Three principles behind effective transformation: webinar recap

At Inviqa, we recently hosted a webinar focused on successful transformation - exploring how organisations can turn insight into action and avoid the pitfalls that so often derail change.

To keep the session practical, Inviqa’s hosts Rachael Brandon Lai, Executive Director of Strategy and Experience, and Kaustav Bhattacharya, CTO shared the three most common challenges organisations face and the methods that can help overcome them:

Challenge 1: A disconnected leadership 

Decision makers are often far removed from customer needs. This leads to decisions based on assumptions, misaligned priorities, and investment in the wrong areas.

Challenge 2: Uncertainty around data

For most organisations, the challenge isn’t a lack of data but rather knowing which data sources matter, how to interpret them, and how to link insights to meaningful business outcomes. 

Challenge 3: Shiny new object syndrome 

Teams can become distracted by the latest technology trends, adopting them with high expectations but without first assessing whether they solve the right problems.

What the attendees told us

To see how many attendees had fallen victim to challenge 3, Shiny New Object Syndrome, we asked which unvalidated shiny new object had taken priority over more impactful initiatives in 2025.

• 50% admitted to having invested unsuccessfully in an AI initiative
• 28% confessed to having implemented an unsatisfactory chatbot
• 14% had launched a failed custom or native app 
• 7% had invested in unvalidated big data or analytics tech 

With the hype around AI and chatbots, these figures weren’t surprising, highlighting how easy it is to adopt technology with bold promises but little guidance on how to make it work in practice.

One attendee mentioned augmented reality, an option we hadn’t included as we’d practically forgotten about it. It once promised to reshape everything but quickly faded into the background and serves as a reminder that hype alone is no guarantee of value.

But shiny new objects aren’t inherently bad

Rachael and Kaustav did emphasise that none of these technologies are inherently bad, they’re just often prioritised for the wrong reasons. Organisations can feel pressure to be seen at the forefront of trends yet lack the inhouse capability to build and maintain the solutions properly, leading to wasted time, effort, and money. 

Rachael stressed that the real question therefore shouldn’t be whether to use these technologies or not, but whether they genuinely improve customer experience or operational efficiency. So called “Shiny new objects” can be the right solution if they meet a real customer need, align with organisational capability, and create measurable business impact.

Overcoming transformation challenges

With the challenges organisations commonly face identified, Rachael and Kaustav moved on to share three methods for overcoming these challenges.

Method 1: Bring leadership closer to the customers

While most organisations run user research, the insights from these sessions often reach leadership through static reports and slide show decks.

This removes the emotional nuance that drives real understanding of what a user or customer needs and may not get leadership excited about the proposed changes.

To solve this for our clients, we now produce short video clips from research sessions specifically for leadership. These clips cut through opinion and internal politics, giving customers a direct voice and creating far stronger buying for experience-led decisions.

Method 2: Find balance in your data sources

As mentioned, it’s not often a lack of data that’s an issue for organisations. The issue instead lies in knowing which data matters, how to interpret it and how to blend different types of insight into something that drives action.

The key is to start with the outcome you want to influence and then choose the data and research methods that will help uncover where the opportunities are.

• Analytics data shows what users do 
• User research and testing explain why they do it
• Performance insights expose the technical barriers between intention and action 

Blending these sources gives a more accurate picture and prevents wasted investment in features that won’t add value.

Method 3: Focus on the fundamentals

While flashy features can feel more exciting, the most powerful improvements often come from foundational work. 

Enhancing accessibility, performance, content operations and technical architecture may not look dramatic on the surface, but they have a strong long-term impact on experience, cost, and delivery speed.

We recently helped a client relaunch a website where the visual changes were minimal, yet the transformation underneath was huge. Usability improved, content teams gained autonomy, and release cycles became dramatically faster. Plus, the organisation now has a platform that can evolve and support future innovation.

Focusing on the fundamentals doesn’t replace innovation; it enables it and is often the route to bigger long-term impact.

There are many ways to deliver insight-led digital change, but these three methods repeatedly prove the most effective. By bringing decision makers closer to real customer experience, letting desired outcomes guide your use of data, and investing in the fundamentals rather than the shiny objects, your transformation efforts are far more likely to succeed and set your organisation up for ongoing innovation-led digital change.

For the full discussion, the recap of the webinar is available on demand here.