Deloitte's 2025 Digital Transformation Report Overlooks Critical CPQ Crisis Undermining Enterprise Growth

Deloitte's annual Digital Transformation Report, which typically sets boardroom agendas across industries, has overlooked a critical revenue operations crisis that threatens to undermine the billions enterprises are investing in digital transformation. The 2025 report highlights AI adoption, cloud migration, and data analytics as key priorities while completely missing the escalating Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) systems crisis that is actively hampering growth initiatives.

While 89% of enterprises invest heavily in digital transformation, most are ignoring the critical bottleneck killing their growth: a CPQ landscape in complete disarray where legacy systems are failing, promised replacements remain unproven, and customers are trapped in expensive limbo. Executives are being pushed to modernize their technology stacks while their CPQ systems—the core engines of revenue generation—are collapsing beneath them.

Global consulting firms like Deloitte serve as trusted advisors for enterprise transformation, yet their frameworks consistently underestimate the operational realities of revenue generation. In most transformation projects, Revenue Operations receives less than 3% of the total budget despite being the infrastructure that supports every customer interaction and directly impacts revenue recognition, forecasting, and deal velocity. The consequences are severe, with sales teams stuck with slow, error-prone quoting processes, finance leaders lacking visibility into deal data, and customers experiencing friction, delays, and pricing mistakes that erode trust.

Across industries, CPQ has become the most overlooked weak point in the digital transformation journey. While Deloitte's report paints a picture of AI-driven futures and seamless digital experiences, enterprises are quietly struggling with quoting and deal processes that slow sales cycles, alienate customers, and drain margins. Companies face an impossible choice between staying with legacy CPQ systems that can no longer handle complex business models or moving to unproven replacements like Salesforce Revenue Cloud with integration risk, uncertain ROI, and high migration costs.

The crisis has moved from theoretical to urgent with Salesforce's recent announcement of end-of-sale for its legacy CPQ product, forcing thousands of organizations into expensive decision-making cycles. DealHub's State of CPQ report demonstrates that without a solid CPQ foundation, AI, cloud, and analytics investments won't deliver expected impact.

Forward-thinking companies are taking practical action to fix their quoting and revenue systems. LifeRaft replaced its legacy Salesforce CPQ system with DealHub to eliminate manual work, improve sales-finance alignment, and deliver clearer quotes, resulting in an 80% increase in average selling price. Intuit implemented DealHub in just eight weeks, cutting proposal turnaround times from seven days to 48 hours while scaling to support over 200 sellers without adding overhead.

For executive teams, the implications are stark. CFOs face pressure to produce accurate forecasts but are hamstrung by unreliable CPQ data. CROs must accelerate sales velocity while navigating broken quoting workflows. CEOs betting on digital transformation ROI discover their efforts are built on shaky foundations. When revenue operations are ignored, every other investment delivers diminished returns while creating a dangerous illusion of progress.

Strategic leaders are recognizing this risk and moving to modernize their CPQ stacks without waiting for consulting validation. Modern CPQ implementations completed in weeks are driving measurable ROI while consulting firms continue writing reports. Digital transformation success depends not on theory but execution, and in 2025, execution begins with fixing the broken systems at the heart of revenue operations.