Bridging the gap between people and platforms: Why tech change fails in advice firms

I’ve sat with firms who’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on new systems, only to go back to where they started. Unsurprisingly, some jump at the newest AI file-noting tool in favour of what was right in front of them with CoPilot, and some pay for tools that sit dormant in the tech stack for years.

In Finura’s experience, technology projects in advice firms aren’t really about technology. Done properly, the tech decisions are often the easy part. The hard part — the messy, expensive, frustrating part — comes afterwards. Because every tech project is actually a people and change project.

Adoption eats features for breakfast

Vendors love to show off features. Advisers and support teams, though, live in workflows. If technology doesn’t fit seamlessly into how people already work — or clearly make those workflows better — features are just noise.

And the data backs it up. Our Finura Technology Benchmarking Data tells us that around 60 per cent of advice firms have gone through a major technology change in the past two years, yet only 29 per cent say it was “very successful.” For the rest, the experience was disruptive at best, and at worst delivered no ROI at all.

Features sold. Adoption not included.

Source: Finura Technology Benchmarking Data

The human cost of poor tech decisions

“Here are your logins — go do some training and figure it out” is not a strategy. It’s a guarantee of failure. Teams will default back to what they know, every single time.

Technology can do brilliant things, but people need to believe it will actually make their jobs easier before they’ll change. That means involving them early, asking where the pain points are, rebuilding processes around those realities, and drip-feeding change in ways that feel manageable.

Adoption isn’t about a one-off training session: it’s about trust, clarity and patience. If you want a return on your investment, you have to invest just as much in the humans as you do in the software.

We often talk about the financial cost of tech, but the bigger cost is human. Poorly chosen or poorly rolled-out systems frustrate staff, slow down clients, and create a culture of cynicism. Once burned, teams become even harder to convince the next time around.

My very first project at Finura was working with a firm that had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on the wrong system, only to abandon it and go back to where they started. The mistake wasn’t the software itself — it was how the decision was made. Everything happened at Board level, with Leaders who weren’t living in the day-to-day process. The back and middle offices — the people who actually were in the trenches — weren’t consulted. The result? A very costly nightmare that needed unravelling.

The financial hit was obvious: months of licence fees wasted on software that never got properly used. But the human cost was even higher. Staff who had been forced through the rollout felt ignored and exhausted, their trust in leadership eroded. Once that cynicism sets in, it infects every future project.

Change fatigue is real

Rolling out new tech isn’t flicking a switch. It’s months of small adjustments, retraining, and habit rewiring. Most firms underestimate how long it takes to massage change through a business.

You have to attack change with infinite empathy. Put yourself in your team’s shoes: they’re trying to do their day jobs and learn how to do them in a new system at the same time. It’s exhausting. Downtime isn’t optional at these points — it’s essential.

We find that fatigue almost always sets in around months four or five. That’s when the early excitement has worn off, but the new habits aren’t fully bedded-in. This is the danger zone. If you keep pushing without pause, resistance hardens. The smarter approach is to take deliberate breaks from the tech project at this point, let the team catch their breath, and then keep moving.

The reality is that embedding new tech successfully means baby-stepping the change. Staff need time to learn, experiment, fail, and try again before behaviours stick. Without empathy for that learning curve, fatigue will win and the system will quietly fail.

Treat tech projects as people projects

Yes, AI and automation are powerful. Yes, portals and CRMs can change the way we do things. But unless people believe in the system, understand the “why,” and see the value in their day-to-day work, the investment will stall.

Our advice would be to budget not just for software, but for training, coaching, and hand-holding. Expect the adoption curve to take months, not weeks. And design rollouts with empathy for the people who actually live and breathe the day to day advice journey — the ones juggling client onboarding, fee consents, advice production, implementation and the new workflows you’re asking them to learn.

Because in the end, bridging the gap between people and platforms is the real key to making technology work.

Leadership matters more than licences

Every successful tech rollout I’ve seen has one thing in common: clear ownership. Someone inside the firm — not the vendor, not the consultant — has to be accountable for embedding the change.

Without it, projects drift; staff disengage; and six months later, the tech is “live” but not truly working.

Leadership doesn’t just mean paying for the software. It means setting the tone, owning the change, and modelling the behaviours you expect from your team.

Final message

Technology doesn’t fail in advice firms because it doesn’t work properly. It fails because people are busy, tired, under-consulted, and expected to change overnight.

If you want technology success, treat it as a people project. Lead with empathy, involve the back and middle office early, take deliberate breaks, and show staff what “good” looks like in their world.

Do that, and you’ll not just close the gap between people and platforms — you’ll finally unlock the technology ROI most firms have been chasing for years.

Danni Le Grande

Danni Le Grande is head of consulting at Finura Group.