A year ago, I started writing about technology for small and medium businesses. Not the bleeding edge. Not enterprise transformations. The practical stuff: choosing tools, implementing them well, keeping costs reasonable.

Along the way, I kept coming back to one idea: right-sizing.

Let me explain what that actually means.

The Right-Sizing Philosophy

Right-sizing isn’t about buying the cheapest option. It’s about matching technology to your actual situation.

Your actual size. Not where you hope to be. Where you are.

Your actual needs. Not features that sound nice. Functions you’ll use.

Your actual capacity. Not what enterprise companies can handle. What your team can implement and maintain.

The goal isn’t minimal technology. It’s appropriate technology.

The Opposite of Right-Sizing

Oversizing

Buying too much. Enterprise CRM for a 15-person company. Advanced analytics when you can’t staff basic reporting. Security tools designed for threats you don’t face.

Oversizing wastes money directly. But it also wastes time on features you don’t use, complexity you don’t need, and training for capabilities that don’t matter.

Undersizing

Buying too little. Staying on spreadsheets past their useful life. Free tiers that limit your growth. Tools that can’t handle your volume.

Undersizing creates frustration, workarounds, and hidden costs in staff time.

How to Right-Size

Know Your Current State

You can’t right-size without knowing your size. That means:

• How many employees use technology?
• What’s your actual software spend?
• What problems exist with current tools?
• What capacity do you have for change?

Start with honest assessment.

Match Tools to Tiers

Most business software has clear tiers:

• Startup/Basic: Simple needs, small teams, limited features
• Growth/Professional: Growing companies, more features, real support
• Enterprise: Large organizations, advanced needs, premium pricing

Match your company to the right tier. Not the tier above because you’re ambitious. Not the tier below because you’re cheap.

Buy for Today Plus 12 Months

Not today alone. Not three years from now. About a year ahead.

This gives you room to grow without overpaying for future that might not materialize.

Plan to Revisit

Right-sizing isn’t a one-time decision. Your business changes. The market changes. What’s right today might be wrong in two years.

Build regular review into your practice. Annual at minimum.

Where Right-Sizing Applies

Software Selection

The most obvious application. Don’t buy Salesforce when HubSpot Free does what you need. Don’t stay on HubSpot Free when you’ve genuinely outgrown it.

Feature Tiers

Within any platform, pick the tier that fits. Basic features are often enough. Premium features often aren’t used.

Seat Counts

Don’t buy licenses you won’t use. Reduce seat counts to actual users. Add as you genuinely need.

Implementation Investment

A 20-person company doesn’t need the implementation approach of a 2,000-person company. Simpler implementations for simpler needs.

Support Levels

Premium support is valuable when you need it. If your needs are basic, basic support suffices.

The Benefits

Financial

You spend money on technology that delivers value, not on capabilities that sit unused.

Operational

Your team uses tools they can actually handle. Complexity matches capacity.

Strategic

Resources saved on over-sized technology can go toward things that actually grow your business.

Psychological

There’s a clarity that comes from appropriate tools. You’re not constantly wrestling with software that doesn’t fit.

The Challenges

Right-sizing requires honest self-assessment. Many companies overestimate their needs or underestimate their constraints.

It requires discipline. Saying no to shiny features. Accepting “good enough.”

It requires ongoing attention. Your right size changes. Regular review is necessary.

And it requires resisting vendor pressure. Salespeople are paid to upsell. Right-sizing sometimes means buying less than they’re selling.

A Year of Lessons

Looking back at a year of writing about SMB technology, the themes are consistent:

• Know what you need. Actually need, not theoretically might need.
• Match tools to needs. Not bigger. Not smaller. Right.
• Implement properly. A well-implemented simple tool beats a poorly-implemented complex one.
• Maintain and review. Technology needs ongoing attention, not just initial purchase.
• Question the upsell. Vendors want to sell more. You want to spend appropriately.

These aren’t exciting insights. They don’t make headlines. But they’re what separates companies that get technology right from those that waste money and frustration on mismatched tools.

The Invitation

If you’re an SMB owner or IT decision-maker, I hope this year of content has been useful.

My goal isn’t to sell you anything. It’s to share the patterns I see after years of helping businesses with technology decisions.

Right-sizing is the throughline. Match your technology to your reality. Not someone else’s reality. Not your aspirational reality. Your actual reality.

Do that, and technology becomes what it should be: infrastructure that supports your business rather than a drain on resources and attention.

That’s what right-sizing really means.