Marketers, it’s time to get rid of your Covid-induced tech hangover

Ease of use is king nowadays, and it’s therefore no surprise that consumers are drawn to services that ‘just work’.

 

However, with thousands of different tools to choose from when creating your marketing tech stack, it’s all too common to see an array of disjointed services cobbled together and marketed as a platform — regardless of whether those services actually integrate effectively and provide a positive experience for the end user. 

 

According to a Blissfully report, the average small business uses 102 different apps, while each mid-market business uses an average of 137 apps. Enterprises have, on average, 288 different SaaS apps in usage across their businesses. 

 

In the past two years, rapid digitalisation across Southeast Asia has left businesses with a Covid-induced tech hangover. According to the e-Conomy SEA 2021 report, 40 million new internet users came online in 2021, bringing the internet penetration in Southeast Asia to 75%. Businesses quickly pivoted towards online solutions to meet customers where they are. In the rush to move online and be operational during Covid, businesses purchased numerous point solutions which in turn left them with a bloated tech stack. It also increased complexity for IT leaders, making internal operations difficult, and with it, impacting the customer experience.

 

 

What does the data say?

 

So you’ve figured out the right tech stack for the platform — now it’s time to look at the data within your platform and how it’s being processed.

 

Although ‘lifeblood’ may be an overused term when discussing the importance of data to modern businesses, its value is important. To deliver an outstanding customer experience, the whole business needs to be singing from the same song sheet, which means having a clear record of all the data from a single source of truth. If this isn’t the case, then it’s not a platform, it’s a bunch of mismatched solutions packaged together.

 

This is no easy feat. If this data is distributed across several different data models (rather than being collated in a unified one from the start), making this data work seamlessly across different apps and services becomes a nightmare.

 

In trying to address marketing, sales, and customer service needs, a vast array of data is required to ensure all efforts are aligned. Without a tool that unifies this data, keeping it clean and functional, it can quickly become fragmented as it’s handled differently by different business units and can create friction in the customer experience.

 

The solution? A CRM platform that has been crafted, not cobbled together. There are lots of powerful sales acceleration and enablement tools on the market. When these tools are integrated with a CRM the end result is a tech stack that becomes incredibly influential in a business’ ability to grow.