Tips for Optimizing Your Tech Stack

Most enterprises waste millions on tech without seeing real impact. I learned this the hard way. Early in my career, I saw companies invest in cutting edge tools only to struggle with adoption, integration, and ROI. That’s when I developed a smarter, outcome-driven approach. Here’s the exact method I use to maximize ROI from technology investments:  Start with Business Outcomes, Not Features ↳ Define the measurable impact before picking the tech. What problem are you solving? What KPIs will prove success?  Ensure Alignment Across Teams ↳ IT, finance, and business leaders must be on the same page. Misalignment leads to wasted budgets and underutilized tools.  Adopt in Phases, Not All at Once ↳ Test, refine, and scale. A phased rollout prevents disruptions and maximizes adoption.  Measure, Optimize, Repeat ↳ Regularly assess ROI. What’s working? What needs adjustment? Continuous refinement drives long-term value. Tech alone doesn’t drive transformation—strategy does. How do you ensure your technology investments deliver real business impact? Let’s discuss. 👇 🔹 Follow me for more insights on digital transformation. 🔹 Connect with me to explore strategies that drive real impact. ♻️ Repost this to help your network. P.S.: Thinking about how to maximize your tech investments? Let’s chat. I’m happy to share insights on what works (and what to avoid).

“You don’t scale chaos—you scale clarity.” — Unknown Post #23: Reassess the Tech Stack In growth mode—especially through acquisition—companies accumulate tech. And without discipline, that tech becomes the digital version of cultural chaos: overlapping platforms, inconsistent workflows, and teams speaking different operational languages. We faced this firsthand after integrating over 40 acquisitions. Every acquired company came with its own systems, preferences, and “the way we do it here.” The result? Forty different approaches to collaboration, reporting, and execution. We knew that wouldn’t scale. So we built a centralized integration playbook and stood up a dedicated team to deploy it. At the center of the effort was a strategic reassessment of the tech stack: + What tools were essential? +What could be eliminated? +And how could we standardize operations without losing local impact? We rebuilt collaboration around a shared set of RACI-driven SOPs—ensuring that roles, responsibilities, and decisions were consistent across the enterprise. Tech wasn’t chosen for popularity—it was selected for performance, alignment, and the ability to support scalable execution. The outcome? Faster integration, clearer accountability, and a unified system of work that allowed us to lead one company, not forty. To reassess your tech stack effectively: + Start with the work—what needs to be done, by whom, and how often? +Audit your current platforms—where’s the duplication, the drag, the disconnect? +Define standard operating procedures before choosing tools to support them. + Automate with intent, not excess—simplify before you scale. + Make cross-functional alignment a requirement, not an afterthought. In times of change, technology is either a strategic asset—or a silent tax on your execution. Rebuild it for clarity, and you’ll unlock capacity where it matters most. Next up: Post #24 – Build a War Room #CEOPlaybook #TechStackClarity #MergersAndIntegration #SOPDiscipline #LeadershipInTurbulence

Buying Clay won’t get you more leads. Buying Gong won’t make your sales team better on calls. Just like: Buying a set of Wüsthofs won’t make you a better chef. Buying that new Titleist driver? Yeah… it’s not going to magically straighten your slice. Too often we buy tools hoping they’ll solve our problems. But tools don’t solve problems. Processes do. And the best Revenue and Rev Ops leaders I know all follow a playbook when it comes to tooling: 1. Start with the problem, not the tool You need a list—not of tools you want to try, but of business problems you need to solve. Some common ones I hear: "We need to improve our pipeline conversion rate" "We need better forecasting data" "We need to stay in closer touch with customers post-sale" Then you can go hunting for tools that solve those problems. But if you’re just chasing every shiny new AI-powered tool? You’re going to waste time, budget, and team attention. Trust me, the 100th AI SDR tool still sounds pretty cool but it might not be what you need for your business at the current time. 2. Use a structured, data-driven evaluation process “I can see us using this” is not a business case. You need a scorecard. How easy is it to implement? How hard will it be to drive adoption? What’s the expected ROI? Does it integrate with our current workflow and tech stack? The best teams run their tooling like procurement pros. Gut feel isn’t enough, especially when budgets are tight and the stakes are high. 3. No process = no payoff Let’s say you buy the tool. Now what? Without enablement, accountability, and integration into daily workflows, that tool is going to sit on the shelf (just like that $500 driver in your garage). At minimum, you need: -Training plans -Change management -Clear documentation -Leadership support -An incentive or consequence to drive usage If you don’t have a process to make the tool work, you’ve bought shelfware. 4. Continuously re-evaluate your stack We’re in an era where AI is creating entirely new categories almost overnight. Point solutions are becoming features. New platforms are emerging weekly. And you can’t afford to run the same stack just because it worked last year. Great revenue leaders are constantly pruning and optimizing, aligning tools with the evolving needs of the team and the business. The bottom line is software doesn’t make you better. Process does. So before you pull the trigger on the next tool, ask yourself: “Do we have the infrastructure, alignment, and plan to make this successful?” Because trust me, your new Titleist is still going to slice 20 yards right unless you’ve put in the reps (or booked some lessons).

