In today’s fast-paced business environment, technology should be an enabler—not an obstacle. Yet, a growing trend of overcomplicated platforms is undermining efficiency, frustrating users, and ultimately diminishing business value. Organisations invest heavily in systems for front, middle and back office and expect them to drive productivity, yet over-engineering and excessive complexity often have the opposite effect.
As platforms become increasingly complex, user adoption decreases, which leads to numerous problems that can affect the wider business. Data quality drops as users either find workarounds when entering data or simply enter incomplete or inaccurate data.
So why is this happening?
Businesses often evolve their platforms reactively rather than strategically, leading to a patchwork of added features, conflicting workflows, and unnecessary complexity. Without a clear vision and governance in place, technology designed to streamline operations instead becomes an obstacle to efficiency.
What can contribute to this problem?
- Lack of change control – Without strategic governance, incremental feature additions pile up without assessing their broader impact. Business teams often request modifications to address immediate needs, but without a structured review process, these changes can lead to conflicting workflows, redundant data, and a disjointed user experience.
- Data inconsistencies – Fields with varying formats across different forms prevent seamless reporting and data consolidation. When similar data points are stored in different ways across the system, it leads to inefficiencies in reporting, manual workarounds, and a lack of trust in the data.
- Feature overload – Platforms become bloated with excessive dashboards, redundant data points, and an overwhelming number of manual entry requirements. Rather than improving productivity, these additions create confusion, slow down operations, and discourage adoption.
- Non-actionable insights – Dashboards display excessive information without clear objectives, making it difficult for teams to derive meaningful insights. A large volume of reports may exist, but if they don’t directly inform decision-making, they become noise rather than value.
- Individual changes without holistic review – Users sometimes request individual modifications to suit their specific needs, leading to a fragmented platform experience. When each team or user customises the system without considering broader business requirements, it results in inconsistency, duplicated efforts, and reduced system efficiency.
A smarter approach: streamlining for impact
Organisations must rethink their approach to platform design, ensuring technology serves its intended purpose without unnecessary friction. Here’s how we approach any site redesign project:
- Start with the business, not the system
- Conduct discovery sessions with stakeholders to understand their pain points and define success.
- Align platform objectives with core business priorities, ensuring that every feature serves a purpose.
- Leverage data-driven insights
- Utilise analytics to track system usage and identify underutilised features.
- Remove or refine low-value functionality while ensuring critical, albeit less-used, features remain accessible.
- Simplify for adoption
- Reduce complexity in entry forms, ensuring data collection is intuitive and necessary.
- Streamline dashboards to focus on actionable insights that drive decision-making.
- Standardise data fields to enhance reporting consistency.
- Enhance user experience with smart automation
- Introduce action buttons to automate routine tasks.
- Integrate add-ins for Excel and Outlook to make data entry and retrieval more seamless.
- Enable regional and customised reporting to provide relevant insights to the right teams.
Addressing platform complexity is not a one-time effort but an ongoing process. Organisations must foster continuous engagement with business teams to ensure the system evolves in a way that enhances productivity and usability. By focusing on streamlined functionality, actionable dashboards, and user-friendly automation, companies can maximise the effectiveness of their business platforms while maintaining data integrity and firmwide reporting capabilities.
How it|venture can help
At it|venture, we specialise in transforming complex systems into streamlined, intuitive platforms that enhance productivity and business intelligence. Our approach combines deep industry expertise with data-driven insights to:
- Conduct in-depth discovery and user engagement to align technology with business goals.
- Leverage our proprietary analytics to optimise system usage and remove inefficiencies.
- Implement practical enhancements that improve user adoption and drive measurable value.
If your platform feels more like an obstacle than a tool, it’s time to rethink your approach. Contact us to explore how we can help you overcome complexity and unlock the full potential of your technology investments.
