The Tech Tangle

Somewhere in your business, there's a spreadsheet that shouldn't exist. Someone created it years ago to bridge a gap between two systems that didn't connect.

When your systems don’t talk to each other and neither does anyone else

Somewhere in your business, there’s a spreadsheet that shouldn’t exist. Someone created it years ago to bridge a gap between two systems that didn’t connect. It’s become essential. It’s also fragile, poorly understood, and maintained by one person who hopes nobody asks too many questions about how it works.

Welcome to technology in a small business.

For most SME owners in New Zealand, technology sits in an uncomfortable space. You know it matters. You know you should probably be doing more with it. You’ve heard about digital transformation and cloud solutions and AI and automation. But the gap between what’s possible and what’s practical feels vast. The systems you have don’t work as well as they should. The systems you need seem expensive and complicated. The people who could help speak a language you don’t fully understand.

Meanwhile, the spreadsheet keeps doing its job, held together by habit and hope.

The Reality

Let’s name what’s actually happening.

Disconnected systems are the norm, not the exception. Your accounting software doesn’t talk to your CRM. Your CRM doesn’t talk to your project management tool. Your project management tool doesn’t talk to your inventory system. So data gets entered multiple times, copied between platforms, reconciled manually by someone who has better things to do. The promise of integrated, seamless technology remains a promise. The reality is islands of information connected by human effort.

Legacy system dependency keeps you stuck with technology that no longer fits. That software you bought ten years ago still runs core parts of your business. It works, mostly. But it doesn’t integrate with anything modern. The vendor has stopped updating it. The person who knew how to customise it has long gone. You’d love to replace it, but the thought of migrating data, retraining staff, and risking disruption keeps you hitting snooze on the decision. So you stay with something that’s increasingly inadequate, because the cost of change feels higher than the cost of staying.

Digital skill gaps in your team create invisible ceilings. The systems are only as good as the people using them. If your team doesn’t know how to use the tools properly, you’re paying for capability you’re not accessing. Training feels like a luxury – there’s never time, and besides, people should be able to figure it out. So everyone develops their own workarounds, their own shortcuts, their own way of doing things. The software has features nobody uses because nobody knows they exist.

Cybersecurity vulnerability is something you probably don’t think about until you have to. Small businesses assume they’re not targets. They are. Ransomware doesn’t discriminate by company size. Phishing emails don’t check your revenue before arriving. A single click on the wrong link can lock you out of everything, expose customer data, or cost you weeks of recovery. Most SMEs have minimal protection, weak passwords, no backup strategy, and a vague hope that it won’t happen to them.

Tech decision paralysis freezes progress because the options are overwhelming. Every problem has fifteen possible solutions. Every vendor promises to transform your business. Every choice feels like a commitment you might regret. So you delay. You stick with what you have. You tell yourself you’ll sort it out when things calm down. The decision that would make everything easier never gets made because the process of making it feels too hard.

Poor technology ROI haunts past decisions. You’ve invested in systems that didn’t deliver what was promised. The CRM that was supposed to revolutionise sales sits half-empty. The project management tool that was going to bring order created its own chaos. The expensive software that seemed essential now feels like a monthly subscription to guilt. These experiences make you wary of the next investment. Once bitten, twice sceptical.

Integration nightmares emerge when you try to connect things that weren’t designed to connect. The new system needs to talk to the old system. The API doesn’t work the way the documentation says. The integration partner quotes a price that makes your eyes water. What seemed like a simple connection becomes a project with its own timeline, budget, and complications. Sometimes you make it work. Sometimes you give up and go back to the spreadsheet.

What’s Actually Going On

Here’s what sits beneath these challenges.

Technology in SMEs typically evolves by accident rather than design. You buy what you need when you need it. Each purchase solves an immediate problem without considering how it fits the whole. Over time, you accumulate a collection of tools that don’t form a system – they’re just tools, sitting side by side, requiring humans to be the glue.

The people selling technology aren’t always aligned with your interests. They want to sell. They emphasise capability and minimise complexity. They show you the demo version, not the version you’ll experience six months in when you’ve discovered all the limitations. The gap between sales pitch and operational reality is often significant, and you don’t find out until you’ve committed.

Small businesses lack the internal expertise to evaluate technology properly. You’re not a CTO. You don’t have an IT department. When someone pitches you software, you’re assessing it based on the demo, the salesperson’s claims, and maybe a few online reviews. You’re making significant decisions with incomplete information, hoping it works out.

The fear of disruption keeps you stuck with suboptimal solutions. Changing systems means pain – data migration, retraining, workflow disruption, things going wrong during the transition. That pain is certain and immediate. The benefits are uncertain and future. So you stay with what you know, even when what you know is holding you back.

A Way Forward

None of this is unfixable. But it requires approaching technology strategically rather than reactively.

Map your current technology landscape. What systems do you have? What do they do? How do they connect – or fail to connect? Where are the manual workarounds? Where is data being entered twice? Getting clarity on your current state is the first step toward improving it. You can’t fix what you can’t see.

Identify the pain points that actually matter. Not every technology problem is worth solving. Some workarounds are fine. Some inefficiencies are tolerable. Focus on the gaps that are genuinely costing you – in time, in errors, in missed opportunities. Prioritise ruthlessly. You can’t fix everything at once, so fix what matters most.

Get independent advice before buying. Don’t rely solely on vendors to tell you what you need. Find someone who understands small business technology and doesn’t have a product to sell. Pay for a few hours of their time to help you evaluate options, ask the right questions, and avoid the mistakes they’ve seen others make. The cost is trivial compared to a bad technology decision.

Think integration from the start. Before you buy anything new, ask how it connects to what you already have. Native integrations are better than custom ones. Standard formats are better than proprietary ones. The best system in the world is useless if it can’t talk to anything else. Make integration a requirement, not an afterthought.

Invest in training, not just software. The tool is only as good as the people using it. Build time for proper training when you implement anything new. Create internal documentation. Identify power users who can help others. Ongoing capability is worth more than initial implementation.

Take cybersecurity seriously. This doesn’t require massive investment. Strong passwords, multi-factor authentication, regular backups, staff awareness of phishing – the basics go a long way. The cost of prevention is tiny compared to the cost of recovery.

Accept that technology is ongoing, not a project. You’re never done. Systems need updating, skills need refreshing, new tools emerge, old ones become obsolete. Build technology thinking into your regular business rhythm rather than treating it as an occasional initiative.

Where to From Here

If any of this sounds familiar, you’re in good company. Technology is challenging for almost every SME owner. The ones who get it right aren’t necessarily more technical – they’re more intentional.

At RegenerationHQ, we help business owners untangle their technology situation – not by selling systems, but by helping you see clearly what you have, what you need, and how to get from one to the other. If you’d value a conversation about what’s working and what isn’t, we should talk.