October 22, 2024
Businesses nowadays—no matter their size—are being pushed harder than ever to keep up with tech. A report in The Times points out that the companies pulling ahead are the ones making quick, smart calls on tech adoption; and it makes sense—while you’re stuck deciding, your competitors are already upgrading, automating, and delivering better services to their customers. In other words, tech is the fuel behind momentum, innovation, and making sure you don’t fall behind. If you’re still stuck in long-winded decision loops, you're bleeding time and money. But it’s important to remember that moving fast doesn’t mean being careless; it just means being clear and confident.So the question is: are you ready to move?
So what’s the smartest first move to make? Get brutally honest about the problem. What’s not working in your workflow? Where are your people getting stuck? What do your customers keep complaining about? Answer those questions first, and your tech choices become much clearer. When you know what you’re solving, you’re not guessing. You’re focused. And when you’re focused, you move faster. The result is not only better decisions but fewer regrets and stronger outcomes. Whether you’re a startup founder or leading a large enterprise team, the basics stay the same—solve real problems, not hypothetical ones. That kind of clarity saves you time, money, and a lot of backtracking later.
Multiple meetings, never-ending spreadsheets, and too many opinions can slow things to a crawl; and this is why businesses, especially growing ones, need to rethink how they make these calls. It helps to create a basic checklist of what matters: What does the tool do? Does it integrate with what you already use? Can your team learn it quickly? Is it scalable? If you can’t answer those in a 30-minute meeting, something’s off. And here’s another very important point: speed doesn’t mean you need to rush anything—it just means you need to cut unnecessary friction. Leaders should feel confident making a call without needing sign-off from five departments, especially for tools that won’t break the budget. Create a small, focused team to research, test, and decide. The faster you move, the sooner you learn—and if the tech’s not right, you’ll find out early and pivot.
A mistake that many businesses make is they think Requests for Proposals (RFPs) are only for big corporations or complex vendor negotiations. Not true. Even a lightweight RFP can be extremely helpful because it forces you to ask better questions and compare options side by side. According to experts at RFPHub.com, instead of choosing a vendor based on a flashy pitch or vague promise, an RFP lays out your requirements clearly—functionality, budget, security, support, roadmap—and lets providers respond directly to your needs. And even if you’re a small team choosing a CRM or a freelancer to build your app, having a mini-RFP process helps you stay organised and make apples-to-apples comparisons. In short: a short RFP keeps you sharp, avoids bias, and speeds up the final choice because you’re not starting from scratch every time.
Too often, tech decisions are made at the top and pushed down to the people who’ll actually be using them day to day. The downside of this is that it’s a recipe for low adoption and wasted spend. The people closest to the work have the best insight into what’s needed—and what’s not. When you involve them early in the decision-making process, you get better input, faster buy-in, and more realistic expectations about implementation. This could be as simple as doing a quick survey, holding a demo session with team leads, or inviting users to test drive the tools before you lock anything in. You’ll also avoid nasty surprises like “this doesn’t work for us” after you’ve already signed the contract. In other words, inclusive decisions are smarter decisions; they’re also faster, because you won’t have to circle back and fix things later. Get the users involved—early and often.
Scalability doesn’t always mean “enterprise-level.” It just means flexibility. Can you add users as your team grows? Does the pricing model shift as your needs change? Will the vendor still support you when your company doubles in size? Tech that can grow with you helps avoid disruption and keeps your operations running as it should. It's also more cost-effective in the long run; meaning—instead of patchworking tools every time you grow, invest in solid foundations now.
We’re living through a moment where change is coming at us faster than most of us can comfortably keep up with. The pace of it all can feel electric, sure, but also completely exhausting. One minute you’re adapting, and the next, everything’s moved on again. For businesses—no matter the size—that speed is now a full-on expectation. The pressure is on to not just move fast, but to move smart. That’s the difference between keeping up and actually getting ahead. And that’s why it matters now more than ever to take a step back and get very clear on what you’re trying to solve, and how. You need to clear out the noise so you can act with focus, confidence, and purpose.
