We have reached a paradox in digital transformation. Global SaaS spending is projected to hit $300 billion in 2025. However when it comes to SAAS adoption, organizations are only using 47% of their software licenses on average (Zylo, 2025). Resulting in wasted $21 million annually in unused licenses. Every year, billions of dollars are poured into state-of-the-art platforms that eventually become shelfware, digital dust-gatherers. End users ignore these in favor of messy Excel sheets and Slack threads.

In my recent research into User Research on Fitness, I noticed a striking parallel that explains this phenomenon. People don’t quit the gym because they lack the desire to be fit. They quit because the human friction of the process outweighs the perceived value of the result.

B2B SaaS adoption has exactly the same problem. We are asking people to change their form, forget old ways. And get moving, like a new workout and this causes immediate soreness.

What is the behaviour science behind this? This is grounded in the “9x Effect,” a concept by Harvard Business School professor John Gourville. He argues that consumers overvalue what they already have (the status quo) by a factor of three. At the same time, its developers overvalue their new innovation by a factor of three. This creates a gaping 9x-gap in perceived value that a product must overcome just to be considered “useful.”

The Aspiration vs. Action Gap

In the fitness world, the “Aspiration” is the glossy image on a gym brochure. The “Action” is the 6:00 AM alarm in mid-winter.

The C-suite executive acts as the enthusiastic gym-goer on January 1st. They purchase a tool for the “dream version” of their company—lean, automated, and data-driven. However, the employees are the ones who have to wake up and do the work. To them, the new software isn’t a solution, but it is a “workout.”

A 2025 study found that 55% of CRM implementations fail. And this is not because the technology is broken. As a matter of fact, this is because of a fundamental gap between leadership’s vision and the daily reality of the end-user (Johnny Grow, 2025).

When I worked on building a sustainability learning solution for hotels, the aspiration was enabling sustainability certification. But for a busy floor manager, the action was documenting sustainability evidence at 11:00 PM after a grueling double shift. If the tool didn’t account for that specific muscle fatigue,” the evidence simply didn’t get entered. We realized we weren’t designing for a sustainability officer. We were designing for a tired human who just wanted to go home. We had to move the “gym” to their doorstep by making the interface quick & easy, for swift, late-night entries.

Overcoming process muscle memory

In physical fitness, unlearning a bad squat form is significantly harder than learning a new one from scratch. Your body gravitates toward what is familiar, even if it’s damaging. In the corporate world, legacy process is our muscle memory.

Building an app for NGOs in remote areas reinforced this. For coaches, a manual paper log represented years of muscle memory, their safe playground. A new app would in all likelihood be akin to switching from reliable old running shoes to high-tech cleats overnight. The friction would have been too high if we didn’t understand the underlying reason. The fix? We created a warm-up phase. A test school was used during the induction of coaches. This become their playground to practice, to warm-up. We enabled to practice without the fear of making any mistakes, and getting used to the high-tech cleats.

The dopamine deficit, all workout, no endorphins

The biggest dilemma in fitness is the time-lag: the workout happens today, but the mirror change is gradual. B2B SaaS is notoriously bad at addressing this dopamine deficit dragging the Saas adoption down with it . We often hide the value behind 10 layers of setup screens and approval loops.

2024 Mind the Product Benchmarks Report reveals that 6.4% of features are driving 80% of clicks. This is the digital twin of expensive gym machines that sit gathering dust. Why, because nobody knows how they help them stay fit.

To stick with a product workout, users need a quick win within the first few minutes.

• In the sustainability solution for hotels, instead of waiting for a detailed sustainability report, we created an instant calculation. Users get to answer a few questions to understand their readiness for the sustainability audit. All in less than 15 minutes.
• In the NGO App, we added a dashboard for master coaches. to get a quick look of the status across multiple schools. This took more than 2 hours of manual compiling from paper forms and WhatsApp messages in the past. By providing an immediate endorphin hit, we raised the app from being a chore to an enabler.

Closing the training-day gap

A common mistake in both fitness and SaaS is treating “Training” as a separate event from “Living.” You can’t expect someone to become an athlete by attending one three-hour seminar. You do it through daily, incremental form-correction.

In many organizations, training is a disconnected event, a half-day workshop. This often has nothing to do with the user’s actual 2:00 PM crisis. This creates Cognitive Muscle Soreness. By the time the user actually faces this on the job, they’ve forgotten 90% of the workshop.

The NGO app does have an initial training for on-boarding coaches about the program & the new features of the app. But we knew a training day would not be enough. Coaches are on the ground, dealing with young students. They need to know what the programs stands for? What is to be emphasized on in each lesson?

Our solution, embedded training instead of external training, we embedded the learning directly into the user flow.

• Instead of a “Training Manual,” we used In-App Training, before the start of every lesson.
• Before a coach can log a lesson info, a sub 5 minute Micro-Learning video needs to be completed. At the end the user is expected to answer a relevant MCQ to finish the training.
• Unless the training is completed, the coach cannot start a lesson.

We turned training into performance support. By making the learning part of the set rather than a separate lecture, we achieved a level of compliance that a classroom never could.

From the heavy backpack to the sip of energy

Most B2B SaaS is sold on aspiration, telling users they should log data because it’s “good for the organization. We asked coaches to log their lessons for impact tracking. Initial perception made this the heavy backpack. It was a burden added to an already exhausting “marathon” of field work. When you’re tired and thirsty, you don’t want to carry more weight for someone else’s benefit. Lessons were updated, but not immediately and often left undone.

We pivoted with a fitness fix. We integrated expense management into the core app flow. We made the app the only way to submit receipts for reimbursement. Voila! The tool was no longer an added task. It became the energy drink they needed to replenish their own resources. We moved the digital interaction from something they did for the NGO to something the app did for them.

The result, timely lesson logging jumped by 67%. We stopped asking them to work out for a vague future goal. By not being the burden and start being the hydration.

Are You Building a Tool or a Program?

It is time to stop asking “What features do users need?”

Instead, ask the Fitness questions:

1. What is the muscle soreness this product causes on Day 1? (Is it too hard to start? Why?)
2. Where is the dopamine hit? (Does the user feel smarter/faster in the first 15 minutes?)
3. What is the result of the work(out)? (Are we improving their lives, helping them achieve their goals by using the app?)
4. Is the tool the heavy backpack? (Is the user seeing value in using the tool, for their own good)

The data is clear: SAAS adoption doesn’t fail because of code; it fails because of human psychology. Blaming users for a software roll-out failure is as relevant as blaming a person for an unsustainable diet failure. The fault lies in the product design.

The next time you launch a product, don’t just ask if it works. Ask if the product is fit to work with the end-users. Ready to transform your product? Book a free 30 min Product fitness consultation.