Feature
For years, tech companies have promised the ultimate "Work OS" — one platform to handle every aspect of today’s work, from communication to project management to analytics. Yet, despite billions in investment and widespread adoption, no platform has solved the complexity of today’s workplace.
The reason isn't a lack of features, but a fundamental misunderstanding of how work happens. It's rarely linear, often highly specialized and deeply interconnected across tools. Experts now argue that interoperability, not consolidation, is the key.
The Fantasy of a Consolidated Work OS
Consider Microsoft's own struggle. Despite owning one of the most comprehensive enterprise software ecosystems — including Teams, SharePoint, Planner, To Do, Loop and Viva — even Microsoft cannot consolidate its own tools into a unified experience. As early as 2021, Microsoft acknowledged what it called Group Sprawl, admitting in communications with tenant administrators that, "Admins may need additional tools to manage large numbers of Microsoft 365 Groups and to deal with Group Sprawl."
If the company that builds these tools can't consolidate them within its own ecosystem, what hope do enterprises have?
The concept of a "Work OS" has always been a mirage rather than a vision of the future, a premise that the complexity of human work can be mapped, standardized and automated to one system. Yet, at the essence of work is disorder: exceptions, handoffs, context, tacit knowledge — the stuff that is in people, not systems.
"There are numerous reasons why Work OS platforms fail," said Cannon Lafferty, head of consulting at Adaptavist. "They can range from having too broad a scope that they don't address specialized needs, or they can be infinitely customizable that they soon lose the ability to present that 'single pane of glass' view. The root cause of information siloes and broken feedback loops may have to do with external factors, not the platform."
Technology has attempted to impose order on this relational mess for decades, with platform after platform singing a siren's song of harmony. Yet the more we build and integrate, the more edges and overlaps emerge. Work isn't in one place because meaning isn't. The information is on the spreadsheet but the insight is on a call. The project board signals progress but culture carries the momentum.
"I've seen organizations attempt full Work OS rollouts, and the first cracks usually appear in user experience,” said Matthew Brown, HCM research director at ISG. “Overzealous governance combined with unclear capability depth creates friction that teams can't ignore. These platforms often flatten domain-specific needs into generic workflows, which looks neat in theory but brittle in practice."
The scale of these failures is eye-opening. Eric Kimberling, CEO of Third Stage Consulting, predicts that by 2026, only 10% of ERP implementations or digital transformation projects may be successful.
A 2024 Forrester Consulting study found that 49% of businesses experienced poor internal collaboration, hurting their customer experience, despite significant investments in collaboration platforms. These aren't outliers or implementation errors; they represent a fundamental mismatch between how platforms are designed and how work actually happens.
"How many times have you seen a commercial on TV promoting a tool which will be 'the last one you ever need to buy?'” asked Vaclav Vincalek, founder of Hiswai.com and 555vCTO.com. “And how many of them do you have in your toolbox? We don't drive one type of car everywhere. That's why we don't have a single platform which does everything. Since there is no definition for all the required functionality, there is no platform for it."
Interoperability as an Alternative
One-stop collaboration platforms fail because the act of collaboration is not code. It is not something to be compiled, translated or abstracted to run on a server. Interoperability is not simply a technical pursuit but an acknowledgment that humans have always been nomadic, traveling across many contexts at once, and that the tools should work for us, wherever we are.
"Modern work spans multiple applications, locations, communication channels and systems," said Lafferty. "The forces that make each function effective are the same forces that prevent a single platform from absorbing them all. The best thing to do is to acknowledge that and use best effort to track this workflow, not contain it."
Successful interoperability requires discipline, not magic, Brown said. "In my experience, successful interoperability requires a balanced approach: clear standards, strong governance, and active provider cooperation,” he said. “Most failures trace back to unclear ownership and technical complexity. Without someone accountable for the seams — data models, event handling, identity — organizations end up with brittle integrations and finger-pointing. When done right, interoperability delivers a 'platform of platforms' that feels unified without forcing consolidation."
"It would be hard to make an argument to build any system without a well-defined interface for other systems to integrate with,” Vincalek agreed. “It is not a question of either/or but an acknowledgment that there can't be one system which does all."
Rather than pursuing the impossible dream of one platform, the focus shifts to connection between tools, teams and the human rhythms they seek to serve.
The Inadequacy of Integration Solutions
Connectors such as Zapier are in many ways the prosthetics of the collaboration world — crutches that can only point to the solution, not provide it. While useful for specific use cases, they reveal the gap between aspiration and reality.
