The Importance of Auditing Your Tech Stack
A tech stack is a combination of technologies a company utilizes to build and run an application or project. A strong tech stack can either contribute to a company’s success. An out-of-date tech stack can create problems for an organization.
MarTech Supergraphic, from ChiefMartec.com
We continue to see rapid growth in the Marketing Technology Landscape, with over 8,000 solutions recorded in 2020. This number will continue to grow as does the industry.
A “typical” tech stack includes:
Operating systems and programming languages
Servers and load balancing
Data storage and querying
Backend Frameworks
Frontend Frameworks
API services
Monitoring and performance tools
Business intelligence solutions
Behavioral and product analytics
Why you need the right fit:
The way a tech stack is built can influence an organization. Their tech stack can affect what kind of products they’re able to build, how efficiently they’ll be able to work as an organization and even what type of engineers they’ll need to hire.
When it comes to building a tech stack, there are trade-offs. While some technology tools save an organization time with promoting efficiency, others are best suited for certain audiences. Then there are other tools that are more scalable, however, they require ongoing maintenance. That being said, it’s possible to meet current needs and evolve as the organization continues to grow and mature.
Why audit your tech stack?
To uncover existing and/or new capabilities as tools evolve
To develop an improved knowledge of existing systems
To identify what capabilities, overlap across tools
To help plan accordingly when it comes to future marketing technology strategy roadmaps
What to know when auditing your tech stack:
List of available tools
What tools each department uses
Why the tools are being used
What each tool does
How should each tool be used
How much is each tool (cost)
Primary tool owner(s)
Benefits of a tech stack audit
Understand the value added by technologies – towards business operations and customer experiences
Enable teams to collaborate effectively
Builds a sole source of truth
Evaluate the effectiveness of the current system
Prepare for current learning curves
Understand how data flows and which processes are supported
Uncover security dependencies
Uncover redundancies
Plan and manage your budget
Avoid creation of duplicate subscriptions
Define a platform or tool owner
Understand what users like and dislike about a tool
Plan the phasing out of a tool or the addition of a new one
It can be a cumbersome process but should be done often as to avoid inefficiencies and hinderances that will derail from the company’s goals. Don’t wait until it’s too late to get back on the path to efficiency! Not sure where to begin? Let’s chat!
