The Expensive Mistake Hiding in Plain Sight
How Indian business leaders quietly lose value one technology decision at a time, while the world moves on.
A story that plays out in Indian companies every year.
The business is growing. Revenue is up. The founder or MD is sharp, experienced and deeply trusted by the team. Somewhere in the last two or three years, they decided to build a custom software solution: a CRM, an ERP, an inventory system, a workflow tool. The brief was handed to the IT team, or more likely to whoever in finance or operations happened to be the most tech-comfortable person in the room.
Eighteen months later, the project is still not complete. Costs have doubled. Half the features don't work the way the business actually operates. The people meant to build it are exhausted and distracted from their real jobs. The business has been running on workarounds and WhatsApp groups the whole time, because the "real" system is always six weeks from being ready.
This is not bad luck. It is what happens, predictably, when a company makes technology decisions without a senior technology leader in the room.
Meanwhile, the world moved on.
While many Indian SMBs still build and buy software the way they did a decade ago, the economics of how technology is built and deployed have changed.
Curative, a US company that generated around $5 billion in revenue and once ran 206,000 COVID tests in a single day, cancelled a Salesforce contract worth about $600,000 a year. Its team built its own CRM with AI in about two months, and its CEO says it works better.1,2
The same company reports that AI agents now negotiate provider contracts for roughly $70 each, against $1,500 to $2,000 when done by human teams, and that credentialing which took two to three months now takes about 12 hours at around 20 cents per provider.1
The cost of building custom technology has fallen sharply, and the economics of software procurement have shifted. The question is whether your leadership team knows this, and if it does, whether it is acting on it.
The technology problem is rarely a technology problem.
It is a governance problem: the wrong person, or no dedicated person, making technology calls that directly affect revenue, margins, compliance and the ability to scale. In most Indian SMBs, those decisions are made by one of three people:
Running sales, relationships, operations and every other priority. Cannot stay current on what technology can do today.
Wrong person. Not their fault. Expensive outcome.Trained to minimise cost, so evaluates technology as a line item rather than a strategic investment, and tends to underinvest in systems that would help the business most.
Wrong person. Well-intentioned. Still expensive.Understands the processes deeply but lacks the technical depth to judge build versus buy, vendor capability, implementation risk or integration complexity.
Knows the business. Doesn't know the landscape.None of these people are doing anything wrong. They are doing their best. But none of them is the right person for technology strategy, and the cost shows up in your P&L.
What it costs. Every year. Quietly.
- The custom build that went wrong. Planned for months, still unfinished well over a year later, at a multiple of the original budget, while the internal team is pulled away from its real work.
- The licence nobody reviewed. Renewed year after year for software used at a fraction of its capacity, because no one owned the question of whether it was still the right tool.
- The reporting that is still manual. Skilled people spending days every month assembling a management pack that is out of date by the time it reaches leadership.
- The AI opportunity no one is evaluating. Tools that could cut high-volume operating costs sit unexamined, while a competitor that looked six months ago now runs on a lower cost base.
- The decision-maker who doesn't know what they don't know. Making technology decisions without a technology leader is like making a major legal decision without a lawyer. The advice seems free. The consequences are not.
Businesses serious about their finances hire a CFO. Businesses serious about their people hire an HR head. Businesses serious about competing today need a senior technology leader at the table.
You don't need a full-time CTO. You need the right thinking at the right time.
A full-time CTO or CIO at the level most growing businesses need is one of the most expensive hires they can make, and often hard to justify full-time. The thinking, however, is essential. That is what the fractional model delivers:
- A review of your software stack, straight away. Where you are overpaying, underusing or locked in. The savings from this step alone can go a long way towards funding the engagement.
- Build-versus-buy calls made on today's economics. Including whether AI-assisted development can deliver most of what you need at a fraction of the cost and time.
- AI in your operations before competitors get there. Evaluating which tools are ready and cost-reducing, and implementing them with proper rigour.
- The honest answer, not the comfortable one. No internal politics, no vendor relationship, no incentive to say what you want to hear.
The question worth sitting with
What is the most expensive technology decision your business has made in the last three years? Was the right person in the room when it was made? If a senior technology leader had been at the table, would the decision have been the same?
Want to talk about what this means for your business? Book a free 30-minute call with a CXOxsys fractional CTO.