The Cost of Digital Complexity: Why Simplification is the New Growth Strategy

Every enterprise hits a point where innovation starts slowing under its own weight. Digital complexity rarely starts as a problem. It starts as progress — one quick fix, one smart workaround, one “let’s just get this live” at a time. Then one day you look up and realize you’ve built something no one fully understands anymore.

That’s the irony of digital progress: the more flexible we try to be, the more fragile things become.

It shows up in the data, too. WalkMe found enterprises lost an average of $104 million last year to underused tools and low adoption — a symptom of systems that have simply become too complex to manage. Anyone who’s overseen enterprise software knows what that feels like: budgets eaten by maintenance, teams exhausted by the basics. It’s not wasteful spending, but it is the quiet tax of keeping too much alive for too long.

Symptoms of Digital Complexity

You can usually spot the symptoms long before anyone actually says the word “complexity.” Projects start to take longer even though the teams haven’t changed. Meetings multiply because no one can quite tell which system holds the right data. People begin to hesitate before making changes because the risk of breaking something feels higher than the reward of improving it.

Over time, the small workarounds become the real work. Teams learn to operate around the systems instead of through them. Reports take days to reconcile, even when the data should be straightforward. Energy that should go into progress gets redirected toward keeping everything running.

Digital Complexity is Built on Good Intentions

Digital complexity doesn’t arrive all at once; it accumulates through well-intentioned shortcuts. The systems that feel out of control today were ultimately built by people solving real problems. Marketing wanted agility. IT wanted stability. Product wanted control. Legal needed oversight. Finance wanted predictability. Every decision made sense on its own, until no one could remember who owned what.

As MIT Sloan Management Review notes, “When digital transformation is organized around technology rather than outcomes, complexity scales faster than value.” Departments start optimizing for their own metrics, and suddenly the technology meant to unify the business is dividing it.

Escaping that trap takes more than swapping platforms. It requires a shift in how teams make decisions, align priorities, and measure success.

The hardest part is often getting people to agree on what “essential” even means. Teams tend to defend their tools as if they were KPIs. Simplification forces a cultural reset as much as a technical one.

Simplification as a Growth Strategy

Simplification doesn't meant doing less, it’s about removing friction, so teams can do more of what matters. In practice, it’s the only way to make growth sustainable. It comes down to focus: what outcomes matter most, which systems move those outcomes, and what can be safely retired without losing value?

The goal isn’t to have fewer tools, it’s to have the right ones. Systems that are unified, measurable, and flexible enough to evolve without collapsing under their own weight.

Ironically, simplicity isn’t easy. It takes more discipline to build something clear than something complex. The market often rewards motion over clarity, but clarity is what drives real progress.

Simplification starts with conversations around:

• What outcomes are we driving toward? 
• Which systems actually move those outcomes? 
• What can we eliminate without losing value? 

It’s about creating the conditions to move faster with fewer moving parts getting in the way.

Composability Without the Chaos

The goal of good engineering has always been to control digital complexity, not create it. To be clear, composability isn’t a shortcut out of complexity. When done right, it starts with discipline, not enthusiasm. You can’t compose your way out of a mess. Composability only works when the foundation is healthy. Otherwise, you’re just rearranging the same problems in smaller boxes.

The organizations seeing results are building strong foundations first — unified commerce platforms, centralized data, and clean processes — and extending from there. They’re designing for adaptability and they’re finding that simplification pays dividends beyond efficiency. It makes teams faster, decision-making clearer, and technology measurable against the only metric that really matters: growth.

Leading the Shift

Simplification is a leadership imperative, not a technology choice. Read that again. It requires alignment around outcomes and the willingness to question how work gets done, not just where it gets done.

Our CEO Eric Dean put it well in his CMSWire article on building growth engines: progress doesn’t come from collecting tools, it comes from how you orchestrate them. The companies breaking through aren’t the ones with the most tools, they’re the ones brave enough to decide what no longer serves them.

Digital complexity doesn’t unwind itself. It takes someone willing to stop the momentum long enough to ask if all this movement is still getting us anywhere.

FAQ

How do I know if my tech stack is too complex?

You can tell your tech stack is too complex when small updates require multiple teams, integrations break faster than they’re fixed, and reports take days to compile. Complexity isn’t just technical, it’s cultural. When people spend more time managing systems than improving outcomes, your stack has stopped serving you.

What’s the right way to simplify an enterprise tech stack?

The right way to simplify an enterprise tech stack is to start with visibility. Map every system, define a single source of truth, and align teams to shared outcomes before removing anything. Simplification cuts friction, not capability. Focus on what actually drives measurable value.

What’s the difference between simplifying and replatforming?

The difference between simplifying and replatforming is scope. Simplifying means improving what already works by consolidating and aligning tools; replatforming means starting from scratch. Simplify first to gain quick wins and validate progress before considering a full rebuild.

How do I make sure composable architecture doesn’t just add more complexity?

You make composable architecture work by building it on clarity. If your data, governance, and workflows are consistent, modularity will scale cleanly. If they’re not, each new service just multiplies the mess.