It’s been a while since we launched Above Trends, Beyond Insights. What began as an experiment in editorial positioning has gradually become a method: looking past headlines to understand how technology actually behaves inside organisations.

The silent accumulation behind digital complexity

Over the past few years, teams have adopted CRM tools, analytics platforms, automation services and specialised SaaS solutions incrementally, often to solve specific and legitimate problems. The result is rarely a bold architectural choice, but a quiet accumulation.

Multiple reports confirm how widespread this pattern has become. According to CIO.com, many organisations now operate between 50 and 200 SaaS applications, and more than 60 percent add new tools on a monthly basis, frequently outside a central governance model. IBM explicitly describes this phenomenon as SaaS sprawl: applications adopted faster than organisations can integrate, document or assign clear ownership.

What makes this accumulation particularly risky is that its impact rarely appears on roadmaps or dashboards. The slowdown emerges elsewhere, in longer decision cycles, duplicated data, unclear accountability and growing coordination costs between teams.

Each tool may be rational in isolation. Together, they create a system that is harder to understand, harder to change and harder to govern.

As IT leaders increasingly focus on consolidation and control, the real challenge is less about reducing the number of tools and more about restoring visibility and ownership across the whole ecosystem.

TREND TRACKER

Automations that work, but no one can explain anymore

Across many organisations, automation is no longer a centralised initiative. Workflows are built incrementally through low-code tools, scripts, integrations and bots, often by small teams responding to immediate needs. These automations usually work well, sometimes for years, but their logic, exceptions and dependencies remain largely undocumented.

Research on knowledge management consistently shows that a significant share of operational know-how remains tacit, embedded in people rather than systems. When those people change roles or leave, automated processes become opaque, fragile and difficult to adapt, even if they continue to run. The risk is not technical failure, but the slow erosion of understanding and control over how work actually gets done.

A Babini Mazzari case study highlights this issue directly: when key talent leaves, automated processes may keep working, but the knowledge behind them often disappears. The case focuses on knowledge retention as a necessary complement to automation, especially in organisations where expertise is deeply embedded in individuals rather than systems.

Want to learn more?

• NSFlow – Strategies to minimize knowledge loss in organizations

• KPMG – Five reasons why automation initiatives fail

• IBM – What is automation?

• Babini Mazzari – Safeguarding institutional knowledge: an AI‑driven digital twin of the COO

QUICK INSIGHT

When IT savings create organisational costs

Research and management literature point to a recurring pattern: costs removed from technology frequently reappear as organisational friction. Coordination effort increases, decisions slow down, and cognitive load shifts onto people who must bridge gaps between systems, teams or processes that no longer fit together seamlessly.

Signals that IT optimisation may be generating hidden organisational costs:

• Teams spend more time coordinating, reconciling data or aligning decisions across tools.

• Responsibilities become blurred as processes span multiple systems with no clear owner.

• Decision-making slows down because information is fragmented or hard to interpret.

• Workarounds and informal practices increase to compensate for rigid or centralised solutions.

• Productivity issues emerge without a clear link to any single system or budget line.

Monitoring these signals helps organisations assess whether efficiency gains on paper are being offset by growing complexity in practice, long before the impact shows up in performance or morale.

WHO IS BABINI MAZZARI

Our Value Proposition

Babini Mazzari is the strategic IT partner for European companies looking to navigate digital transformation in a structured, pragmatic, and sustainable way.
We don’t just deliver technical solutions - we work as an extension of your internal team, helping you integrate systems, optimize processes, and lead change with clarity and competence.

Our approach is built on listening, transparency, and a strong results-driven culture. Whether you're scaling, modernizing, or rethinking your operating model, we support every client with the right tools, clear methodology, and long-term vision.
Above Technology. Beyond Solutions.

📎 [Our services]
📎 [Our Manifesto]