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Today’s businesses are spending a ton of money on digital transformation projects, in excess of $1 trillion per year by some estimates. But statistics show that nearly 75% of businesses are not seeing the return on their investments they were promised.
The problem, top experts believe, is not in the software platforms and other digital tools businesses are using to drive transformation. Rather, the efforts to boost efficiency and productivity are failing due to a flawed approach to technology onboarding.
“Most companies misunderstand onboarding because they treat it like orientation,” says Jared Navarre, Founder of Keyni Consulting and CEO of Onnix Global. “Slides, walkthroughs, checklists — that’s not onboarding. Onboarding is the moment a product proves it deserves to exist inside someone’s workflow.”
Navarre is a systems strategist and operational architect known for solving complex, high-stakes problems across healthcare, technology, infrastructure, and public-sector operations. With verified top-0.001% WAIS-IV intelligence scores — a clinical measure placing him among the highest-scoring adults ever evaluated — he blends high-cognition modeling with pragmatic execution in his advisory work for Fortune-level enterprises and global institutions. He has designed resilient frameworks for humanitarian networks and guided over 250 organizations through moments of rapid change. In addition to his leading roles with Keyni and Onnix Global, he also serves as chairman of the humanitarian NGOs IN-Fire and Project AK-47.
“Onboarding is where the user’s good intent either turns into behavior or quietly dies,” Navarre explains. “That’s why measuring onboarding success is so valuable. I’ve watched customers leave enthusiastic kickoff calls and still churn weeks later because nothing materially changed in how they worked. When that happens, the sale didn’t fail; the onboarding did.”
Successful technology implementation requires measuring progress
When implementing new tech initiatives, churn is the top concern for both those selling the tech and those buying it. Sellers want to avoid license churn by seeing their product integrated into the buyer’s workflow, and buyers want to avoid adoption churn by seeing key stakeholders embrace the new technology.
To lower the risk of churn, businesses must make sure onboarding is succeeding by measuring its effectiveness. But this is where businesses often get confused, measuring the wrong metrics and missing the signs that onboarding is getting off course.
“How companies measure onboarding varies by industry, but the mistake is consistent: confusing activity with progress,” Navarre says. “SaaS companies celebrate setup completion. Enterprise platforms celebrate deployment. Marketplaces track signups. None of those matters if the user never crosses a real threshold where the product makes something easier, faster, or better. A simple rule applies across categories: if onboarding can be marked ‘complete’ without the customer being meaningfully better off, the metric is lying.”
Progress will look different depending on the application, but with software, there are usually a small number of actions that strongly correlate with retention. Businesses looking for signs of successful implementation should look for the following:
- In enterprise systems, intended users staying active without constant support.
- In marketplaces, the first successful transaction that holds up.
- In fintech, repeat usage, rather than simply account creation.
- For internal tools, teams continuing to use the new tool rather than resorting to workarounds or returning to existing systems once the novelty wears off.
“Churn is rarely a surprise for those who know how to spot the signs,” Navarre says. “It’s usually decided early, often in the first few weeks, when a product either creates momentum or becomes optional. Measuring onboarding success forces teams to confront whether users actually reached value, not whether they completed a process.”
Strong technology implementation plans make it easy for stakeholders to engage
The strongest onboarding experiences limit the distance between signup and payoff by delaying anything that feels like paperwork, which can quickly add friction to the rollout. Instead, they guide users through the product instead of pushing them to documentation.
It’s also important for the implementation process to recognize that different users need different paths. Forcing every user through the same sequence regardless of role may increase operational efficiency, but it doesn’t help with technology adoption. Streamline the onboarding process for each role by quickly showing them how the new solution addresses their unique pain points, and users will be more receptive.
“Improving onboarding success is rarely about adding more content or more steps,” Navarre shares. “It’s about removing ambiguity. Teams need to be clear about what the first real win is, how quickly someone should reach it, and what friction is getting in the way.”
Overall, new technology implementation strategies should treat onboarding as part of the product, not a one-time flow that gets forgotten after launch. Seeing it as a change management exercise, rather than an install and activation, makes it much more likely that businesses will achieve the momentum needed to translate new systems into business growth.
“Onboarding isn’t a moment, but the phase where a product earns the right to stick around,” Navarre warns. “Companies that manage it well by measuring it honestly stop mistaking motion for progress and start fixing the problems that actually drive churn.”
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