Uber Efficiency: Integrating Martech into End-to-End Tech Stacks

A technology stack whose component parts don’t adequately connect can hardly be called a stack: it’s more like a collection of severed organs—or worse, a Frankenstack. 

While a company in the midst of a digital pivot can limp by with systems siloed according to department or task, a digitally advanced company runs on all cylinders with an end-to-end stack that provides customers and employees with a seamless experience.

Having a slick website is great; having a full marketing technology stack (or martech stack) is better. 

In this blog post, I’ll explain the benefits of a streamlined marketing stack and show how incorporating it as part of what geeks call an end-to-end stack can take your organization to the next level.

Benefits of End-to-End Martech Stacks

A streamlined end-to-end marketing stack is a thing of beauty. 

It integrates all forms of digital marketing with how customers experience content, as well as e-commerce and postpurchase—and it provides actionable data every step of the way. 

In one well-choreographed dance, a customer can go from seeing a search result to reaching a landing page to purchasing a product or generating a lead. And on the seller side, you get to see every click or drop-off to help inform future refinements. 

From the customer standpoint, a slick marketing stack reduces friction wherever it might traditionally be found. For example, such a stack would eliminate the need for a call or email or for a customer to rekey certain information—all prime opportunities for a customer to bail. 

Some organizations do a great job getting potential customers to their websites, but once customers get there, there’s nothing to do—a clunky e-commerce setup, no invitation to join a newsletter, or no gated content to download. A marketing stack, however, lets you build funnels so that a prospect can convert.

On the seller side, interoperable stacks help people in different roles collaborate and complete business transactions online. For example, a small business that uses Google Docs to draft proposals and contracts, QuickBooks for billing, and a calendar application for project management is plagued with redundancies; they have to manually cut and paste customer information from one place to another. And keeping documents in sync is a productivity drain. 

Integrating a Martech Stack into an End-to-End Solution

If you’re reading this, there’s a chance you’re already interested in the promise of martech stacks: maybe you’re here to learn how to incorporate one into your sales, marketing, and service software. Of course, it’s going to depend on what your organization’s policies, products, or services are and what your existing workflow looks like, but here are a few points of advice. 

First, some vocabulary. Fine-tuning an end-to-end solution that aligns a martech stack with sales and service stacks to collaborate cross-functionally and grow sales is called revenue operations, or a RevOps stack for short. 

Rather than hire different software developers or outside resources to support marketing, sales, and service at the departmental level, RevOps supports all three departments together in one integrated stack. Instead of having different developers supporting the marketing tech stack and sales tech stack independently, RevOps supports the full revenue stack.

This sounds like a lot of work, but it doesn’t have to be. For instance, some companies insist on building their solutions in house, which is a distraction from your core competency. For most of us, it’s better to leverage existing software. Then you can focus your efforts on integrating existing software applications built and supported by others.   

Smaller organizations tend to leverage best-of-breed software products because the number of employees is limited. Larger organizations often sacrifice best-of-breed feature depth for vertical integration because the velocity of the organization often outweighs the preferences of individual employees.

Integrate your RevOps stack with your back-office enterprise resource planning (ERP) software, and you’re well on your way to a comprehensive end-to-end stack. Developing this seamless, automated end-to-end solution involves a good deal of work up front, but if your organization does it correctly, the solution will underscore your competitiveness for years to come.  

End-to-End Solutions Are Key for Disruption

There has been much written about Uber over the past decade, and for good reason. Much of their success stems from their development of a full end-to-end solution. Traditionally, you’d need to call a taxi company to get a ride, wait forty-five minutes for it to show up, and then give the cabbie your card or cash once you got to your destination. Uber created an easy-to-use marketplace solution that made use of mobile devices and GPS technology to enable users to summon a ride and gig workers to provide one—all with their smartphones. 

Maybe you aren’t looking to create the next Uber, but the point is that patience thresholds are shorter than ever. Whoever can deliver what the customer wants fastest, easiest, and cheapest corners the market. 

In other words, the disruptive power is velocity, enabled by systems that combine the front and back office in one interoperable digital environment.

I’m a digital marketing consultant with ample experience helping companies of all sizes scope, build, and deploy martech and RevOps stacks to support digital pivots. 
If I can help you find the right solutions to pivot your organization, department, or workflows to a digital stack, contact me, and let’s talk.