Transformation is the new due diligence

A greater premium is being placed on organisations that can demonstrate resilience, adaptability and clarity of operations, especially against a backdrop of accelerated technology cycles and economic uncertainty.

Businesses that embed transformation from inception are now measurably more resilient, more investable, and more valuable than those that treat it as a late-stage intervention.

When transformation is built into a company’s DNA, operational and technological agility becomes instinctive rather than purely reactive. Keeping your technology and data adaptable, while augmenting your teams with the right tools, creates long-term resilience rather than just short-term performance gains.

It has become the due diligence required to feasibly assess whether a business is structurally capable of change, not just whether it can survive the initial transaction.

The organisations that achieve the strongest valuations are not the ones scrambling to fix processes or clean up data handling ahead of a deal. Instead, they are the businesses that designed for change and transformation from day zero, embedding transformation into how the organisation makes decisions and scales.

We have seen growing evidence that rapid, widespread adoption, without clear direction, has led to costly outcomes.

Organisations that rushed into generative AI tools, horizontal platforms and broad transformation programmes have seen limited returns, exposing legacy processes and vulnerabilities rather than resolving them.

A clear premium is now being placed on precision, meaning transformation grounded in sector context and clarity of outcomes. Generic, one-size-fits-all technology deployments increasingly accelerate operational dysfunction, speeding up broken processes instead of redesigning them to work from the ground up.

As a result, senior stakeholders are no longer only asking what technology an organisation has chosen, but how it has been deployed and governed into the operating model.

Specific, strategic changes signal greater leadership maturity and confidence in your operations, and a clear understanding of where true value is being created in your organisation. Clean organisational data is no longer just an IT concern; it’s a business product and now a driver for your valuation, that must sit at the heart of business strategy. We are now seeing a decisive move away from hype and experimentation towards outcome-driven deployments grounded in measurable results.

Allianz the German P&C insurer, a first mover in this shift, has achieved over 2x market rate growth in motor policies driven by customer, offering and operations changes underpinned by data and analytics. (McKinsey 2025).

Empathy-driven transformation should be considered the ultimate strategic asset.

As the operating model structures of traditional firms evolves from the 1970’s 7-S framework, many new emerging structures report they are around 20% more prepared for growth, new ways of working and scaling of AI & Digitisation when they include more empathetic methods of coordination – in addition to structure, the elements are purpose, value agenda, ecosystem, leadership, governance, processes, technology, behaviours, rewards, footprint, and talent.

Transformation credibility is as much cultural as it is technical, yet empathy is often overlooked. When decision-makers understand the rationale behind change and feel supported by their chosen transformation approach and partners, adoption accelerates, and the business sees real, lasting impact. The role of a transformation partner is not to create dependency, but to empower organisations towards building internal confidence and capability.

Providing employees with routes to AI led training & coaching is an example working in some organisations – hyper-personalisation – based on smart data collection, insightful analysis and delivery to individuals modules of gamified learning as a key to continuous improvement. Virtuous closing of the loop in improved outcomes for customer call and field service managers has been experienced in Deutsche Telekom.

Businesses that invest early in transformation don’t just unlock greater agility, but build a more sustainable organisation from the outset. Meaningful empathy-led transformation is the key to driving meaningful growth and should be expected to take priority in 2026.