Technical debt is not only old code. In ERP it includes undocumented customisations, manual integrations, unsupported versions, duplicate data sources, tests that exist only in someone's notebook and rules nobody can explain anymore. What they share is that they make every new change slower, riskier or more expensive.
Debt may be created deliberately. An organisation sometimes has to meet an obligation quickly or preserve process continuity. The problem is not the compromise itself, but losing the record of why it was made and when it stops being acceptable. A temporary solution without an expiry almost always becomes part of the architecture.
Priority belongs to items that threaten a critical process, data integrity, platform supportability or the organisation's ability to deliver an important change. A cosmetic inconsistency or low-impact old component may wait. Technical debt then stops being an abstract IT backlog and becomes a portfolio of business risk and delivery capacity.
An integration that reads a database table directly can solve a reporting need quickly. Debt appears when nobody documents field meaning, version changes or behaviour for incomplete records. The first major upgrade then breaks the report or, worse, continues feeding it incorrect data. A safer approach defines the integration contract, validation, monitoring and error owner.
At least once a quarter, connect the debt register with planned business changes. An item blocking a new sales channel or safe upgrade may become a priority before it causes an incident. At the same time, close records whose consequence no longer exists. The register is useful only when it changes decisions about capacity, sequence and acceptable risk.
Technical debt is a business decision because it changes how quickly, safely and predictably the organisation can deliver the next change.