The phrase ‘less is more’ has never rung truer than it does in 2021. The mass influx of challenges and changes in last year were enough to last most people a lifetime. In fact, some of the changes implemented in the business sector are likely to become permanent fixtures that will outlast our lifetime.
Of those that may outlast us, the digital and technological tools adopted by organizations are perhaps the most probable. However, the mad dash to adopt new tech and adapt to the widespread virtual and remote work situations may have resulted in impulsive purchases with lack of time for proper evaluations and competitive analysis.
Now that things have slowed to a more manageable pace, and employees have had time to experiment and explore the new tech tools, leaders should take the time to double back and reevaluate the tools they onboarded during the transition. Although it may seem tedious, integrating and consolidating the tech stack you’ve amassed will yield significant benefits you, and your executives will be grateful for in the future.
Maximize ROI: If you purchased several individual solutions to support your marketing, sales, and customer services teams, you should evaluate each solution to identify any functionality overlap.
Due to the cooperation between departments, some vendors will have multiple individual solutions that are tailored to each department’s unique needs, and some may have package deals that will combine the solutions at a discounted price for a streamlined experience.
If you find functional overlap, there may be an opportunity to maximize the return on investment with one vendor and eliminate an unnecessary additional cost with another.
Efficiency: Operating and maintaining a handful of tools will be far more convenient—and therefore efficient—for both you and your team.
It’s no secret that administrative tasks can be the time-suck of the century. Keeping your tech stack at a large volume only increases the amount of time and effort that’s needed to manage and maintain. Time better spent selling, supporting, or optimizing will be monopolized by tedious tasks like switching from platform-to-platform and troubleshooting issues with multiple customer service teams. Optimizing less tools with more functionality will make it easier for you and your team and it will improve adoption and productivity.
Additionally, reducing the number of systems you operate will reduce the time spent compiling collected date. Reviewing two or three reports rather than ten or eleven to gain the same insights in less time.
Alignment: As you added systems to your tech stack over the last year your teams likely became more and more removed from one another, creating siloes you now need to breakdown.
Bringing multiple teams onboard with a single or few consolidated systems will promote cross-department communication and alignment to business goals. Marketing will have more visibility of sales and customer service operations, feedback, and engagement and vice versa. Visibility will allow them to collaborate and deliver more effectively for the consumer.
Don’t just give your teams the tools they need to operate. Be strategic and give them the tools to cooperate and function as a ‘well-oiled machine’ so to say.
Holistic Consumer View: Earlier it was mentioned that the data you collect would be easier to compile with a consolidated or integrated tech stack. While that will help you track productivity and optimize operations, it will—more importantly—allow you to gain a more holistic perspective of your consumers.
Examining data from sales and marketing, even customer service, will provide different insights into consumer preference at different stages of the buying journey and customer cycle. If the data is examined individually in the context it’s collected it can only provide so much insight, but when examined in correlation to data from the other departments and from various perspectives, the possibilities are endless.
If you’re going to take the time and effort to harness data, you want to approach it from every possible angle to ensure that it can make the maximum impact.
Evaluating your tech stack regularly is good practice regardless of the situation, but it’s exceptionally important when you’ve had an influx of new technology. When you adopted systems during the rapid changes of the pandemic, you had to act fast. There wasn’t much time for consideration—you needed tools and you needed them at declining-budget friendly prices.
Now is the time to take a moment to reevaluate and make the considerations you may not have previously had time for. Refining your tech stack will produce efficiency, productivity, and cost-savings benefits across the board at your organization—a win that everyone needs right now.