AI, but the success of these initiatives hinges on effective adoption. Organizations that approach digital adoption as an enterprise-wide enabler, supported by clear ownership and governance, are better equipped to drive business outcomes. This integrated strategy, when aligned with business objectives, enhances user experience and delivers stronger returns on software investments.
Forrester’s in-depth survey of 335 decision-makers about their organization’s digital adoption strategy yielded several important recommendations:
Appendix A: Methodology
In this study, Forrester conducted an online survey of 335 decision-makers at organizations in Asia Pacific, Europe and North America to evaluate their organization’s digital adoption strategy and implementation. Survey participants included decision-makers in business strategy and operations, change management, CX, HR, IT, and product management. Questions provided to the participants asked about their key priorities, digital adoption platform goals, effectiveness and challenges. Respondents were offered a small incentive as a thank you for time spent on the survey. The study began in May 2025 and was completed in June 2025.
Appendix B: Demographics/Data
Region
| REMOVE | REMOVE |
|---|---|
| Europe | 37% |
| North America | 32% |
| APAC | 16% |
| India | 15% |
Employees
| REMOVE | REMOVE |
|---|---|
| 1,000 to 4,999 employees | 23% |
| 5,000 to 49,999 employees | 61% |
| 50,000 or more employees | 16% |
Revenue
| REMOVE | REMOVE |
|---|---|
| $500M to just under $1B | 3% |
| $1B to just under $3B | 57% |
| $3B to just under $5B | 27% |
| More than $5B | 14% |
Industry
| REMOVE | REMOVE | |
|---|---|---|
| Banking, financial services, and/or insurance | 10% | |
| Business and/or professional services | 10% | |
| Education and/or non-profits | 10% | |
| Energy and utilities | 10% | |
| Government | 11% | |
| Life sciences or healthcare | 9% | |
| Manufacturing | 9% | |
| Technology and/or technology services | 12% | |
| Transportation and logistics | 9% | |
| Travel and hospitality | 10% | |
Current position
| REMOVE | REMOVE | |
|---|---|---|
| C-level executive | 20% | |
| Vice President | 26% | |
| Director/senior manager | 45% | |
| Manager | 9% | |
| Project manager | 1% | |
Business function
| REMOVE | REMOVE | |
|---|---|---|
| Business strategy and operations | 32% | |
| Change management and business applications | 5% | |
| Customer experience | 5% | |
| Human resources / learning and development | 5% | |
| IT | 38% | |
| Product design/development and management | 15% | |
Responsibility over organization’s digital adoption strategy
| REMOVE | REMOVE |
|---|---|
| Final decision-maker | 34% |
| Part of a team making decisions | 61% |
| Influence decisions | 5% |
DAP usage
| REMOVE | REMOVE |
|---|---|
| Piloting | 13% |
| Implemented | 21% |
| Implemented and expanding | 36% |
| Fully embedded | 30% |
Note: Percentages may not total 100 due to rounding
Appendix C: Endnotes
ref1 Source: Data And AI Transformation Is The Most Important Activity For Digital Transformation, Forrester Research, Inc., March 14, 2024.
ref2 Source: Business And Technology Services Survey, 2024, Forrester Research, Inc., November, 2024.
ref3 To calculate approximate productivity savings, Forrester has followed Forrester’s TEI methodology and assumed a mid-sized firm employing 1,000 employees, with an average blended salary rate of US$29.98, and a productivity recapture rate of 50%.
ref4 Source: Vasupradha Srinivasan, Agentic AI Strengthens Digital Adoption Platform Offerings, Forrester Blogs.
ref5 Source: Start Building A DAP Center Of Excellence Now, Forrester Research, Inc., July 12, 2023.
ref6 Source: Vasupradha Srinivasan, Agentic AI Strengthens Digital Adoption Platform Offerings, Forrester Blogs.
This study was conducted by Forrester’s Custom Content Consulting Practice. Get in touch to discuss your custom content needs and goals. Learn more about all of Forrester's consulting capabilities.
PDF 