I've watched dozens of £5M–£30M businesses pay for enterprise-grade software built for £100M companies while missing simple automations that would recover 10 to 15 percent of operating cost within 90 days. You don't need bigger or flashier tools. You need the right ones.
The “Ferrari stuck in traffic” problem
One thing I've noticed working with businesses particularly in the £5M to £30M range is how often they're running enterprise software that was designed for companies ten times their size.
They'll have a CRM built for 5,000 users when they have 30. An ERP system with modules they've never turned on. Marketing automation platforms charging them based on contact tiers they'll never hit. It's not that these tools are bad. It's that they're overkill, and overkill is expensive.
What makes this more interesting is what's happening right next to that software stack. Manual processes that haven't been touched in years. Spreadsheets doing work that could be automated in an afternoon. Invoice approvals sitting in email threads. Customer onboarding sequences that still require three people and four handoffs.
The business is paying for enterprise complexity while running on small-business duct tape. That's the “Ferrari stuck in traffic” problem. You've got the horsepower, but you're stuck at 15 miles per hour because the infrastructure around it hasn't caught up.
Where the 10 to 15 percent lives
It shows up in SaaS licenses for features nobody uses. It shows up in integrations that were supposed to save time but created more work. It shows up in subscription tiers that made sense three years ago and haven't been revisited since.
But it also shows up in the gaps. The manual reporting that takes two days every month because the dashboard was never built. The customer queries that get escalated to leadership because there's no system to handle the common ones. The onboarding process that relies on someone remembering the steps instead of the system enforcing them.
This isn't about cutting costs. It's about reallocating spend to where it actually creates capacity. A business that's paying £15K a month for software it doesn't fully use while manually processing things that could be automated isn't optimising. It's leaking margin.
It's not a tools problem
Here's what happens. Most owners think the answer is better tools. It's not. The answer is better questions.
"Is this tool actually doing the work we bought it for, or are we working around it?"
"Where are we still manually doing something that happens predictably and could be systematised?"
"What are we paying for that was essential two years ago but isn't anymore?"
"If we were starting from scratch today, would we buy this stack or build something simpler?"
Those questions surface the real opportunities. And in most businesses I work with, the answers unlock somewhere between 10 and 15 percent in recoverable operating cost within 90 days. Not by cutting capability. By cutting complexity that nobody needed in the first place.
Systems and infrastructure that aren’t fit for purpose create bottlenecks and reduce productivity. This requires more human intervention than necessary and won't create a business that runs without you. More stress on you and a less valuable company as a result.
If you’re interested in discovering where the bottlenecks are in your business and how to fix them, find out more about getting a simple bottleneck audit for your business.
If you're trying to make your business run better - and worth more - consider whether your over-specced software, manual workarounds and licensing waste should be traded in for something more effective.
All the best,
Gavin
P.S. If you're curious what this looks like in practice, get in touch to find out where complexity is likely costing you margin. I offer a limited number of free strategy calls, where I will give you a prioritised list of where to look first in your own business.
Schedule a 30-minute strategy call and we'll map exactly where complexity is costing you margin.
Know another business owner wrestling with over-complicated systems? Forward this along.
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