Schalk Stalman on the challenges in digital transformations for enterprise clients

IntroductionIntroduction

More often than not, digital transformation promises more than it delivers. In most cases, the reasons are familiar: unclear strategy, lack of leadership alignment, and cultures resistant to change. Failure rates can reach as high as 40 percent, and in the enterprise space, that number can feel even higher.

To close out our three-part series, we speak with Schalk Stalman, CEO of Hypersolid, about what it takes to make large-scale, or so-called enterprise transformations, succeed.

This conversation looks specifically through the lens of enterprise clients, where global scale, complex governance, and multiple decision layers create a unique set of obstacles - and where AI will soon influence the balance of power, and therefore how such a digital transformation is orchestrated.

InterviewInterview

Q: From your experience, what do you recognize about the complexity people describe around digital transformation?

I want to start of with a disclaimer: research firms are quick to label complex digital transformations as failures. But in my experience, the companies themselves often describe them less as failures and more as frustratingly slow.

And that’s not always because they underestimated the challenge. In my 30 years of being at the heart of this business, I am convinced that most enterprise leaders understand the scale. These are smart people who understand the complexity of their business. What happens most of the time is that reality doesn’t match expectations.

And there’s another truth: I’ve rarely seen an enterprise architecture that the people who have to work with it genuinely love. Most of them feel slow and clunky. Not because the technology is inherently bad, but because global corporate structures are slow by design.

Endless processes, approval layers, and governance frameworks have the tendency to strangle agility. The question quickly becomes: Does the process serve the business, or is the business forced to fit the process? In many global digital transformations, that’s the real tension.

Q: What makes digital transformation succeed, and where did you see it working well?

Success almost always comes down to the stakeholder on the client side. Take our recent work with Tilia. The lead stakeholder understands what we are doing, works closely with us, and embraces our pace. That kind of energy changes the game.

Other successful clients, like citizenM, have the audacity to make bold moves. In this case, citizenM abandoned a heavy, monolithic platform like Amadeus in favor of a lightweight system like Apaleo.

We recommended Apaleo to them, and they trusted us. In return, it gave them both speed and differentiation. Especially as it was part of a composable architecture we created for them. In that kind of client relationship, we can add real value, and fortunately, the results show it.

That added value came to fruition earlier this year with Marriott International acquiring the citizenM hotel brand for $355 million, adding 36 select-service lifestyle hotels in the U.S., Europe, and Asia Pacific to Marriott’s portfolio, as well as three under-construction hotels opening in 2026.

Q: Where can Hypersolid make the biggest difference?

Many clients come to us out of frustration with existing partners. They want speed, capability, and a human touch. That’s what we deliver: speed, no endless ticket queues, and capability.

What also differentiates us is our human connection. At the end of the day, we are a tech company, but the real value of Hypersolid lies in the people who are working on that technology. I come into the office every day looking forward to talking with our developers and discussing technology with them. Those conversations are what fuel my enthusiasm.

But that approach also extends to the way we work with our customers. We pride ourselves on being a company where you can just call us and talk to an actual person who not only listens to you, but has also been working on the solutions we created for that specific client.

That means he or she has the knowledge, but also has the capabilities to solve your problem. Our second-line support constantly operates at the level that in many big consultancies you’d only see in a crisis.

If you combine those strong capabilities and people we have in-house with our approach to tech, you understand why we are able to deliver speed and agility.

Take citizenM again. They wanted global reach and the ability to pivot quickly. MACH gave them both. But in fast-moving markets, especially with AI now accelerating change, standardization becomes harder.

What you build today could be obsolete tomorrow, unless you have an orchestration layer that can adapt to new components. That is exactly what our MACH approach allows us to do for our customers.

And I believe that’s where the big cloud providers, Microsoft and AWS, will invest billions. The question is: how will enterprise clients respond?

Q: I heard you mention AI, which you are heavily advocating internally. How do you feel AI will impact this specific topic?

For me, AI is a big game-changer because it fundamentally shifts the balance of power. It makes scale and capability more accessible, allowing smaller players to punch above their weight. In theory, that is a good development for a company like Hypersolid.

But it also raises the stakes for orchestration. Cloud providers like Microsoft and AWS will try to integrate, even absorb, the orchestration layers that companies depend on. That could erode the autonomy of platforms like Salesforce.

Composable solutions will matter here. If you can build something that plugs into a global orchestration layer without being locked into a single vendor, you become far more valuable. But that means playing your cards right at the orchestration level. And that is something that goes beyond technology, as it becomes a strategic discussion.

For most enterprise clients, the conversation always comes back to the same challenge: How do we make this global? If we build an AI solution for a customer like Heineken in one market, it’s not a win until it’s deployed consistently across 40-plus countries, with security, compliance, and performance under control. Without that, it does not become a standard solution and is therefore not suitable for an enterprise client like Heineken.

So yes, AI will have a large influence on the balance of power, but the new and real battle will be fought in orchestration. And right now, the dominant players are the big cloud providers. A few new players may emerge, but in the end, global adoption will depend on either aligning with or competing against those giants.

Digital transformation is never just about technology. Whether it’s Nik Nieuwenhuijs describing the leadership misalignments that stall progress, Ivar Allema on how to make sure that technology and business are speaking the same language, or Schalk Stalman outlining the orchestration challenges of global enterprises, the pattern is clear: transformation succeeds when there’s alignment, ownership, and trust - and fails when those are missing.

With AI now reshaping the pace and nature of change, the pressure is even greater. The question for every organization, especially at enterprise scale, is not whether transformation is possible, but whether the leadership, culture, and orchestration are in place to make it stick.