In a rush to stay competitive, many companies grew their tech stacks quickly. Now, they’re scaling back to reduce tech stack bloat and realize efficiency.
Companies have spent the past few years refining their tech stacks to keep up with advancements like generative and agentic AI. However, in their rush to stay modern, many have become bogged down with too many systems and software pieces.
Indeed, this report suggests that even smaller businesses make their teams wade through more than 100 applications to do their jobs. And the cost for all that tech? Suffice it to say that it’s higher than most leaders would prefer.
This phenomenon of the rapidly expanding tech stack is understandable, given that everyone’s been playing “catch-up” for so many years. However, the trend now appears to be moving in a different direction, with organizations seeking to consolidate their technologies rather than simply add more pieces into the mix.
Why tech consolidation matters
Trimming a company’s tech stack makes sense for a variety of reasons. For one, it reduces issues pertaining to data storage and sharing. The more sprawling the number of tech tools, the higher the likelihood of frustrating friction between employees and departments. It’s overwhelming to have to log into dozens of applications and systems all day. And it’s especially cumbersome when those applications and systems don’t necessarily integrate smoothly — or at all.
Consolidation of technology can also help improve decision-making efficiency across an organization. A leaner tech stack means leaders and team members can gather important information faster. They don’t have to jump from system to system or attempt to manually sort through all their data. Instead, they can promptly find the insights they need.
Finally, bringing together an organization’s tech stack stops it from continuing to get more complex. After all, chances are strong that more technologies are going to appear on the horizon for the foreseeable future. Businesses that trim their stacks now can avoid them getting too unwieldy.
Tactics to tame a tangled tech stack
How exactly can you start taming a tech stack that’s gotten out of control? Three strategies should help you start the process.
Focus first on upgrading the tech affecting revenue-producing areas
It can be tempting to begin reviewing the tech involved in your backend processes to kickstart your tech consolidation. However, if you want the most value from your tech update, concentrate on your revenue-producing areas and processes initially. That way, you can start seeing a tangible result that affects your bottom line.
For example, evaluate how your current CRM and supporting tools actually work together. Are you getting a complete picture in one place, or does your team still have to piece together context across emails, meetings and multiple systems to understand a relationship?
Platforms like Rings AI consolidate fragmented data into a single system of context. Instead of switching between many tools, teams get a unified view of their relationships and interactions at the person and company level. Using the strength of AI, Rings AI interprets all the data and finds hidden connections and opportunities. Your employees can then act on the contextual input they receive to build stronger connections and improve sales.
Tighten your marketing tech
Redundancies in your marketing tech stack can leave you with diluted branding and missed moments to attract new customers. This article recently noted that most companies only use about half of their marketing tech products anyway. Therefore, you might want to review yours.
Established marketing platforms remain a solid starting point when you’re deciding which tools to keep and which to phase out. If you’re narrowing things down, focus on solutions that continue to evolve and cover multiple functions well, rather than adding more niche tools to your stack.
While you’re investigating your marketing technologies, be sure to consider the tech that you’re asking your customers to use. Are you making them log into your system several times just to place an order? Do you offer them more than one app to buy from your team? As a brand, your job is to make their life easier, not more difficult.
Harness the power of your long-term data
Unless your organization is fairly new, you may have historical data that’s locked in dated or even proprietary tech. Now can be a good time to retrieve that data.
There’s no one way to bring together your legacy data into a usable format, especially if it’s highly unstructured. That said, AI products are increasingly able to help make sense of information that seems unrelated. And when your data is structured, you can use it more effectively.
Remember that one of the biggest assets of AI is its ability to find unseen patterns in large chunks of data. You could be sitting on crucial information that’s been locked away in data that you haven’t been using.
Your tech stack might be working. But is it working efficiently? If you’re unsure of the answer, take time to prioritize a tech stack consolidation project. You may be able to get more value from your systems and software while wasting less money on unnecessary tech.
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