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Technology is constantly evolving, and it’s now a huge part of every business model. Unfortunately, the various platforms and tools available to businesses don’t always work as well as you may expect, especially as a cohesive strategy. To help you figure out the best tools to add to your strategy, Christopher Antonopoulos of Measured Results Marketing shared his tips and best practices for optimizing your company’s tech stack.

Best Practices for Tech Stack Optimization

With the changing technological landscape, tech stacks are becoming more and more complicated. Even one poorly integrated tool can significantly affect your revenue streams and lead generation abilities. Here are some best practices you can use to ensure any tools you add to your stack will have the effects you’re looking for.

* Map out what you want to accomplish before thinking about new technology. Ask yourself what is getting in the way of your business achieving its goals. Choose your tools based on the problems you want to solve.

* Don’t get distracted by technological possibilities. Look at what’s actually broken in your business and determine whether technology is actually needed to fix it. In more than 50 percent of cases, problems in a business are the result of people’s skill sets or processes that are currently in place, rather than deficits in technology. It doesn’t matter how many tools you invest in. If you don’t examine your people and current processes for opportunities to improve, you’ll still have the same problems.

* Examine your tools and figure out whether they do what you want. How well do they integrate with one another? If a tool doesn’t work or do what it’s advertised to do, learn how you can uninstall it and whether doing so will break anything in your established processes.

* Integrate your tools so they all work together from one end of the lead funnel to the other. No lead should be left behind to languish in your funnel. Establish a proper process to track leads from end to end, understand where they came from, and learn what their behavior is. Your tech stack should integrate to form a single, well-oiled platform, not a hodgepodge of loosely connected tools. If a tool won’t integrate well into your tech stack, it’s not worth the investment.

Dos and Don’ts of Adding a New Tool to Your Tech Stack

Do:

* Determine whether the tool is capable of solving your problem.

* Research the services offered by the person/company you plan to purchase a tool from. Does the tool have a team to integrate it with your tech stack? Will the team train you on the software?

* Only work with tool and service providers that are certified in what they’re supposed to help you with.

Don’t:

* Add a new tool without researching its usefulness, necessity, and integration ability.

* Hire one-trick ponies for help with integrating new technology. You’ll get stuck working with someone who only knows how to do one thing, rather than help you with the entire integration process.

* Assume a new tool can solve all your business problems.

Common Misconceptions

In addition to the tips above, it’s also important to ensure you don’t entertain any of the most common misconceptions about tech stack optimization. Doing so can impact your ability to optimize your tech stack in the best way possible.

The first misconception to avoid is the idea that integration between two tools or systems of t...