What Digitalization Really Means for Croatian Small Businesses
Digitalization in Croatia often means installing software to satisfy EU requirements. But without ownership and behavioral change, it's just theater.
In most Croatian small businesses, “digitalization” means one thing: adopt software to satisfy EU requirements or grant documentation.
I keep seeing the same pattern. A business applies for EU funds. The grant requires proof of digital transformation. So they purchase software—an ERP system, a CRM, a project management tool. The invoices get filed. The reports get submitted. The checkbox gets checked.
Then nothing changes.
The Installation Problem
The software gets installed. The login credentials get distributed. Someone attends a training session. The business now has a “digital solution” in place.
But here’s what actually happens: the old spreadsheet stays open. The WhatsApp group remains the primary communication channel. The paper notebook still sits next to the keyboard. The new tool becomes one more thing to maintain, not the thing that replaces the old way.
This isn’t a technology failure. The software works fine. This is an ownership failure.
Why Behavior Doesn’t Change
When you install software because you need to—for a grant, for compliance, for external pressure—the motivation is external. You’re solving someone else’s problem, not your own.
The business owner doesn’t wake up thinking: “I need better customer relationship management.” They wake up thinking: “I need to deliver this order, collect that payment, call that supplier.” The CRM exists in a parallel universe from the actual work.
There’s no internal pull toward the new tool because there was no internal problem it was meant to solve. The problem was external: satisfy the requirement, get the funding, pass the audit.
Software adopted to solve external problems rarely solves internal ones.
The Real Cost
The visible cost is the subscription fee—maybe €50 or €200 per month. That’s manageable. Most businesses absorb it as an operating expense and move on.
The invisible cost is higher: the cognitive load of maintaining unused systems. The guilt of knowing you “should” use the tool. The meetings about why adoption is low. The training sessions that don’t stick. The slow erosion of trust in digital solutions altogether.
After a few failed implementations, businesses become skeptical of any new tool. “We tried that. It didn’t work for us.” The problem wasn’t the tool. The problem was the adoption model.
What Actual Digitalization Looks Like
Real digitalization doesn’t start with software. It starts with a process that hurts.
Someone in the business notices: “I spend two hours every week copying data from one place to another.” Or: “We keep losing track of customer conversations.” Or: “I have no idea which projects are profitable.”
That pain creates pull. The business wants a solution, not because someone required it, but because the current situation is genuinely frustrating.
When you adopt software to solve your own problem, you have skin in the game. You’ll push through the learning curve because the alternative—going back to the old pain—is worse. You’ll customize it because you understand exactly what you need. You’ll maintain it because it’s actually saving you time.
This is digitalization with ownership.
The Grant Paradox
EU digitalization grants are well-intentioned. They lower the financial barrier to technology adoption. They push businesses toward modernization.
But they create a perverse incentive: adopt software first, find the use case later. The funding timeline doesn’t match the adoption timeline. You have six months to implement and report. You don’t have six months to slowly discover what actually needs to change.
So businesses rush to install something—anything—that satisfies the deliverable. The software is real. The transformation is not.
A better model would fund the discovery process, not just the tool purchase. Help businesses identify their actual bottlenecks before prescribing solutions. But that’s harder to measure, harder to audit, harder to fit into grant frameworks.
The Honest Path Forward
If you’re a Croatian small business owner considering digitalization, ask yourself one question: What process currently frustrates me enough that I would pay to fix it?
If the answer is “nothing specific, but we should probably modernize”—wait. Don’t buy software you don’t need yet. Don’t adopt tools to look modern. The appearance of digitalization is not the thing itself.
If the answer is specific—“I lose three hours a week to manual invoicing” or “I can’t see which customers haven’t paid”—then you have a real starting point. Find the simplest tool that solves that specific problem. Use it until it becomes invisible. Then find the next pain point.
Digitalization without ownership is theater. It might satisfy a grant requirement, but it won’t change how your business actually operates.
The businesses that succeed with technology aren’t the ones with the most software. They’re the ones who adopted tools they actually needed, for problems they actually had.
Related
- Why Most EU SMB Software Is Overbuilt — The mismatch between SaaS design and European SMB reality
- Why Digital Transformation Fails — A deeper look at the gap between installation and change