"Zapier is a good example of an integration tool," said Vincalek. "As with any other tool, it has its place in the right context and it depends on the requirements, current infrastructure and use cases, to decide if it should be used or not."
Brown is more pointed about the limitations of data integration tools in enterprise contexts: "Consumer-grade tools like Zapier are great for edge automation, but they're not enterprise-ready for HR workflows,” he said. “The challenge isn't just technical — it's cultural. These tools can introduce hidden risks: data integrity issues, compliance gaps and workflow failures caused by misaligned permissions or role-based access controls. Without a global view of security and governance, you're gambling with critical processes."
Simple integration tools fall short, said Mahmoud Ramin, research director at Info-Tech Research Group. "Endeavors to develop an all-in-one platform are typically doomed to fail mainly because projects change dynamically and a rigid 'OS' cannot keep up with changing contexts. Modern work is multidimensional, and it usually does not follow a predicted path. Modern teams and projects heavily rely on multiple tools and literally no single vendor can fulfill all their requirements at the same time."
The path forward requires more sophisticated thinking. "Instead of consolidating everything into a single platform," Ramin said. "AI can help by providing insights from various systems and orchestrating tasks across multiple tools. A successful enterprise can use multiple applications across different departments and domains, while synchronizing workflows through APIs, iPaaS and AI orchestration."
Building Connections for How Work Flows
If the single platform dream has failed, and current integration tools are insufficient, what is the path forward? The answer isn't found in better digital workplace consolidation, but in abandoning the impulse to consolidate altogether.
Conference
Nov
17
KMWorld Washington 2025
Register
Webinar
Dec
3
Fix the Disconnect Between Projects and Profit
Your margins are hiding in disconnected data. Let's find them.
Register
Webinar
On demand
AI in Customer Service: Faster Resolutions, Happier Customers
Don’t let rising demand burn out your team. See how to build a smarter, more resilient support org.
Watch Now
Webinar
On demand
Accelerating Healthcare Ops with AI
Sign up to see how your peers are putting AI to work — and making it stick.
Watch Now
Webinar
On demand
From Nice-to-Have to Non-Negotiable: Prove the Value of Your EX Stack
Transform your tech stack: prove its value, secure your future.
Watch Now
Webinar
On demand
The Great Workforce Breakdown (And How to Stop It)
Disconnected employees. Failing communication. It’s time to turn things around.
Watch Now
Work begins with understanding, not implementing, Vincalek said. "Before any consolidation work starts, one has to conduct an information flow mapping,” he said. “What information flows where, who is using it and what the dependencies are. That will provide insight into if the workflows are useful, or if any changes are required. Only then should the question of new tools or consolidation come into the discussion."
This fundamental shift in thinking pushes leaders to ask "How does work actually flow, and where are the critical connection points?" rather than "How do we get everyone into one system?"
Brown's experience points to specific design principles for multi-tool ecosystems: starting with data integrity to minimize duplicates and conflicts, implementing alert discipline to avoid notification fatigue and using workflow engines and orchestration layers that most HR teams don't even know to request. But these aren't just technical considerations — they require partnership between domain experts and IT, with clear accountability for the connections between systems.
Lafferty adds an important warning: "Interoperability can help align systems of work, but it can also limit organizations' ability to adapt to change, should the interoperability restrict being able to take advantage of new streams of work or different ways of working." The goal isn't to create rigid integrations, but flexible connections that can evolve as work evolves.
Instead of Eliminating Tools, Eliminate Friction
The most successful organizations don't seek to eliminate tools—they seek to eliminate friction. They build systems that respect the specialized nature of different work domains while creating connections between them. They invest in governance and standards, not in the fantasy of one platform that does it all. They recognize that work is nomadic by nature, and that tools should follow people across contexts rather than forcing people into one context.
The promise of one digital workplace has failed, but what it's revealed is more valuable than what it promised: work is too rich, too human and too dynamic to be contained. The real challenge isn't technical — it's conceptual. Will organizations let go of the seductive simplicity of "one platform for everything" and accept the messy reality that meaningful work happens in the connections between things, not within them?
Editor's Note: Read more about the ongoing promise and danger of digital workplace consolidation:
- The Myth of the Digital Workplace Hub — “I just want one place to go for everything” is a common refrain I hear from employees when discussing their digital workplace.
- Work OS Is Giving Me Flashbacks to Cable TV — As vendors add on more and more functionality in pursuit of becoming the "work OS," we're having flashbacks to our cable subscriptions of yesteryear.
- The Blurring Lines Between Collaboration and Project Management Software — Today's project management tools don't just track work, they do it. But is “work management” a leap forward or another layer of digital noise?