By Mary Lockwood, Principal Consultant
Every business leader eventually faces the same question at a technology crossroads: do we double down on what we have, or invest in something built to last?
After two decades of watching businesses ask this question, and witnessing the dramatically different outcomes, I've learned that three questions predict whether your technology investment will fuel growth or become your biggest bottleneck.
Question 1: Are You Building for a Growing Market?
I've seen too many businesses nail the market opportunity only to watch their technology crumble under the weight of success. You can have the perfect product, the right timing, and customers lined up around the block, but if your systems can't handle growth, success becomes your biggest problem.
Here's what many business leaders don't realize: 40% of every company's IT budget goes to paying down technical debt, which is money that could otherwise fund innovation and growth. Think of technical debt like deferred maintenance on your car. You can skip oil changes for a while, but eventually, you're looking at a new engine instead of routine upkeep.
When companies try to scale without proper architecture, the costs multiply exponentially. In physical product development, Fixing an error in advanced stages costs 6 to 100 times more than addressing it during the concept phase, and the same principle applies to software and systems architecture.
Consider Friendster, the social media pioneer that lost its first-mover advantage because its technology stack couldn't handle growth. As demand increased, page load speeds became "criminally slow," and users migrated to faster competitors like MySpace. Technical debt turned market leadership into market irrelevance.
Being first to market means nothing if you can't stay in the race when everyone else shows up.
Question 2: Is Your Architecture 10X Better Than Patching Legacy Systems?
Many businesses approach technology like home renovation, a little here, an upgrade there, maybe a fresh coat of paint. But renovation has limits. Eventually, you need to ask whether you're building something fundamentally better or just making the old problems look prettier.
The ROI difference is dramatic, as companies that implement proper architecture from the start see remarkable returns. For instance, one case study outlines how a multinational financial services and asset management company’s accessible redesign delivered 50% more organic traffic, doubled quote requests, reduced maintenance costs by 66%, and achieved 100% ROI within 12 months. Meanwhile, a global logistics company that tried to modernize piecemeal saw its transformation timeline extend by two years, with costs nearly doubling. These are only two case studies of dozens that you can find with similar outcomes.
It's like comparing a custom-built house designed for your family's needs versus adding rooms onto a 1920s bungalow. Both approaches get you more space, but only one may provide you with a foundation that supports your long-term vision.
Question 3: Do You Have a Team That Understands Both Technology and Business?
Here’s where the rubber hits the road, and why we at RVTC are in business in the first place. Technology projects often fail because they’re led by people who understand either the business or the technology, but not both. These failed projects have become our bread and butter and the reason we created a service called Tech Rescue. It happens so often that we’ve built an entire pipeline dedicated to rescuing failing projects. We liken it to hiring a brilliant architect who’s never lived in a house, or a homeowner trying to design structural engineering…neither has the full picture. Without both perspectives, the end result may look good on paper but fail in practice.
The most successful technology implementations happen when senior technical people spend 10-15% of their time on "the business side", understanding requirements, demonstrating value, and connecting technical decisions to business outcomes. These business-focused technologists focus not only on build things right; they build the right things.
Portland's tech sector demonstrates this principle in action. The Silicon Forest has experienced 10% growth in high-tech jobs and a leading position in GDP growth since 2020. Companies like Vacasa ($634.5M raised), Exterro ($100M in funding), and ConductorOne ($62M raised) succeeded because they combined technical excellence with deep market understanding.
The Compound Effect of Getting It Right
Ask anyone who’s worked with our team, and they’ll tell you one of our favorite nuggets of wisdom (borrowed and paraphrased from Warren Buffett): Make long-term decisions with long-term people, because all success in life comes from compound interest.
The same is true with technology decisions that compound over time, both positively and negatively. Southwest Airlines learned this the hard way when technical debt in its crew scheduling systems caused nearly $1 billion in compensation and fines during a single holiday season. Meanwhile, companies that invest in proper architecture from the start see front-end planning reduce project costs by 10% and schedules by 7%.
The choice isn't between cheap and expensive technology. It's between technology that grows with you and technology that eventually requires emergency surgery; one scales with success, the other breaks under the weight of it.
Before you make your next technology investment, ask yourself these three questions honestly. Your future growth and your peace of mind depend on getting the answers right.
