6 Simple Tips for Managing a Tech Stack
By: Arcamax Publishing Inc.
Tags: Digital Marketing, Marketing Technology, Email Marketing, Online Marketing, Email Marketing Tips

A tech stack is the collection of digital tools a company uses for their daily tasks and long-term targets. It includes proprietary software, third-party platforms, apps, cloud services, databases, and other tools.

As more and more businesses move forward with their digital transformation initiatives, tech stacks are used for a wide range of purposes — from sales to digital marketing, analytics, and human resources. For instance, a marketing tech stack for a campaign may use Mailchimp for email marketing campaigns, Buffer for social media management, Salesforce for CRM, Google Analytics for stats and tracking, and WordPress for hosting a blog.

And that is for just one marketing channel. Building and managing multiple platforms can be overwhelming.

Prioritize a Strategy

Every part of your business should support your core goals and mission. Explore how technology can enable these goals and add tools accordingly. If a piece of tech is flashy and modern but ultimately doesn’t help you achieve your organizational goals, then it’s probably unnecessary.

2. Research Extensively

Weigh the options at your disposal before committing to your tech. A common mistake is to settle for the most popular or cheapest tools. Instead, get the tools that offer maximum value to your company and assist you with streamlining operations. This is especially important when you consider the time it takes to migrate to or adopt a new platform across an organization. Switching vendors and platforms is a distraction and a learning process for everyone. Save time upfront and choose a platform for what it can do for you and avoid glossing over deficiencies because of a better price. You’ll pay for it in the long run.

Request platform demos and ask extensive questions so you truly get a sense of the capabilities.

3. Focus On Users

Since your team is going to be working with the tech stack daily, it is important to review their needs while picking the tools they will be using. Assess how tech-savvy your team members are, so you can work out the level of training needed for any tool.

Those who don’t have an in-house IT team can arrange for user-friendly tools and third-party services that make it easy to implement new platforms and offer strong customer support services.

4. Check Out Your Competitor’s Portfolio

You can get a jump start on building a stack by looking at how others do it. This doesn’t necessarily mean they do it right, but it gives you an idea of how it could be done. Bear in mind that your company is considerably different from your competitor’s and your goals differ. This is why you don’t have to replicate their stacks if it doesn’t fit your business needs.

5. Seek Adaptability

Your tech stack should motivate you to scale. Before committing to a set of tools, evaluate your existing company trajectory and goals, and compare them with the restrictions of the digital tools.

Prior to confirming if your tech stack is adequate for business growth, find out if it gets timely updates. When a tool is consistently releasing updates to address the evolving customer expectations, it can be a reliable weapon in your arsenal.

6. Look Into Integration

One of the most valuable considerations when managing your tech stack is to work on the integration. Regardless of how much promise a platform holds, it must properly communicate with other programs and platforms in your stack. For instance, think about a new website management tool that claims to double the number of incoming leads. If it does not offer integrated support for your CRM, every team member is forced to transfer leads from one system to another and sacrifice productivity. In addition, manual data entry becomes tricky and marketing databases need a lot of maintenance. These six simple management tips for handling a tech stack will help you optimize your workflow and improve your productivity the right way.