“We have to tell you, our MarTech stack isn’t that great.”
We’ve heard it from just about every company we’ve talked to lately.
At GALE, we speak to many businesses aspiring to create differentiated experiences through their owned and paid channels. They aim to deliver best-in-class customer experiences, engaging loyalty programs, and personalized communications in new and innovative ways. However, they often find themselves with a technology stack and data infrastructure that is holding them back.
The important thing that I try to say each time: You’re not alone.
Rarely, if ever, is a business sustainably run upon clean data and a clear technology direction. Most started out clean, but from there, they figured it out as they went; they allowed the functions to mature as they determined what, as a company, they were going to be when they grew up. Growth begets pains, pains beget fixes, fixes beget complexity. And complexity begets anxiety about how to ever dig out from under a set of hastily made decisions.
Before you know it, you, as a technology leader, are sitting at a table with marketing executives and your agency partners, saying “I have to tell you, our MarTech stack isn’t that great.” And it feels like your stack is hindering the company’s ability to achieve its ambitious goals.
The other important point I emphasize in this situation is: It’s not an impediment; it’s merely a starting point from which you can evolve and improve the stack in order to accomplish your organization’s goals.
Frankly, this is often the starting point, and we’re quite accustomed to it. With an understanding of what the business wants to accomplish, you need to determine what capabilities you already have and can reuse, then understand what the gaps are and how to fill them. Sometimes it’s modifying, extending, customizing your platforms. Sometimes it is acquiring new platforms to replace and/or add new capabilities. It is important, however, that a vision and roadmap guide the decisions you’re making along the way, and that you don’t continue to build on the existing complexity.
We don’t have to unravel everything and, no, we don’t have to get to “great” right away to be differentiated and personalized. There may be new foundational technologies, there may be big transformative efforts, but let’s not lose sight of how we make progress along the way. GALE’s MarTech strategy and architecture offering can assist you in defining your vision, building a phased roadmap to ensure you have an approach and plan for evolving your MarTech stack, enabling you organization’s goals and objectives.
So even if your MarTech stack isn’t that great, it doesn’t have to hold you back. Together, we can get to work to effectively reach your organization's goals.
