Why Technology Alone Won’t Modernise Your Business
Executive Summary
For more than a decade, modernisation has commanded boardroom attention, with billions poured into cloud, data platforms, and automation. Yet despite these investments, the business value has often fallen short. The lesson is clear: technology alone does not deliver transformation.
At TXP, we see technology as the enabler—but it is people who turn potential into performance. Success comes when organisations strike the right balance: systems alongside skills, innovation alongside stability, short-term delivery alongside long-term resilience.
For CIOs and CTOs, this balance translates into four priorities:
- Tackling legacy debt without disrupting critical operations.
- Closing skills gaps through flexible resourcing and knowledge transfer.
- Embedding security practices across every stage of transformation.
- Governing cloud and AI responsibly, guided as much by people as by platforms.
Organisations that achieve this balance modernise faster, build resilience, and realise measurable ROI. Those that overlook it risk stalled progress, higher costs, and missed opportunities.
The message is simple: transformation takes hold when technology and people combine, that’s the multiplication effect.
Read on for the full insight…
Why Technology Alone Won’t Modernise Your Business
Why CIOs and CTOs must balance systems with skills to succeed.
The limits of technology-first transformation
Investing heavily in digital transformation, shifting to the cloud, building smarter data platforms, and embracing automation at scale is a path well-trodden by many organisations over the last decade.
While often a challenging journey, these efforts are steadily laying the foundation for businesses to become more agile, innovative, and resilient. Yet still, the evidence suggests progress is uneven. Gartner’s 2025 CIO Survey found that only 48% of enterprise-wide digital initiatives meet or exceed their goals. McKinsey suggests similar, reporting that 70% of digital transformations fall short, most often because leaders underestimate the human and organisational hurdles, from resistance to change to mismatched structures. Indeed, Harvard Business Review reinforces the point: when transformation is treated as a technology project alone, the real strategic value is rarely realised.
What therefore is clear is that modernisation is never just about the technology. It is about the people who bring that technology to life, by adopting it, adapting it, and weaving it into the core of the business.
Technology x People: the modernisation multiplier
The most successful modernisation programmes balance technology and people. Technology provides the automation, scale, and efficiency. People provide the context, adaptability, and creativity that turn those capabilities into outcomes.
For mid-enterprise organisations, where budgets and resources are often stretched, this balance has become critical:
- Legacy systems. Core applications cannot simply be lifted into the cloud; they need people who understand dependencies and business impact.
- Cloud and AI. These technologies promise agility, but without skilled governance they can create sprawl and spiralling costs.
- Security. Detection technologies are vital, but true resilience comes from embedding security practices across teams.
- Resourcing. Scarce skills are one of the biggest risks to delivery. Flexible models for sourcing and deploying expertise are essential.
On paper, programmes may appear transformative, but it’s really only when the right blend of systems and skills comes together that real impact is delivered.
Lessons from the field
CIOs and CTOs know that real transformation means balancing technology with talent.
Simon Hopkinson, Vice President, Capgemini: “We’ve solved complex technical problems together [with TXP], and that has challenged our client to think a little differently about how they might do things. But the trust we have between the two organisations meant that when, when we had a challenging problem, TXP understood it, understood the reasons behind it”
Mark Hamblin, COO, The Shipowner’s Club: “Lots of our competitors are using technology to drive change much more than they used to as a goal for competitive advantage. Uh, that said, it’s always people that are delivering that technology without great people will go nowhere”.
The lesson is the same everywhere: transformation sticks when systems and people move forward together.
Four priorities for CIOs and CTOs
For leaders shaping modernisation agendas in 2025, four principles stand out:
- Modernisation is both technical and human. Systems must change, but so must skills, behaviours, and ways of working.
- Invest in adoption and knowledge transfer. Building skills into teams is as valuable as delivering technology.
- Blend internal and external capability. External partners should strengthen your teams, not replace them.
- Balance innovation with stability. Modernisation bridges operational resilience with new digital opportunity.
Modernisation without complexity
Technology will always be the enabler, but people are what turn potential into performance. In our experience, transformation succeeds when organisations treat modernisation as both a technical and a human challenge. The combination of systems and skills creates the momentum for faster delivery, stronger security, and measurable ROI. Where that balance is missing, progress slows, costs rise, and opportunities are left on the table.
For CIOs and CTOs, the message is simple. Modernisation succeeds when technology and people move together.