Have you ever signed off on a system, a piece of software or a new process, and then quietly wondered why it cost so much more than the problem it was actually fixing?
You’re not imagining it. This happens constantly.
A business has a fairly small, fairly ordinary problem. Somewhere between the problem being identified and the invoice landing, it turns into a much bigger, much more expensive thing than it ever needed to be.
Nobody necessarily did anything dishonest. That’s what makes this one tricky. Most of the time, everybody involved genuinely believed they were doing the sensible thing.
Why We’re Talking About This
We see this pattern constantly, across all sorts of businesses and all sorts of “problems”. Software, agencies, consultants, automation platforms, custom-built anything. The names change. The shape of the story doesn’t.
Somebody has a real, specific, usually quite small problem. By the time a solution has been proposed, quoted and signed off, it’s grown arms, legs and a monthly subscription fee.
This isn’t really about any one supplier, product or industry. It’s about proportion, and how easily it gets lost the moment money and technology enter the conversation.
Before We Go Any Further
This is simply our view.
We’ve bought things we didn’t need. We’ve also, on occasion, sold something a bit bigger than the problem strictly required, usually because we hadn’t asked enough questions first. Nobody is exempt from this.
Have a think about your own experience while you read this. Chances are something will come to mind. This is simply how we see things, based on what we’ve watched happen over the years.
Why Does a Small Problem Turn Into a Big Solution?
Mostly because nobody stopped to size the problem properly before reaching for a solution.
It’s a genuinely easy trap. Somebody notices something annoying. A process is clunky, a bit of admin takes too long, customers keep asking the same question nobody’s answering well. That’s a real problem, and it deserves fixing.
The trouble starts when the response to “this is annoying” becomes “let’s build a platform” rather than “what’s the smallest thing that would actually fix this”.
A few things tend to feed that jump:
- Whoever’s proposing the fix sells solutions of a certain size, so that’s the size of solution they propose.
- Nobody has actually worked out what the problem is currently costing, so there’s nothing to measure the fix against.
- “Comprehensive” and “future-proof” sound more impressive in a meeting than “small and cheap”, even when small and cheap is the right answer.
- Once a project has a name, a kick-off meeting and a project manager, it develops its own momentum. Scaling it back starts to feel like admitting a mistake.
None of that is necessarily malicious. It’s just how these things tend to drift.
How Do You Know If a Solution Is Disproportionate?
Ask what the problem is actually costing you, then compare that honestly against what you’re being asked to spend to fix it.
That sounds obvious written down. In practice, an awful lot of spending decisions get made without anyone doing this properly.
To illustrate, here’s a hypothetical, not a real client story, just a pattern we’ve seen play out in various forms.
Imagine a small business where one member of staff spends around twenty minutes a day manually copying orders from an online form into a spreadsheet, so the warehouse team can pick them. Mildly annoying, genuinely a waste of someone’s time, but not exactly a five-alarm fire. Call it perhaps £15 to £20 a week in wasted staff time, generously.
Now imagine that business gets quoted several thousand pounds for a bespoke integration platform to “automate the entire order-to-fulfilment workflow”, plus an ongoing monthly fee, to solve exactly that problem and nothing more.
“I’m all for automation. I’m less keen on spending £10,000 automating something that took somebody five minutes in the first place.”
That’s not a real invoice. It’s an illustration of a pattern we genuinely recognise: the cost of the fix bearing no meaningful relationship to the cost of the problem it’s solving.
The maths should roughly work. If the problem costs you a few hundred pounds a year and the fix costs several thousand plus ongoing fees, something has gone wrong with the proportion, even if the product itself is perfectly good.
Why Does This Keep Happening, Even to Sensible People?
Because a few things quietly work against proportionate decision-making, and they’re worth naming.
The bigger option is easier to sell, and easier to buy into. A confident pitch about a comprehensive platform can feel more reassuring than someone honestly saying “you probably just need a slightly better spreadsheet and a bit of discipline”. The grand version sounds like it’s being taken seriously. The small version can feel like it’s being dismissed.
Nobody wants to look like they under-invested. If a problem is bothering enough people, there’s pressure to be seen doing something substantial about it. A cheap, boring fix doesn’t always feel like “doing something”, even when it works just as well.
Technology gets treated as inherently impressive. Apparently, if you bolt “AI” or “automation” onto anything these days, it sounds twice as clever and about three times the price. Whether the underlying fix needed to be clever at all is a separate question, and one that doesn’t always get asked.
Comparison shopping happens at the wrong level. People compare Supplier A’s platform against Supplier B’s platform, both pitched at roughly the same scale, rather than stepping back and asking whether either of them is the right scale to begin with.
