[Infographic] Top 10 Reasons You Need To Audit Your Martech Stack

During the course of our clients' digital transformation projects it is common to be talking about the technologies and tools that need to exchange information. One of the most problematic technology stacks is that of Marketing. Marketing technologies have evolved so quickly that there is now a bewildering array of tools and technologies to choose from. Trying to get a sense of possibilities and what the organization needs is a maddeningly difficult task. It is easy to get pulled in by slick pitches from vendors, who promise great ROI and tout their differentiation from the competition. They all promise increased revenue, reduced costs, and excellent customer service delivered by employees who are happier because the software tool will make their work more efficient and effective.

How do you separate the hype from what is practical? Not what’s possible, but what is truly practical – what is going to move the needle based on your organization’s maturity, current state, capabilities and processes? That is not an easy question to answer. However, there are approaches that help to separate the signal from the noise: ways to identify areas of maximum impact that will provide sustainable ROI.

WATCH: How to Assess & Evaluate Your MarTech Stack

The challenge with ROI is that once the outcome improves, every program attempts to take credit: better web sales. It was our marketing campaign, usability project, taxonomy initiative, market stack refresh, MDM program, product launch site redesign. Therefore it becomes difficult to tie any given action to benefits. A careful audit will help create credible cause and effect linkages to ensure that wise investments are made that achieve the desired outcomes.

Here are the ten great reasons to perform a MarTech audit.

1. You will gain a consolidated and accurate view of your marketing technology investments
2. Baseline measures and process linkage will be aligned and documented so you can more realistically plan and manage budgets and investments.
3. Stakeholders will have an understanding of how technologies add value to business operations and customer experience.
4. The process of evaluating systems effectiveness will improve operational efficiency, and uncover overlaps/redundancies in capabilities.
5. An enhanced capability to evaluate the impact off adding new applications and retiring legacy ones
6. An audit will uncover what kind of data the existing tools store, how it is shared with third parties, and how that affects the company's privacy, as well as understand security dependencies.
7. You will gain insights that enable you to track integration with technologies in the stack, document how data flows, and identify which processes are supported.
8. An audit will identify the champions for specific tools and who is driving user adoption, and what users like and dislike about those tools.
9. Fresh insights into training opportunities across the marketing technology stack. This will provide a clear path to professional development plans for marketing and supporting tech teams.
10. Once the talent and expertise are established, the right team structure can ensure that there is no single point of failure, because dependencies on any one point of contact have been minimized. Teams will be able to collaborate effectively because they understand their roles and how technology supports them.

The MarTech stack is a critical component of your business--perhaps the most important one in this competitive environment. EIS can help your company explore the benefits of a MarTech audit, how it can improve ROI and ultimately create a dynamic environment for future growth. Contact us to learn how we can help.