Three simple reasons you should consolidate your MarTech stack

With over 8,000 marketing technology (MarTech) tools on the market, it’s no surprise that digital teams are dealing with tool fatigue. Tools are often under-utilized, teams aren’t properly trained on how to use them, and tool governance means that work quickly becomes unmanageable.  

On top of that only 33% of organizations feel that their MarTech stack effectively meets business needs, according to Gartner. That’s a lot of hassle for not much reward.  

“With any MarTech implementation, there’s a need to align process, people, and goals to ensure the powerful new tools will generate business benefits,” 

says Nick Iyengar, Group Director for Digital Intelligence, Cardinal Path. 

To avoid this problem, digital teams should consider consolidating their MarTech stack as much as possible. Specialist tools can play a pivotal role on digital teams and certainly have their place, but many other tools can be replaced with comprehensive, all-in-one solutions that the entire team can work from.  

Ultimately, consolidating your digital tools can reduce operational silos, enable better end-to-end visibility, decrease the time it takes to solve issues, and significantly reduce costs. 

Gain centralized visibility and reduce silos 

In most organizations, digital teams operate in a rapidly changing landscape. Website changes need to happen quickly, critical campaigns need to be launched at the last minute, and decisions need to be made based on the most recent data. On top of that, digital tasks might be spread across teams, offices, or markets.  

Every member of the team (and leadership!) needs an overview of progress and current issues to ensure nothing slips through the cracks in a fast-paced environment.  

Using fewer tools also not only gives team members and management centralized visibility, it also breaks down silos within the team and across departments. Using the same platform naturally allows departments to collaborate more easily. What’s more, they can also see progress and give input for fixes without the traditional feedback sessions.   

Lenore Gibson, UK & EMEA marketing director at Dunnhumby, said that “Silos make it hard for senior leadership to ensure that everyone in the organization is pulling in the same direction. The business operates less efficiently. Time is lost and projects delayed through a lack of communication and failure to engage key functions and stakeholders at the correct stage.” 

When teams work in fewer tools, they can easily establish a common language for discussing the tasks at hand and quickly resolve them.  

Questions to ask yourself:  

• Does your team have end-to-end visibility of your digital projects?  
• Can you quickly get an overview of projects, goals, and opportunities for improvement? 
• Do you have so many tools that collaboration is difficult?  
• Do you have a single place where teams can collaborate on tasks together?  

Set goals and forecasting   

Once you move from the chaos of too many tools, no collaboration, and siloed governance, you can recreate a foundation for how you operate as a digital team and align efforts behind a single strategy and shared goals.  

A single tool or a small system of tools will give you an executive-level overview, so you can better set goals and forecasting that takes advantage of the interconnectivity of your teams’ efforts. 

“It’s almost impossible to meet marketing objectives with no knowledge of the tools being used in pursuit of those objectives,” 

said Anita Brearton, founder and CEO of CabinetM. 

Another benefit of uniting digital goals is that you can ensure your team is working towards key business objectives alongside other teams. “Developing and reviewing progress against shared objectives and KPIs is a good way to align with sales and other functions – it shows that you have skin in the game,” says Lenore Gibson.   

Fewer tools not only makes it easier to align goal setting, it also makes reporting much more straightforward, as teams report from a “single source of truth.” Having a shared source for reporting, makes reporting up and down the line (and across business units), more efficient and easier for everyone to get behind.   

Simply put, the more platforms you’re using, the more places you have to check to get accurate reporting on your business goals. 

“Understanding what metrics matter most, and focusing on getting accurate, concise business processes in place and adapt to measure KPIs is critical,”

 writes Noah Jacobson for MarTech Advisor. 

Questions to ask yourself:  

• Do you have aligned digital goals that work towards wider company objectives? 
• Can your team track progress towards your goals alongside other teams?  
• Does your company use a single source of truth for reporting?  

Save on costs 

Technology spending accounts for a massive chunk of marketing spend. CMOs report spending 26% of their budgets on MarTech in 2019. However, marketers say they use only 61% of the functionality available in their martech portfolio. And only 33% of organizations feel that their MarTech effectively meets business needs. Yikes. 

Organizations clearly lack the resources and skills to integrate and adopt tools they purchase, which is costing them serious money.  

Reduce cost by consolidating your tech stack where you can. Look for overlap in your platforms and see where you can eliminate under-utilized tools or centralize tasks under one tool—leaving you with very few generalist tools and a handful of point solutions for specialized areas.  

Look into how well your generalist tools integrate with each other and your specialist tools, so data, insights, and workflows easily moves between platforms. This will help you ensure you don’t need to purchase a band-aid solution to bridge any gaps you might have in your platforms.   

Beyond tooling, it’s important to ensure you have the right governance and processes in place to make your platforms a success. Focus on training your teams in how to use tools and setting up governance so usage stays consistent.  

“Training can positively impact the utilization of technology which in turn improves performance. Better utilization of a product or platform may help eliminate other pieces of technology,” 

said Anita Brearton. 

Questions to ask yourself:  

• Does your digital team pay for tools that are under-utilized?  
• Do you have multiple tools for the same tasks? 
• Can you better train your team in how to use and manage a tool in order to take full advantage of its features?   

Learn more about how you can start the tool consolidation process 

Don’t let your digital team be the ones saying they use only 61% of the functionality available in their MarTech portfolio. 

By using a full digital solution, so you can establish a holistic strategy for achieving your objectives. Whether you’re after growth or enhancing user experience, fewer tools will help you identify opportunities for improvement and track progress towards key metrics. Once you do that, you can then work on strategic initiatives like attracting more traffic, engaging and retaining your audience, tracking and fine-tuning the path to conversion, and reporting on your progress.  

At Siteimprove, we want you to track and achieve the results you’re after. Get in touch to learn how you can do exactly that.