When your CRM becomes the linchpin of your entire tech stack, it’s like building a Jenga tower on a single block—it’s only a matter of time before it all comes tumbling down.  Ever had that moment of dread when one CRM update sends ripples through your entire tech stack, causing chaos in Marketing, Sales, and Support? 🫠 The problem lies in over-reliance on a single tool to manage every aspect, turning minor issues into major disruptions. The negative impact of CRM over reliance is clear: ❌ Major Data Silo: Information is trapped within the CRM, making cross-functional collaboration a nightmare. ❌ Scalability Issues: As your business grows, so does the tech debt, making future updates & integrations more complex and costly. So, what’s the solution?  ⚙️ Architect a Distributed Tech Ecosystem: Design your tech stack with specialized tools for different functions. Your CRM should be one of many interconnected tools, not the central hub for everything. Understand that your CRM isn’t a data warehouse or a CDP, so dont architect your system to treat it as such. ⚙️ Implement Data Flow Strategies: Integrate a customer data platform (CDP) to establish a single, unified customer view, and/or use a reverse ETL tool like Hightouch with a data warehouse to distribute that single source of truth data across your tech stack. This ensures your data is not only organized but also activated in a way that supports GTM Strategies. ⚙️ Focus on System Orchestration: Build your tech stack with integration platforms (like Workato, Tray, Cargo, Zapier, Make) to help ensure data flow and interoperability between systems, reducing friction and enhancing efficiency. ⚙️ Design for Modularity and Scalability: Choose scalable, modular solutions for business functions that can evolve as your organization grows, ensuring that your tech stack remains agile and adaptable & you arent over engineering your crm to do things it was never meant to do.  Don’t let your CRM tower wobble—build a tech stack that stands strong! 💪 #RevOps #TechStack #CRM #BusinessGrowth #Integration #Efficiency #Scalability #DigitalTransformation

If your AI token bill isn’t rising, your teams probably aren’t moving fast enough. Executives everywhere are waking up to a familiar surprise. AI usage is up. Token bills are climbing. And someone asks, “Do we really need to spend $10,000 a month on inference?” The answer: maybe more than that. Because if that $10K makes your top engineers 15 percent faster, shortens delivery by a sprint, and lets operations self-serve instead of waiting on dev, you’re not overspending. You’re under-innovating. The right question isn’t “How do we spend less?” It’s “How do we spend wisely?” AI spend is no different from cloud or compute. You don’t cut it. You optimize it. Here’s how smart orgs are doing that: 1. Use the right model for the right job Every task doesn’t need GPT-4 or Claude Opus. • Use lightweight models like Gemini Flash or Claude Haiku for autocomplete, regex, and summaries. • Use top-tier models like GPT-4o or Claude 3.5 for architecture, planning, or complex code generation. • Fine-tune or host open models internally for repetitive workflows. This alone can cut costs by 30 to 50 percent without losing capability. 2. Route requests intelligently Think of your AI platform like a router. Simple prompt? Route to a fast, cheap model. Strategic task? Route to a high-context one. Every inference doesn’t need a Ferrari. Sometimes a bicycle will do just fine. 3. Empower teams to design efficient prompts Prompt verbosity leads to bloated outputs and wasted tokens. Teach your team to prompt like engineers, not just users. • Use structured prompting and templates • Iterate on shorter context windows • Encourage reuse of optimized chains 4. Monitor value, not just spend Create dashboards that correlate token usage with business impact. Are high-usage teams closing more tickets? Shipping faster? Reducing escalations? If yes, spend more. If not, coach smarter. 5. Expand beyond engineering, but with purpose Support, finance, and ops teams want to use AI. Don’t throttle their enthusiasm. Give them light copilots with constraints, audit trails, and clear use cases. Innovation needs space, but space with guardrails. The bottom line: AI isn’t just an expense. It’s an amplifier. And like all amplifiers, it needs tuning, not muting. The companies that win won’t be the ones that save on tokens. They’ll be the ones that teach their teams to turn compute into capability and models into momentum. Prudent AI isn’t about spending less. It’s about spending with purpose.

