In the final week of March 2020, managers at dozens of Turkish SMEs faced the same problem simultaneously: offices were closed, employees were at home, but workflows were still tied to desktop computers and on-premise servers. Accounting teams could not issue invoices; field staff could not enter orders. A cloud migration or remote-access project that would normally take six to nine months suddenly had to happen in days, not weeks. This was not a technology problem. It was a leadership test. The question was not which software was better — it was how to make the right call under pressure.
The acceleration of technology decisions during a crisis is unavoidable, but the line between speed and carelessness is razor thin. During this period, many Turkish companies moved toward cloud-based access solutions, VPN infrastructure, or browser-accessible ERP modules. Some of those decisions became lasting steps toward digital maturity. Others left behind systems that nobody maintained after the crisis passed — generating licence costs, resisting integration, and quietly eroding the IT budget. The difference was not the technology chosen. It was the discipline applied to the decision-making process.
A fast decision is not the same as a hasty one. A sound technology decision made under crisis conditions answers three questions clearly: How many days will it take for this solution to restore the critical workflow? Will this investment continue to produce value after the crisis ends? And is there someone inside the organisation who will own, manage, and troubleshoot this system? The third question is the one most often skipped. During the pandemic, many SMEs purchased software that looked compelling in a vendor demo, only to find after deployment that nobody on the internal team could actually operate it. The system ran. Nobody used it.
Turkey’s economic conditions in early 2020 made these decisions harder. With currency pressure weighing on foreign-currency-denominated licences, monthly subscription models for cloud solutions looked more manageable for cash-constrained SMEs than annual upfront fees. But the total cost of ownership over a three-year horizon was often higher with the subscription model. Sound leadership means seeing both variables at the same time — the short-term cash relief and the medium-term cumulative cost. Under crisis pressure, most managers see only the first; they notice the second when the invoices arrive.
From a business continuity perspective, the most valuable technology decisions made during the pandemic were not ambitious transformation projects launched from scratch. They were pragmatic steps that made existing infrastructure remotely accessible. Getting a locally installed accounting or ERP system reachable via VPN, decoupling e-invoice and e-archive processes from desktop dependency, moving critical reports to a cloud storage location — these were changes that could be implemented within weeks, produced tangible operational value, and did not overwhelm the team’s learning curve. By contrast, several companies launched full ERP migrations during the same period. The majority of those projects stalled under crisis pressure or failed to deliver the expected return.
The hardest part of leadership in a crisis is the ability to say no. Vendors make aggressive offers during disruptions; the pressure of ‘decide now, this price is temporary’ is real. Some of those offers genuinely represent good opportunities. Most leave behind a system that does not fit the company’s actual needs once the crisis has passed. Sound leadership recognises this pressure for what it is — not a decision criterion, but a warning signal. When a vendor says the price changes if you do not sign today, waiting at least one day almost always produces a better outcome.
Making technology decisions in a crisis is a leadership competence, measured not by how fast you decide but by how well you decide. Two things are required. First, clarify the workflow: which process has stopped, why has it stopped, and what will restart it? Then look for the smallest, fastest-to-deploy solution that answers that specific question. Large transformation projects do not begin inside a crisis. They begin after the crisis, when the ground is stable again. The job during the crisis is to keep the system running. A leader who manages that earns the right to build something more durable on the other side.
This article was originally written in Turkish by Gökhan MERCANOĞLU on April 6, 2020 and has been automatically translated into English and other languages using machine translation.