Strong Roots, Thriving Projects: Building Your Digital Thread for Growth
Across industries, executives are investing heavily in digital transformation. According to Hexagon’s Data Connectivity & Visibility: The Competitive Edge in Industry report, 7 in 10 organizations have added more digital tools and data sources in the past year and 76% of leaders frequently or continuously use visualization dashboards. On the surface, this looks like significant progress toward digital maturity.
But peel back the layers and a different picture emerges. Much like a tree with weak or tangled roots, many organizations are struggling to nourish growth. Despite new tools, the report found that 66% of leaders still rely on paper-based information on a frequent or continuous basis and 57% admit their tools lack connectivity to each other. Together, these realities tell a sobering truth: most organizations don’t yet have a true digital thread.
[Defining digital thread: An always-connected data flow from across an entire enterprise, providing continual intelligence.]
For project-driven organizations, where success depends on accurate, real-time data across the project lifecycle, this gap can mean the difference between industry leadership and repeated underperformance.
The Myth vs. The Reality of Digitalization
The adoption of more digital tools is often conflated with successful digital transformation. But the two are not the same. The distinction lies between digitizing and digitalizing:
- Digitizing is about converting analog documents and processes into digital form (like replacing paper reports with Excel or other disparate digital solutions). This doesn’t fundamentally change how data flows across the organization.
- Digitalizing is about reimagining and integrating processes end-to-end. It’s building a connected ecosystem where project, portfolio and enterprise data seamlessly interact, enabling that data to inform every facet of the project lifecycle.
A true digital thread is only possible when organizations cross that chasm. It requires more than dashboards, data entry or standalone systems. It demands an always-connected data flow across the enterprise, where finance, operations, engineering and project controls are all linked. Without it, decision-makers operate in silos, reacting to partial truths rather than leading with clarity.
The impact shows. Hexagon’s research reveals that 56% of leaders agree their digital transformation has yet to deliver the expected value, an example being that teams are losing an average of 117 working days per year to manual reporting and data consolidation. More tools, without connectivity, continue to result in inefficiency.
The Cost of Lacking a Digital Thread
The consequences of weak data connectivity aren’t limited to the back office. Unfortunately, they cascade directly into project and business outcomes. The study shows:
- 93% of organizations are impacted by projects running over budget.
- 70% report a strong or severe impact from missed project milestones.
Whether you’re a project leader or an executive, these outcomes hit close to home. Both leaders in the field and leaders in the boardroom make decisions daily that hinge on accurate, timely data. When information is outdated, siloed or incomplete, decisions inevitably drift off course, leading to budget overruns, schedule delays, misalignment between project and business goals and missed opportunities to pivot when conditions change.
Why Integration is the Root of Success
Think of your project-focused organization as a tree:
- The roots are your integration tools and connected systems. They soak up data across project and portfolio lifecycle phases and business functions.
- The trunk represents your skilled staff, who rely on those roots to glean the right information at the right time to execute effectively.
- The branches are the best practices and processes your organization has implemented, which teams leverage to effectively relay data/instruction to the field.
Every leaf symbolizes a project and all the leaves combined represent your portfolio.
When the roots fail to absorb the right nutrients, because of disconnected systems, paper-based reporting or siloed processes, the trunk (your team) is stalled. Best practices and talent can only do so much without a healthy flow of information. Over time, the branches falter and the leaves wither. Projects miss milestones, budgets spiral and business objectives go unmet.
However, when the root system is strong, powered by integrated tools and a true digital thread—data flows freely. The trunk thrives, branches send nutrients upward and the leaves flourish. That’s the power of data connectivity in project-driven organizations: it nourishes success from the ground up.
The Way Forward: Enterprise Project Performance
The good news? Organizations don’t have to remain stunted by fragmented systems and outdated processes. By adopting an Enterprise Project Performance (EPP) strategy, they can finally bridge the gap between isolated tools and a connected digital ecosystem.
While functions like finance have rapidly embraced digitalization to meet compliance demands, projects and portfolios have often been left behind. Lacking the same urgency, they’ve missed out on the efficiency, transparency and insight digitalization delivers. Today, however, the stakes are higher than ever: with rising project complexity and the advent of AI, capital-intensive organizations stand at a crossroads... modernize their project practices or risk falling behind.
Don’t get us wrong, EPP isn’t about adding “yet another tool.” It’s about creating a unified hub that allows organizations to retire redundant legacy systems and consolidate processes into a single platform. That doesn’t mean eliminating every existing tool; critical systems like ERP and HR platforms remain, but they can be seamlessly integrated into an EPP solution. This is where project controls, portfolio management and project planning converge (alongside cost actuals, detailed schedules, timesheets, etc.) to deliver an enterprise-wide view of performance. The result? Leaders are empowered with:
- Real-time visibility into project health and portfolio alignment.
- Automation that eliminates low-value reporting tasks and frees teams to focus on strategic work.
- Standardization that ensures everyone is working from the same processes, data and definitions.
- A foundation for AI feeding advanced models with clean, connected data for predictive insights and smarter forecasting.
The results speak for themselves. In a commissioned study by Forrester Consulting, the real-world impact of EcoSys™, a leading Enterprise Project Performance solution, was evaluated. To quantify the benefits, Forrester created a composite organization based on interviews with actual EcoSys customers. The study found that this organization achieved:
- 85% ROI and $6.42 million in net present value savings over 3 years.
- 20% reduction in project cost overruns.
- 25% increase in project controller productivity.
- 50% productivity recapture rate across employees.
- A payback period of just 21 months.
These aren’t just efficiency gains: they’re proof that a connected, enterprise approach pays dividends in project outcomes, business alignment and financial performance.
The Importance of Complete Adherence
Of course, these results don’t happen by accident. The organizations that realized this level of impact also committed to a fundamental overhaul of the way they plan, manage and execute projects. They eliminated manual processes, retired paper-based reporting and replaced homegrown or fragmented systems. This transformation wasn’t easy—it required hard work, persistence, and above all, the faith and buy-in of their employees.
Digitalization is an all-or-nothing venture. A tool can be promising, but without user adoption and business leaders actively championing change, the effort will stall. True digital threads only take shape when organizations go all in.
The encouraging truth? When leaders step forward with vision, persistence and alignment, they don’t just adopt new technology—they write the next chapter of their organization’s success story. You are the hero of that story.
Becoming the Heroes of Your Industry
The reality is clear: simply digitizing existing processes isn’t enough. To thrive in today’s project-driven economy, organizations must let go of legacy ways of working and embrace a truly connected approach.
By investing in a digital backbone and adopting an EPP solution, like EcoSys, leaders can finally realize the promise of the digital thread. As a result, they’ll turn data silos into actionable intelligence, drive alignment across the business and unlock the agility needed to pivot when it matters most.
For leaders in a project focused organization, this is more than an operational upgrade. It’s an opportunity to become the heroes of your industry, delivering projects on time, on budget and in full alignment with business goals.
Next Steps
The future of project delivery is connected. With an Enterprise Project Performance strategy, you don’t just drive project success, you lead lasting, impactful transformation.