Every growing business encounters this problem.
Products that supported growth when you had five employees can’t handle your team of 50. Systems are disjointed. Data isn’t flowing where it needs to go. Spreadsheets are coming unhinged. Before long, your technology stack is holding your company back instead of fueling it forward.
Here’s the issue…
By and large, most companies don’t build their tech stack with growth in mind. They throw another SaaS application onto the tech stack whenever a problem arises and hope for the best. And of course, that “hope it works” approach to building a tech stack almost never goes as planned.
What you’re going to learn:
- Why Most Tech Stacks Fail During Growth
- The Most Common Mistakes Businesses Make
- Where SharePoint Migration Fits Into The Puzzle
- Building a Stack That Actually Scales
Why Most Tech Stacks Fall Apart During Growth
Growing businesses add tools at a rapid pace. Here’s a CRM, let’s support that with a project management platform. Oh, and these spreadsheets are needed to make everything work.
It feels like it works. Until it doesn’t.
WalkMe recently published a report that revealed 43% of enterprise tech stacks have become more complex in the past three years. Worse still? That complexity is costing companies big time. Large enterprises lost $104 million on average in 2024 due to technology underutilization.
Complexity is the enemy of growth.
More importantly, businesses reach this breaking point by consistently making technology decisions that benefit one team. Not one person. One entire team! With total ignorance for the system as a whole.
Ask anyone that’s had to manually export/import data from one platform to another on a weekly basis. It’s a nightmare.
The result? A disjointed tech stack that creates more work for everyone involved.
The Biggest Mistakes Growing Businesses Make
Okay, so it’s clear that adding tech without thinking it through long-term is a bad idea. But what else goes wrong?
Here are the most common tech stack mistakes growing businesses make. Avoid these at all costs!
Adding Technology Without Thinking About Integration
Here it is. The number one problem with how most businesses think about building a tech stack.
Companies select new technology based on features and accept it when the tool doesn’t integrate with their existing stack. Add enough of these “feature first” tools together and employees quickly find themselves cutting endless hours of their lives to meet deadlines. Welcome to the hamster wheel.
Integration should be considered at the very beginning of the buying process. Don’t let your employees get stuck in the hamster wheel.
Keeping On-Premises Solutions For Too Long
Hold on to legacy systems and familiar file storage for too long and you’ll fall into this trap.
Old technologies might be comfortable, but they’re expensive. At some point, it will cost your business more to maintain than it would to move to the cloud.
Moving a legacy SharePoint site to SharePoint Online is a great example. These older, on-premises versions of SharePoint are cumbersome and don’t play nice with the modern, cloud-first tools your employees need.
That’s where expert SharePoint migration solutions come in. Businesses that need to move from an older version of SharePoint to SharePoint Online can rely on these experts to migrate their data, permissions, workflows and customizations over without interrupting day-to-day operations.
Not Thinking About Tomorrow
The article already touched on buying technology that makes one team happy… Today. While it feels good for about a week, buying technology that doesn’t scale causes huge problems in the future.
For instance, if your business buys a project management tool that charges per user, it’ll be really cheap when you have 10 employees. But what happens when you grow to 50? Or 100?
Maybe your application only supports 50 users. Now you need to buy another tool.
Scale should be considered with every tech purchase.
Where SharePoint Migration Fits Into A Modern Tech Stack
There’s a good chance SharePoint is already part of your tech stack. If you’re reading this article, you’re likely part of a growing company. Around 80% of large companies are using SharePoint Online for their core document management and collaboration needs. That’s a lot of Excel spreadsheets.
But here’s the thing. A lot of businesses aren’t using SharePoint Online. They’re using older, on-premises versions of SharePoint.
While on-premises SharePoint works… It’s costly. It’s clumsy. It doesn’t support mobile interfaces, and it doesn’t play nice with the cloud solutions that your employees are leveraging today.
That all changes when you migrate to SharePoint Online.
With SharePoint Online, you’ll:
- Move document management to the cloud for anywhere access
- Improve team collaboration across the organization
- Seamlessly integrate with the rest of the Microsoft 365 suite
- Save on infrastructure and maintenance costs
Just remember, SharePoint migration isn’t a DIY project. There are important considerations to think through before you jump into the migration. As mentioned earlier, skipping the planning process is one of the top reasons migrations fail.
How To Build A Tech Stack That Actually Scales
Alright, let’s wrap this all up!
Building a forward-thinking tech stack can seem daunting, but if you approach the process the right way, it doesn’t have to be. Here’s how to future-proof your growing business by building a tech stack that scales:
- Review your existing stack. Grab a notepad and map out every piece of technology your employees are using. Dig deep. You’ll be surprised to find how many redundant tools are being used across the organization.
- Evaluate integration. How well do those tools work together? It’s ok if they don’t, you’re just auditing right now! But understanding where the breakdowns occur will help you simplify processes down the road.
- Start thinking cloud-first. Everything should be in the cloud these days. Buy new tools that operate in the cloud natively and incentivize your employees to do the same.
- Don’t fear the cloud migration. Speaking of migration, if you aren’t using SaaS applications yet, now is the time. Make sure any “legacy” applications you are using still fit your business needs.
- Plan for integration. When you do start adding new tools to the tech stack, make sure they integrate well with your existing stack. If Tool A doesn’t integrate well with Tool B, you probably shouldn’t be using Tool B.
- Reach out to the experts. There will be times when your business needs to rely on technology experts. SharePoint migrations are a great example. Make sure you hire a reputable company that specializes in expert SharePoint migration solutions.
Pulling Your Scalable Tech Stack Together
If you asked ten business owners how they built out their technology stack, you’d get ten different answers. That’s because most tech stacks aren’t built with the future in mind. They’re put together by addressing pressing pain points, and hoping those new tools fix more than they break.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
By taking a step back and auditing your existing stack, you’ll learn what tools are actually being used (and which ones you can retire!). With that knowledge in hand, you can start planning for what your tech stack will look like one, five, and ten years down the road.
And that is how you future-proof your growing business by building a scalable tech stack.
