Is Your Tech Stack Ready for Revenue Intelligence?

Aug 21

3 min read

Your ability to make smart, data-driven decisions is only as good as the data itself.

For many businesses, their tech stack - the collection of tools they use for sales, marketing, and customer service - is a mess of disconnected systems, outdated records, and missing information. This isn't just an inconvenience; it's a major liability. Bad data leads to bad decisions, no matter how clever your leadership team is.

Before you can build a system for true revenue intelligence, you need to ensure your tech stack is ready for the job. This means getting your data house in order, removing clutter, and making sure your tools are working together, not against each other.

The Hidden Cost of a Messy Tech Stack

A messy tech stack creates "data debt" - a state where your information is incomplete or unreliable. This debt costs you time and money. It leads to:

Wasted time: Your sales team has to manually update records or hunt for information.
Inaccurate reporting: Dashboards and reports show a misleading picture, causing you to invest in the wrong strategies.
Poor customer experience: Your teams lack a 360 - degree view of the customer, leading to disjointed communication and service.

A Step-by-Step Guide to Auditing Your Tools

Think of this as a spring clean for your revenue engine. Here’s a four-step process to get your tech stack ready for reliable revenue intelligence:

1. Review Your Core Platforms Take a deep dive into your CRM, marketing automation platform (like HubSpot or Salesforce Marketing Cloud), and customer service tools. Look for common issues like:

Missing data: Are key fields like "Deal Size" or "Industry" left blank?
Outdated records: Do you have duplicate contacts or accounts for the same company?
Manual entry errors: Are people typing in inconsistent information, like "Sydney" and "Syd" for the same location?

2. Standardise Your Data Consistency is key. For all essential details - such as deal size, customer industry, lead source, and company size - make sure the data is both standardised and required. Instead of allowing free-text fields, use drop-down menus with pre-defined options. This simple change eliminates manual errors and makes your data clean and usable for reporting.

3. Test Your Reporting Capability The purpose of your tech stack is to give you a clear view of your business. Test if you can quickly and accurately pull key metrics like:

Conversion rates at each stage of your funnel.
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) by lead source.
Customer retention and churn rates.
Revenue from existing customers (upsells and cross-sells). If you can’t easily get these numbers, your tech stack has a reporting problem that needs to be addressed.

4. Clear the Clutter and Fill the Gaps Review all the tools your teams use. Are there any platforms you’re paying for that are rarely used or that duplicate another tool’s functionality? Identify and remove them to save money and simplify your stack. At the same time, identify any gaps that prevent you from tracking critical metrics and explore new tools that can fill those gaps.

Example in Action:

A Head of Sales in Brisbane wanted to measure their win rates by industry to inform their team’s targeting strategy. During a tech audit, they discovered that most deals didn’t have an industry tagged in the CRM. They made the "Industry" field a required drop-down field during deal creation, and within a single quarter, they had enough clean data to create a powerful report that informed their entire sales strategy.

A clean, efficient tech stack isn't a luxury - it's a necessity for any business serious about growth. By auditing your tools, you are not just improving your data; you're building the foundation for reliable, impactful revenue intelligence.

Ready to get your tech stack in order? SHIFT Advisory runs tech stack readiness audits that clear the clutter, fix the gaps, and prepare you for reliable revenue intelligence.

💡 Book a Tech Stack Readiness Audit today with SHIFT Advisory to clean up your CRM, streamline tools, and unlock reliable revenue insights.