The Superuser Paradox: When Your Tech Champion Becomes Your Biggest Constraint

I should start by saying I feel a sense of trepidation writing this article, since I’ve spent the last decade banging the drum on the topic of the value of user champions within change programmes.

But that experience has also given me some really nuanced insights that I wanted to share, particularly for firms either embarking on change, or those who’ve implemented new technology and aren’t quite getting the best from it in BAU.

Most mid-sized UK wealth management firms have a familiar story about technology.

There’s a brilliant, well-meaning ‘superuser’ (perhaps referred to in your business as a ‘product owner’ or ‘site administrator’) who keeps the CRM and workflows running, answers everyone’s questions, administers the users, fixes the weird edge cases, and somehow holds the whole thing together.

And for a while, it works.

But then the firm grows. Regulation tightens. Vendor releases keep coming. Adviser capacity is squeezed. The technology footprint expands (CRM, portals, workflow, integrations, MI, document generation, suitability, platform links and of course now AI…). And that single point of capability quietly turns into a single point of failure.

This is the irony: we absolutely should involve practitioners in change – user champions, change forums, design authorities, feedback loops. Done well, it’s one of the best drivers of adoption. But in many firms, that model unintentionally creates the opposite outcome: cumbersome processes, fragile knowledge, slower delivery, and frontline frustration.

What’s happening isn’t a people problem. It’s a governance and operating model problem.

Why this is hitting mid-sized firms especially hard

Large firms tend to have some combination of: a change function, defined governance, documented workflows, release management, training and comms.

Mid-sized firms often have none of that – not because they’re careless, but because they’re busy, growing, and operating lean. So the superuser becomes:

the backlog owner

the support desk

the trainer

the workflow designer

the data quality police

the vendor liaison

the reporting specialist

the integration fixer

the “can you just…” person for everyone else

That’s not a role. That’s a bottleneck disguised as heroics.

And it clashes with what the industry now demands: more robust operational resilience, better governance, better data, and the ability to respond to ongoing disruption.

The hidden risks of the lone superuser model

1) Your “institutional capability” is actually personal memory

If the way your CRM works lives mostly in one person’s head, you don’t have capability – you have a key person dependency.

Real examples I have seen across the sector:

“When the site admin is on holiday, everything stops.” Requests queue up, workflow changes pause, and the firm runs in “do not touch anything” mode.

“Our product owner went on parental leave and we had no one who could safely maintain the system.” The business ends up either freezing change or taking risky shortcuts.

“I’m a business owner and I spend my evening configuring workflows.” The person who should be driving business growth is instead trapped maintaining the operating system.

This is exactly how operational fragility creeps in: not through catastrophic outages, but through small, everyday dependencies that compound over time.

2) The admin burden grows – and the data gets worse, not better

A common pattern: the superuser is under pressure to keep data perfect (for income reconciliation, valuations, compliance, MI, pipeline visibility, client service, reporting, and so on). So they create manual workarounds.

The intention is good. The impact is often not.

Front office advisers are busy. If the process is too long, too click-heavy, or too ‘system-first’, they will:

delay updates

use workarounds

store notes outside the system

enter the bare minimum

So the CRM becomes less trusted, and the superuser responds with… more controls.

And that creates a loop: more friction → lower adoption → worse data → more friction.

Meanwhile, broader industry commentary continues to highlight how data quality and governance underpin effective decision-making and resilience in financial services.

3) You fall behind product changes – not because you don’t care, but because you’re firefighting

Most of the commonly used advice practice management systems (e.g. Xplan, Intelliflo Office, Curo, Plannr) evolve constantly. Firms that don’t have a disciplined cadence for reviewing and rolling out vendor improvements usually end up in one or both of these places:

Over-customised: everything is bespoke, brittle, and expensive to maintain

Under-adopted: valuable features exist, but never become “how we work”

The industry has even created ways to measure this gap. Intelliflo’s eAdviser Index tracks how advice firms use technology and links adoption maturity to performance, based on analysis of nearly 4 billion interactions. Whether or not you agree with every conclusion, the signal is hard to ignore: adoption isn’t a one-off project – it’s an operating discipline.

4) “Perfect” becomes the enemy of “live”

This one pains me to write, because as both a perfectionist and a business owner I know I’m occasionally guilty of doing just this myself. But it’s right to call it out.

Another common dynamic: superusers and product owners often feel personally accountable for the system’s quality – so they optimise for correctness and completeness.