We genuinely don’t think most of this is deliberate. It’s just easier to sell big, and easier to buy big, than it is to stop and ask whether big is actually necessary.
Does That Mean Bigger Solutions Are Always Wrong?
No, not at all, and it would be daft to pretend otherwise.
There are plenty of situations where a proper platform, a serious agency engagement or a genuinely bespoke build is exactly the right call. If a problem is genuinely large, complex, recurring and expensive, then a proportionately large fix can be entirely justified, and often cheaper in the long run than a string of smaller patches.
The point isn’t “always buy the cheapest thing available”. The point is that the price and complexity of the fix should relate to the size and cost of the problem, in both directions. Sometimes that means spending more than feels comfortable, because the problem genuinely warrants it. Sometimes it means spending a great deal less, because it doesn’t.
“At the end of the day, the size of the fix should match the size of the problem, not the size of the sales pitch.”
So, What Should You Actually Do?
Before agreeing to spend anything meaningful on fixing a business problem, work through this in order.
- Write the problem down properly. Not “our process is a mess”, but specifically what happens, how often, and who it affects.
- Put a rough number on it. How much time, money or lost business is this genuinely costing right now? Estimate honestly rather than guessing high or low to suit a decision you’ve already half made.
- Ask what the smallest possible fix looks like. Before looking at platforms and packages, ask whether a simple process change, a spreadsheet, a bit of training, or an existing tool used differently would solve most of it.
- Get the proposed solution’s cost against the problem’s actual cost. If the fix costs more per year than the problem does, ask why, and get a straight answer.
- Ask what happens if you do the cheap version first. Test the small fix. If it genuinely isn’t enough, you’ll know exactly why, and you’ll be buying the bigger solution with real evidence rather than a hunch.
- Only scale up once the smaller version has proved its limits. Growing into a bigger solution, once you understand precisely what it needs to do, tends to produce a much better result than starting there.
Checklist: Before You Buy the Big Fix, Ask
- What is this problem actually costing us right now, in time or money?
- What’s the smallest, cheapest version of a fix that might work?
- Has anyone tried the small version, or did we jump straight to the big one?
- Does the cost of the proposed solution roughly match the scale of the problem?
- Are we buying this because it’s genuinely needed, or because it sounds impressive?
- What happens if this problem simply doesn’t grow much further? Does the solution still make sense?
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I know if a business solution is overkill for my problem?
Compare what the problem currently costs you, in time, money or lost business, against the total cost of the proposed fix, including any ongoing fees. If the fix costs significantly more per year than the problem, that’s a strong sign it’s disproportionate, even if the product itself is good.
Isn’t it sometimes worth paying more for a “future-proof” solution?
Sometimes, yes, if you can point to a genuine, specific reason the problem will grow. Future-proofing becomes a problem when it’s used as a general justification for spending more, without anyone being able to explain exactly what future scenario it’s protecting against.
Who’s usually responsible when this happens, the supplier or the buyer?
Both, most of the time. Suppliers naturally pitch at the scale of solution they sell. Buyers often don’t do the work of sizing the problem properly before agreeing to a fix. Proportion is really the buyer’s responsibility to check, even when the supplier is being entirely genuine.
What if the cheap fix doesn’t fully solve the problem?
Then you’ve learned something valuable at low cost, and you can make a much better case for a bigger solution, because you now know precisely where the small version falls short. That’s a far stronger starting point than guessing.
Is it always wrong to buy the more expensive option?
No. Some problems genuinely justify a bigger, more expensive fix. The issue isn’t the price tag on its own, it’s whether the price tag has any real relationship to the size of the problem it’s solving.
How do I stop this happening again in future?
Build the habit of sizing the problem in writing, roughly costing it, and testing the smallest workable fix before agreeing to anything bigger. It doesn’t need to be formal. It just needs to happen before the cheque gets signed, not after.
Our Final View
We think a lot of business spending goes wrong not because anyone did anything dishonest, but because nobody paused to ask whether the size of the fix actually matched the size of the problem.
Big solutions have their place. Some problems genuinely need them. Our issue isn’t with scale for its own sake, it’s with scale that’s never been tested against the problem it’s supposed to solve.
Before you spend serious money fixing something, work out what it’s actually costing you, try the smallest version first, and only grow the solution once you genuinely understand what it needs to do.
Fancy Talking It Through?
If you’ve got something in the business that’s bothering you and you’re not sure whether it needs a proper system or just a better process, give us a call.
You don’t need a pitch from us. Sometimes it just helps to talk it through with someone who’s seen a few of these situations before, and can help you work out whether you’re looking at a £500 problem or genuinely a £10,000 one.