The battery backup economy Spanish and Portuguese businesses are buying battery systems at record pace. After last year's grid failure, the logic is obvious: if the power goes out again, we need to keep running. But here is what I find interesting. Many of these companies are not treating the batteries as backup. They are treating them as the strategy. The grid is now the backup. This is not just about power. I see this pattern everywhere. When the workaround becomes the workflow I worked with someone last year who ran a small logistics operation. They had a proper inventory system. Paid good money for it. But every time I visited, the actual decisions were being made from a spreadsheet that one of the team had built. The spreadsheet was the backup. Created because the main system was slow, or confusing, or missing a feature they needed. But over 18 months, the spreadsheet had become the source of truth. The expensive system was just where data went to die. When I asked why they still paid for the main system, the answer was: "Well, we might need it if something goes wrong with the spreadsheet." The backup had become the strategy. The strategy had become the backup. This happens more than you think I have seen it with: Customer communication. The CRM exists, but everyone actually uses a shared inbox and sticky notes. Project management. Asana or Monday is there, but the real tracking happens in a Google Doc someone started during a crisis. Financial forecasting. There is a proper model somewhere, but decisions get made from a back-of-envelope calculation that "just makes more sense." The pattern is always the same. Something gets built properly. Then something simpler gets built as a fallback. The fallback works better. Everyone quietly shifts to the fallback. The proper thing stays in place because nobody wants to admit it failed. Why this matters If your backup is doing the real work, you have two problems. First, you are paying for something that is not earning its place. That logistics company was spending £4,200 a year on software that had become a glorified archive. That is not a rounding error for a small operation. Second, your backup was never built to be a primary system. It does not have the resilience, the documentation, or the thought behind it. The spreadsheet works until it does not. The shared inbox works until someone leaves and takes the context with them. The Google Doc works until three people edit it at once and nobody knows which version is right. You are running your operation on something that was designed to be temporary. The honest question Here is what I ask people when I notice this pattern: "If your backup disappeared tomorrow, what would you actually lose?" If the answer is "everything," then it is not a backup. It is your system. And you need to treat it like one. That means either: Properly building out the backup so it can handle the load. Documentation, redundancy, training, the whole thing. Fixing the primary system so people actually use it. Getting rid of the primary system entirely and admitting the backup won. Most people do none of these. They just keep running both, hoping the duct tape holds. The grid example again What is happening in Spain and Portugal is instructive. Those businesses are not pretending the grid is still primary. They have made a decision: batteries are the strategy, grid is the fallback. That clarity changes how they invest, how they plan, how they think about risk. The worst position is the middle. Pretending your primary system is primary when everyone knows it is not. That is where money leaks, confusion grows, and small problems become large ones. How to spot this in your own operation Look for these signs: You have software you pay for but rarely open Your team has "their way" of doing something that differs from the official process New people get trained on the workaround, not the system When something goes wrong, the first instinct is to check the backup, not the primary You cannot remember the last time you updated or maintained the "proper" system If more than two of these are true, your backup is probably running the show. What to do this week Audit one system. Pick the most expensive tool or process in your operation. Ask yourself: where does the actual work happen? If the answer is somewhere else, write down where. Calculate the cost. What are you paying for the thing that is not doing the work? Include subscription fees, time spent maintaining it, and training costs for something people do not use. Get a real number. Make a decision. You have three options: fix the primary, formalise the backup, or cut the primary loose. Pick one. If you are not sure which, the 5 Whys tool at alira.london can help you work out what is actually causing the disconnect. But the decision is yours. Sitting in the middle is the most expensive option of all.