That sounds sensible… until it slows value delivery..

Sometimes the right commercial decision is:

launch the workflow that covers 80% of cases

train advisers on the new “good enough” process

learn from exceptions

and iterate

Firms that can do that consistently tend to move faster – not because they’re reckless, but because they’ve built a governance loop that makes iteration safe.

The goal isn’t to remove champions – it’s to stop making them the operating model

User champions, superusers, and practitioner-led change are hugely valuable. But they need a container.

Think of it like this:

Champions generate insight (what users need, what’s broken, what’s possible)

Governance creates decisions (what we’ll do, why, when, and how we’ll measure success)

Release management creates momentum (small, frequent, communicated improvements)

Support and documentation creates resilience (so knowledge doesn’t evaporate when someone is away)

Without that, the champion becomes one big bottleneck – everyone plugs into them, they feel overwhelmed and the firm never scales.

A practical change model for mid-sized wealth management firms

You don’t need a giant change office. But you do need a lightweight yet robust, repeatable system. Here’s a model that I believe works well in practice:

1) A simple change intake (one front door)

Create a standard way to submit requests:

problem statement

who it affects (front office, admin, compliance, paraplanning)

colleague impact

client impact

risk & compliance impact

quick estimate of effort (a quick ‘t shirt’ size is fine, provided you define your t shirt sizes so everyone is applying them consistently)

This alone reduces random corridor requests and “just do this now” pressure.

2) A regular change forum (perhaps fortnightly in the immediate period after go-live, but then monthly after that; no more than an hour long; cross-functional participation)

A small group including wider business representation – e.g. operations, compliance/risk, a senior adviser voice, admin/team leader, and the product owner/superuser.

Decide:

approve/reject/defer

priority level

whether it’s knowledge-based, data-based, a defect or a genuine change request – and then route it down a pre-defined process accordingly

success measure (time saved, errors reduced, adoption rate, etc.)

3) A release cadence (small and regular beats big and rare)

Aim for frequent, low-risk improvements:

monthly “what’s new” sessions

short release notes or videos tailored to roles

targeted training (tailored to roles, and ideally delivered in both video and written formats to reflect different learning styles )

4) Minimum viable documentation

Not a long manual that nobody’s going to read. For context, I worked with a business a few years ago and one of the first things I inherited was a 140-page account opening guide. Please don’t do that! Just:

a workflow map for critical journeys

a documented process

key data fields and definitions (if applicable)

ownership and escalation paths

This will give you manageable operational resilience in the real world.

Where Evotra fits: support your champions, don’t replace them

Option A: We take the complex work so your champion can breathe

When your product owner is buried in tickets and firefighting, we can step in and apply our deep expertise in:

workflow rebuilds and optimisation

automation and integrations

complex configuration

document coding

data governance design

release planning and rollout process

documentation and training assets

This frees your internal team to stay close to the business while still progressing change. And it removes the cost of hiring and/or upskilling to achieve the required level of expertise.

Option B: We take the “boring” work so your champion can innovate

In other firms, the champion is highly skilled and wants to do the deep work. So we take the things that might be bogging them down a bit:

day-to-day support and triage

daily data feed reconciliations

password resets and routine queries

MI/dashboard build and upkeep

admin backlog clean-up

Either way, the outcome is the same: less fragility, more momentum, better adoption.

A quick self-check: are you in the superuser paradox?

If some of these resonate with you, you’re probably feeling it already:

Changes stop when one person is away

Your backlog is a spreadsheet (or worse, someone’s inbox)

Advisers complain about “clunky” systems, “extra admin” and “too many clicks”

You’re not consistently adopting vendor improvements

Data quality is a constant fight, not a by-product of a good process

“We can’t touch that workflow, it might break” is a normal sentence

The business owner is still configuring the CRM at night

The takeaway

User champions are vital – but champions without governance become bottlenecks.

And bottlenecks don’t just slow technology down; they slow the whole firm down.

A modest investment in a repeatable change process, release cadence, and resilience-focused documentation can transform your tech from “held together by one person” into a scalable capability.

If you need help establishing a pragmatic change process, taking complex work off your team’s plate, or absorbing routine support so your champions can push forward – you’re not alone. It’s a natural stage of growth, and Evotra can support you.

To find out more about how we can help set you up for long term success with your wealth management technology, you can download our rEsolve guide HERE.

Written by:

Sally Merritt, CEO