We recently helped an insurance brokerage improve their customer conversion rate from 20% to 50%. The solution wasn't adding more technology.

It was deleting most of what they had.

We eliminated 85% of their middleware - the complex systems sitting between their customer-facing application and their data. Everything still worked. Actually, it worked better.

Faster responses. Fewer failures. Lower costs. More secure.

This pattern repeats across industries: companies accumulate layers of technology that add complexity without adding value.

How Did We Get Here?

The complexity usually grows like this:

Year 1: "We need to connect System A to System B"

Year 2: "Let's add middleware for flexibility"

Year 3: "We should use an enterprise service bus for standards"

Year 5: "We need an abstraction layer to manage complexity"

Year 7: "Why is everything so slow and expensive?"

Each decision made sense at the time. Together, they created a system nobody fully understands and everyone's afraid to touch.

The Actual Problem

Most middleware doesn't do anything valuable. It takes data from one place, maybe renames a few fields, and passes it somewhere else.

No decisions. No transformations. No business logic.

Just expensive copying with multiple failure points, slower performance, higher maintenance costs, and increased security vulnerabilities.

The insurance brokerage was paying for:

Three-layer architecture where two would work

Multiple unnecessary failure points

Significant annual maintenance costs

66% slower performance than necessary

Four times more security vulnerabilities

When we eliminated the middleware that added no value, something interesting happened: the system became more reliable, not less.

How to Spot Worthless Complexity

Try this exercise: trace a piece of data through your system.

Count how many times it gets transformed. How many systems it passes through. What value gets added at each step.

For each component, ask:

Is it making a decision? (If no, red flag)

Is it transforming data meaningfully? (If just renaming fields, red flag)

Could this be a direct connection? (If yes, red flag)

Then calculate the true cost:

Licensing fees

Maintenance overhead

Performance impact

Security surface area

Opportunity cost of slower development

The Important Distinction

Not all complexity is worthless. That remaining 15% often contains your competitive advantage.

In the insurance case, we preserved:

Sophisticated underwriting algorithms

State-specific compliance logic

Risk assessment intelligence

Multi-source data correlation

The key is distinguishing between:

Valuable Complexity: Business logic that creates competitive advantage

Worthless Complexity: Technical overhead that adds no business value

Your competitive advantage isn't in your middleware. It's in your domain expertise, your business logic, your understanding of what makes you different.

Everything else is just expensive noise.

The Real Benefit

When the insurance brokerage eliminated worthless complexity:

Response times improved dramatically

Maintenance costs dropped substantially

Security improved through simplification

The system became more reliable

Development got faster

But the biggest benefit? They could innovate again. Their developers could understand the system. Changes that took months now took days.

Your Situation

Every organisation accumulates worthless complexity over time. It's not anyone's fault - it's how systems evolve without regular pruning.

But every day you tolerate it costs you:

Money paying for systems that add no value

Speed moving slower than necessary

Talent frustrated developers who could be innovating

Risk unnecessary failure points

Security vulnerabilities you don't need

What to Do

Start with one integration. Trace the data flow. Ask the hard questions about what's actually happening at each step.

You'll likely find that a direct connection could replace three layers of middleware.

The insurance brokerage proved it: when you eliminate worthless complexity, you don't just save money - you transform how quickly you can move.

Because here's the truth: in most technology stacks, the majority of what you're paying for adds no business value. It just makes everything slower, more expensive, and more fragile.

The question is: are you brave enough to delete it?

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Want help identifying worthless complexity in your systems? Let's talk.