UK businesses being held back by growing ‘complexity trap’

A study from the recently rebranded business division of UK mobile operator O2 has found that the country’s technology decisions are becoming harder to navigate and are having a tangible impact on firms, including reduced confidence in long-term growth, while technology challenges are increasing costs and slowing progress.

The research from O2 Business – the new working name of O2 Daisy, which was created by the merger of Virgin Media O2 (VMO2) Business and Daisy Group – was conducted by Censuswide, which collected data from 502 UK business leaders between 22 and 23 April 2026.

The survey data is said to highlight the scale of the challenge facing today’s leaders, with just over three-quarters of business leaders reporting increased personal pressure over the past two years, as their organisations balance cost pressures, growth ambitions and the need to adopt new technologies.

Worryingly, the survey pointed towards a clear confidence gap emerging across the UK, with smaller businesses significantly less confident in their growth prospects than larger firms. Specifically, just over two-thirds of small office/home office (SOHO) businesses expressed confidence in long-term growth. This is compared with over 90% of mid-sized and larger organisations, pointing to a widening divide across the business landscape.

When technology is easier to deal with, businesses get back time, focus and confidence – and that’s when real growth happens

While the research also showed that most organisations remain confident overall, it also found that complexity was beginning to erode that confidence. Some 16% of business leaders said that they were not confident in their organisation’s long-term growth prospects, highlighting underlying fragility beneath the headline figures.

The findings pointed to what O2 Business called a growing “complexity trap” for UK businesses, with technology at the heart of the challenge. Two-thirds of leaders surveyed said technology decisions were becoming increasingly complex, and almost half believed their tech setup was more complex than it needed to be.

Concerningly, this rising complexity was found to be already having a tangible impact on performance, with increasing operational costs (30%), putting pressure on leadership time and focus (26%) and slowing business growth (19%) cited as the top impact of technology challenges in the past 12 months.

Leaders were seeing a clear way forward by simplifying technology and operations to cut spend, boost productivity and unlock growth, as a third (33%) faced rising costs.

Commenting on the survey findings, O2 Business CEO Jo Bertram observed that most businesses don’t feel short of technology – they feel weighed down by it.

“Too many systems, too many suppliers and too much time spent trying to make everything work together … we think it should be simpler than that. We’re breathing simplicity into the way business works by bringing connectivity and communications together in one joined‑up experience that just makes sense. When technology is easier to deal with, businesses get back time, focus and confidence – and that’s when real growth happens,” said Bertram.

Matthew Riley, chairman of O2 Business, added: “UK businesses are the engine of our economy, but too many are being slowed down by complexity they never asked for. When organisations are tied up managing systems instead of strategy, productivity and growth suffer. Simplifying that landscape isn’t just a technical challenge – it’s a commercial opportunity.”