November 10, 2025
The Price of Doing Business or £32 Billion in Frankenstack Waste? Freshworks Investigates The Cost of Complexity
As a business software user, glued to a laptop, there’s always a sneaking suspicion that software vendors, especially in the SaaS era, endlessly push new services and concepts. Features that many companies and their workers don’t need, creating complexity.
That’s often echoed when CXM talks to those who have to implement software changes, use multiple tools, or work through a “seamless user experience” that’s anything but.
Riffing on that sneaky feeling, Freshworks has a report out highlighting the “Cost of Complexity”, considering the issue that the software meant to fuel economic growth is actually slowing it down.
The data from the 23-page report reveals that software complexity is quietly draining annual revenue, impacting business momentum across the UK.
Complexity or Chaos?
According to Freshworks’ report, a significant portion of software spend is going to tools that don’t deliver, implementations that fall short, and licences no one uses.
But the bigger story isn’t just wasted budgets – it’s stalled growth. Employees lose valuable time each week to complicated systems and disconnected tools, and many say it’s affecting their decision to stay with their employer.
Nearly £1 in every £5 spent on software is wasted on unused tools, failed implementations, and hidden costs.
This complexity costs the UK economy nearly £32 billion annually. And globally, worker fatigue, confusion, and inefficiency (37%), revenue leakage from delays and missed business opportunities (34%); and productivity loss from bloated tools and fragmented channels (29%) cause revenue loss caused by organisational complexity.
The Bride of Frankenstack
The research points to a larger industry trend: companies that simplify their tech stacks and design for real-human users are gaining a competitive advantage, while others remain trapped in costly “Frankenstack” complexity.
The report notes that on a typical day, workers have to contend with:
- Fifteen different software solutions and four communication channels, on average.
- Almost half (45%) say their team works in silos.
- Nearly two-fifths (37%) say their organization lacks a single source of truth.
That poor employee experience leads to an impact on morale, and while many workers suck it up or find cunning workarounds to make their day easier, others are losing patience. According to the report:
- 60% of surveyed employees said they are at least somewhat likely to leave their organizations within the next year.
- Primary drivers behind potential departures include organizational complexity (38%), complicated processes (30%), burnout (30%), and poor or difficult software (17%).
- Software implementations impact morale, with nearly one in five workers (17%) saying someone on their team quit or burned out because of an implementation in the past year.
Of course, Freshworks, while claiming to uncomplicate software was, like its rivals, showing off a set of new AI features recently. But the key takeaway advice of “replace tech sprawl with unified systems” will resonate with many, whatever software they use.
