Clearing technical debt to fuel business growth

Technical debt builds up over time to place huge pressures on a business’ workflows and technological transformations. Henry Helgeson, CEO at BlueSnap, explains how businesses can get to grasps with their overdue technical debt.
The UK is at a critical inflexion point. Despite economic uncertainty, its scaleups are thriving, growing revenue by an average of 43% a year – more than double the OECD average. And it’s not just startups. Businesses of all sizes are entering new markets, updating legacy systems, and accelerating digital transformation.
There’s real momentum – but also real complexity. As companies grow, their tech stacks often become more fragmented. From cloud services to global payments, the right tools can power growth, but only if they’re well-connected. Too often, technical debt gets overlooked, and it can quietly slow progress when it matters most.
At first, it might seem harmless – some overlapping tools here, a few manual workarounds there. But over time, what once supported your business turns into a tangled web of incompatible systems and clunky processes that overwhelm your teams.
It’s not a fringe issue. With 91% of CTOs considering technical debt more concerning than even cybersecurity and employee turnover, the need to tackle it is critical for any growth-focused business.
How does technical debt build?
Technical debt often accumulates over time. It usually doesn’t come from bad decisions – it comes from fast ones. As businesses grow, they move quickly to solve problems, often adding new tools and workarounds to keep things running. But over time, all those one-off fixes add up. Each new integration adds complexity and puts more pressure on your team. This is what we call over-integration. Eventually, the business becomes harder to manage, harder to scale, and more prone to failure.
Legacy systems are another issue. When technology providers neglect updating their products, internal teams are left with obsolete systems and often attempt to fill the gaps with in-house solutions. These fixes are rarely flexible or scalable and require constant upkeep.
Misaligned business goals also contribute. As priorities shift, older systems designed for earlier iterations of the business struggle to keep up. Still, they remain in place because replacing them is perceived as too risky or too expensive. What starts as small trade-offs snowballs into major structural friction.
Spotting the symptoms of technical debt
The warning signs are often easy enough to spot – if you know where to look. When IT teams face delays in rolling out new features or rely heavily on manual processes, it’s a clear sign that technical debt is preventing progress.
IT departments that are stuck in maintenance mode – frequently consumed by patching legacy systems or documenting myriad software and systems – are another red flag. If your team is stuck fixing and maintaining, and not building, your growth potential shrinks.
Customer experience suffers too. Slow, unreliable systems lead to frustration and churn – especially when users demand speed and reliability.
Another common yet overlooked indicator is a fragmented payments infrastructure. As companies enter new markets, they often add payment providers to support local needs. Over time, this creates a disconnected web of providers, each requiring their own maintenance and integration efforts.
The risk increases when software partners prioritise easy wins over long-term scalability and resilience. In the absence of built-in redundancy or failover capabilities, internal teams are left to shoulder the burden. This introduces additional complexity, operational risk, and compounds technical debt.
Scale smarter, not harder
Scaling doesn’t have to mean adding complexity. The key is planning ahead. As companies grow and modernise, it’s important to align new processes with the systems you already rely on, such as your CRM or ERP. When your tools work together, your IT team can move faster, reduce maintenance, and spend more time driving real innovation.
Meanwhile, if international expansion is part of the growth plan, it’s important to select payment providers that already support the currencies and payment methods you’ll need in future markets. This avoids the need to bolt on additional systems later, preserving simplicity and reliability.
Finally, make managing technical debt a regular practice. Even the most self-aware businesses must schedule time and allocate sufficient budget to audit their tech stacks. From retiring outdated components to making necessary updates, prevention is always more cost-effective than emergency overhauls.
Technical debt can hinder progress, drain team morale, and erode customer trust. But it’s not a foregone conclusion. With a proactive mindset and a well-built strategy, your technology stack can serve as a foundation for scalable growth, rather than a constraint. By designing with long-term value in mind, the UK’s nascent businesses can transform complexity into a source of competitive strength.