The thermodynamic law of entropy states that all things tend toward disorder. Fun thought, huh? The technology you use to run a company and the data it manages will get increasingly disorganized if you do nothing about it. Offsetting entropy in your tech stack is a constant battle.
How do we keep our technology from falling into disorder? You can do this in two ways:
1. Intelligent staffing
2. Tech stack rationalization
Intelligent staffing means fiercely calibrating your employees’ capabilities to the highest priority needs of the business and then outsourcing the rest.
You must get that seat resourced if you’re missing a technical architect to see beyond each technology. If your needs are on the admin side, contact a team on it.
Upskilling your team can save you tons of headaches when turnover happens. It’s wise to decentralize your institutional knowledge of a tech stack.
Just as your staffing is necessary, so is your tech stack rationalization.
Tech stack rationalization means optimally utilizing the capabilities of all your technology. All of your systems give you data; some keep it, and some share it. Duplicate or excessive data can cloud your ability to see what’s genuinely happening within your business.
Salesforce can be an excellent place for storing and accessing data, but without rationalizing the tech stack surrounding it, Salesforce will most likely create a log jam of duplicate or unhelpful data.
Before you throw out, replace or buy technology, it’s essential to understand one thing. A good tech stack rationalization is less about the technology than the connections between them.
So, think about how information flows between Salesforce and the complementary technology before deciding what stays or goes.
1. Decide what data each stakeholder needs to see on a dashboard (Outcomes).
2. Identify the data each technology generates.
3. Identify where that data is stored (E.g., Marketing data stored in Marketo or Pardot and sales data stored in Salesforce).
4. Identify duplicate or redundant data.
5. Decide where and how that data needs to be presented (E.g., Marketing dashboards for the marketing team are displayed in Marketo, but the marketing data is presented to executives through Salesforce).
6. Rationalize away!
As technology experts, it’s easy to underestimate the Law of Entropy when getting good data into and out of a CRM. The only offset to the Law of Entropy is Intelligent intervention, meaning you have to engage your team, their experience, and the background of your technology partners to maximize the resistance to disorder.
Through persistent intervention, your CRM can perform consistently to give your organization everything it needs to make decisions, close deals, and attract new clients.
At Bolt Today, we assist companies in creating, enhancing, and maintaining the tech stack powering your CRM. Our Salesforce consulting services deliver outcome-based approaches to developing and managing complex systems so that every stakeholder can work efficiently within the CRM, improving your ROI. Reach out to us, and let’s have a conversation on what it would look like for you to optimize your digital transformation.
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