Creating value through service innovation requires new processes and ways of communicating to multiple stakeholders. Institutions and stakeholders within the service ecosystem, however, often resist change. Adopting a new service strategy entails two distinct costs – monetary and psychological. The tensions between an organization’s need to generate incremental revenue and the challenges of balancing business as usual and the costs associated with service innovation are explored. Specifically, this paper aims to explore the adoption of a customer relationship management (CRM) technology solution in a bureaucratic setting, and the sequence of events needed for successful implementation, with emphasis on overcoming various barriers and hurdles.