One bad tech decision can destroy your startup. I've led the creation of 100+ software products for Silicon Valley startups & global businesses. The 5 key principles for choosing right in 2025: Most founders get their tech stack totally wrong. I've watched companies burn hundreds of thousands rewriting their entire codebase because they chose trendy tech that couldn't scale. Your tech stack choice today will impact: • How easily you scale • How fast you ship features • How much talent you attract Most chase whatever's hot in tech Twitter threads. But your business isn't a testing ground for experiments. Here are 5 principles I've learned from building software for Silicon Valley startups: 1. Avoid Fads Like The Plague Every year brings a new "revolutionary" framework that's supposed to change everything. 90% disappear within months. Your tech stack needs to solve real problems, not win coolness points. 2. Think Long-Term Your tech choices are marriages, not one-night stands. Pick solutions that will still be relevant in 5-10 years. The strongest technologies are usually the battle-tested ones. 3. Accept The Trade-offs There are no perfect solutions, only smart compromises: • Microservices scale better but add complexity • NoSQL gives flexibility but sacrifices consistency • Serverless cuts costs but increases dependency 4. Go Mainstream The more developers using a technology, the better your position: • Easier hiring • Better tool integration • Fewer scaling headaches • Lower maintenance costs Don't get stuck maintaining some obscure framework nobody uses. 5. Get Expert Eyes One bad tech choice = years of technical debt and scaling nightmares. Talk to experienced CTOs. Study where others failed. Ask around. The cost of getting it wrong is massive. I've seen it firsthand: • $300k spent on rewrites • 8-month delays • Entire teams quitting If you're building something serious and want to avoid these expensive mistakes, let's talk. We help companies choose and implement tech stacks that scale. Book a free consultation here: https://lnkd.in/dndQiR9A

When you're in RevOps... and you join a new company... or start working with a new client... 🙏 You always hope for the best when it comes to the existing tech stack 😬 But the reality is that the tech stack is probably a lot more complex than you expected 🤔 How do you even start tackling this? A few suggestions - ✍ Compile a list of all of the GTM tech stack ✍ Map out a visual of the tech across the end-to-end customer lifecycle, including the touch points and integrations ✍ Document all of the details (who owns the tool, who uses the tool, what the tool is used for, how much the tool costs, contract start/ end date, pricing details, integration with other tools, adoption and usage data, etc., etc.) ✍ Evaluate and assess where you have redundancies, where you aren't fully leveraging the technology, where you have gaps, etc. ✍ And identify where you can consolidate or leverage an existing tool for new use cases Chances are there are - some tools you can sunset some tools you need to better integrate some tools you aren't using properly some tools you can optimize for better ROI some tools you will need to purchase ☝ And if you decide to purchase, look for technology that addresses multiple use cases and solves for more than one business challenge. Platform approach > point solutions. ❌ For example, don't buy - a tool to capture buyer signals, plus a separate tool to get a 360 view of your prospect, plus a separate tool to generate relevant messaging, plus a separate tool to automate workflows... Instead, leverage technology like Common Room to do all of the above with an integrated, all-in-one solution. Platform approach > point solutions. Slowly, but surely, you will get your tech stack in order... 💪 #revops #techstack

