Kiwi small businesses are right not to trust tech spend

CPA Australia surveys small businesses across eleven Asia-Pacific markets every year. In the 2025-2026 results, New Zealand comes last in almost every technology measure, and one number goes a long way to explaining the rest: only 26 percent of Kiwi small businesses said their technology investment improved profitability last year. The regional average is 56 percent.

Read that again from the owner's side. Three out of four businesses that spent money on technology got nothing back they could see. If that happened to you, you might stop spending too. The survey politely calls New Zealand owners "risk averse". We would call them experienced.

The gap this creates

The caution is understandable, but it is expensive. Only 32 percent of NZ small businesses earn more than a tenth of their revenue online, against 63 percent across the region, the lowest of all eleven markets. Digital payments tell the same story: 35 percent here, 72 percent regionally. Meanwhile 54 percent of owners say rising costs did major damage last year, so the margin pressure is real and the most obvious growth channel sits unused.

NZIER, in work commissioned by Xero, put the size of the untapped opportunity at $8.6 billion in small business productivity. The customers are online. Most Kiwi businesses are not meeting them there.

The problem is the deal, not the tech

Here is what we think those numbers largely measure: how software tends to be sold, more than whether it works. When a business pays by the hour or buys a fixed-scope project, most of the risk lands on the owner. The developer gets paid whether revenue moves or not. After one or two rounds of that, caution is a pretty rational policy.

So SurpCode changes the deal instead of arguing with it:

Price tied to the result. We agree upfront on the number the software must move: bookings, orders, repeat customers. The price is tied to that lift, not to a timesheet. If the number does not move, we have not earned.

Revenue share for bigger builds. For the right product we fund and build at our own cost and risk, and get paid from the revenue it earns. No big upfront invoice, which matters when cashflow is the thing keeping you up at night.

Small first steps. In our experience the gap rarely gets closed with a grand digital transformation. It gets closed with one booking page, one online storefront, one automated invoice run, live in a week, measured honestly.

You do not need to become a tech company. Often one piece of software that pays for itself is enough, backed by a partner whose payday depends on it doing so.

These numbers will be different next year; the region is not slowing down to wait. The question worth taking to your next quiet Sunday is simple: which side of that gap do you want your business standing on when the next survey comes out?