Save this image. The smartest accounting firms I know review their tech once per year. They don't have perpetual tech FOMO, and the reward is big money savings and focus. Here's how they do it: Starting today, give yourself 30 days to make decisions, then wait to revisit it until next year. For US tax firms this is the best time for tech change, because you don't want to ride into battle next year on untested tech. But here's what 90% of firms get wrong: Because you already have a tech stack, you look for cute little apps to plug a hole here, make you more efficient there. Bandaids. The result is a broken, oversized stack. You know it, so you window shop 365 days a year. Let's put that to bed right now. While no stack is perfect, you CAN have 100% confidence you're on the right stack. The resulting focus is 🤌🤌 The biggest mistake firms make is choosing their tech in the wrong order. Important: we want our core apps to solve for as many things as possible. Getting the first picks right can reduce the number of tools you use by upwards of 50%. Let's walk through this step by step: 1️⃣ Your Core Functional Tech (Blue) Start with your tax software and your accounting ledger. It's where you'll spend more time than anywhere else, but importantly it also impacts what the right downstream tech selections are. I'm character limited here, if you want my shortlist of tools recs for each category I shared them with my email list yesterday. Sign up this week and I'll send you those recs jasononline.link/3dX 2️⃣ Practice Management & Workflow (Red + Pink) You'll notice these are both rectangles. It's because your workflow tech + your practice management tech should be selected in tandem. The tools in pink are a new category that's developed in the past 3 years, and are now a non-negotiable part of every firm's tech stack. I wish these two categories could be merged, but today they can't. We'll revisit that in 12 mos time. 3️⃣ Engagement (Green) Don't shortcut this one. Presenting 3 options, clarifying scope, creating urgency etc has a very real impact on what your client will pay you. If every engagement your client accepts for the next 5 years was $50 more, you'd make $1.7M more dollars in that time (you're welcome). 4️⃣ Service Line (Teal) These are the tools that support specific service lines. Like a reporting tool for your advisory service, or a bill pay tool, or a spend management tool. Sometimes your upstream tools will handle this fine, sometimes they won't. 5️⃣ Toppings (Yellow) This one's a trap. You fall in love with these tools and it can have an undue influence on the way you pick the rest of your stack. But toppings like RightTool, Zapier or Uncat are listed last for a reason. They'll make you more efficient with the rest of your tech, but don't let the tail wag the dog. Don't be distracted by people like me the rest of the year. Nail your stack now and reap the reward of 12 months of focus.

Most eCommerce brands spread themselves thin across too many different tech tools.  This adds up in costs and headaches from managing different platforms.  More importantly, disjointed tech stacks = disjointed data and experiences for customers. The solution?  Product bundling.  Leading platforms are integrating related functions into unified solutions.  This includes order management, fulfillment, analytics, and more in one place.   Consolidating tech tools this way saves brands time and money.  It also connects data and experiences for customers. As you evaluate your tech stack, look critically at areas of fragmentation.  Can you bundle 2-3 apps into one?  Which platforms offer an integrated suite of what you need?  Moving from disjointed apps to unified platforms cuts costs and provides a seamless customer experience. The future of eCommerce tech is integrated.  Brands that consolidate first will innovate fastest.

I’ve seen nonprofits lose months drowning in 12 different software tools… And I’ve seen others unlock game-changing donations + efficiency with just 3 right tools. The difference? Strategy. Here’s what’s working in 2025 for nonprofit tech stacks: 1) Consolidation over complication → Old way: Add every shiny new CRM, email, donation, volunteer platform. → New way: Streamline to essential, integrated tools only. Why? More tools = more chaos = less focus on your mission. 2) Mission-first integrations → Old way: Pick whatever’s cheapest or trendiest. → New way: Choose tech that frees up your time and fuels donor relationships. Why? If it doesn’t move your impact needle, it’s not worth it. 3) Nonprofit discounts are everywhere, if you know where to look → Old way: Pay retail prices for big-name software. → New way: Use curated nonprofit discounts to save $50K+ per year. Why? You should invest every extra dollar in programs, not overpriced tools. We spent hundreds of hours building a step-by-step resource to help you choose, set up, and actually use your tech stack the right way. So you can stop wasting time and start scaling smarter. And it’s 100% FREE: Just comment: TECH STACK You’ll find it in your inbox today. Question for you: Which tool is currently slowing you down the most? With purpose and impact, Mario