Using too many software systems across teams leads to conflicting reports, wasted time and rising costs. This guide helps operations leaders spot the red flags, get team buy-in for change, and streamline systems for scale.
Marketing automation
The hidden costs of tool sprawl
Last updated
July 15, 2025
Read time
8 min
Written by
Lindsay Elswick
Contents
Share this article
Introduction
Most companies didn’t set out to build a complicated software stack. They just needed reliable ways to get things done — send emails, process payments, manage contacts, build their website. So they chose tools that solved real problems. And for the most part, those tools worked.
But now they have a tool for everything. And over time, tools start to overlap, data gets siloed, and simple projects take longer than they should because the systems don’t fit together as well as they used to.
As the stack grows, so do the challenges: delays, manual workarounds, broken handoffs, rising costs.
This article surfaces the real (and often invisible) impact of overgrown systems and offers a practical path for leaders to spot red flags, make the case for change, and move toward something more scalable.
When your stack holds you back
When your stack holds you back
No one plans for tool sprawl. But it happens, quietly and gradually, until the cracks start to show.
For marketing, you pick a form builder to collect leads. An email platform to follow up. A separate tool for landing pages. Then one for webinars, one for A/B testing, one for lead scoring, one for social scheduling. For sales and support, you add a pipeline tool to manage deals, a platform for client onboarding, maybe even a support ticketing platform. Each tool solves a specific problem. But over time, those one-off decisions become a tangled system of logins, overlapping features and disconnected data.
What started as operating lean and only adding what you need now means:
And that complexity only deepens as your team and needs grow. What once felt like manageable gaps turn into blockers — slowing down launches, muddying your data and forcing teams to spend more time keeping systems in sync than doing actual work.
Often, you don’t notice the weight of it all until projects stall, reports conflict, or you're rebuilding something that already should work.
That’s exactly what EMS Corps ran into when they began expanding their flagship emergency medical training program beyond the Bay Area. What had worked for a couple of sites — manual processes, one-off tools, siloed data — quickly became a barrier to scale.
Key workflows like application intake, stipend tracking and multi-step approvals still relied on staff doing everything by hand. Performance tracking for grant funders added even more admin work. And much of the program’s success hinged on experienced team members, a model that was hard to replicate across new, lightly resourced regions.
It became clear that their setup couldn’t scale without migrating to an all-in-one platform. And once they did, they launched more than 13 new programs across four states in a matter of months.
Read their full case study here
For marketing, you pick a form builder to collect leads. An email platform to follow up. A separate tool for landing pages. Then one for webinars, one for A/B testing, one for lead scoring, one for social scheduling. For sales and support, you add a pipeline tool to manage deals, a platform for client onboarding, maybe even a support ticketing platform. Each tool solves a specific problem. But over time, those one-off decisions become a tangled system of logins, overlapping features and disconnected data.
What started as operating lean and only adding what you need now means:
- Teams using their own tools with little oversight or integration
- Manual workarounds to move data between platforms
- A growing uncertainty around how (or if) everything connects
- A lack of complete, accurate data about business performance
And that complexity only deepens as your team and needs grow. What once felt like manageable gaps turn into blockers — slowing down launches, muddying your data and forcing teams to spend more time keeping systems in sync than doing actual work.
Often, you don’t notice the weight of it all until projects stall, reports conflict, or you're rebuilding something that already should work.
That’s exactly what EMS Corps ran into when they began expanding their flagship emergency medical training program beyond the Bay Area. What had worked for a couple of sites — manual processes, one-off tools, siloed data — quickly became a barrier to scale.
Key workflows like application intake, stipend tracking and multi-step approvals still relied on staff doing everything by hand. Performance tracking for grant funders added even more admin work. And much of the program’s success hinged on experienced team members, a model that was hard to replicate across new, lightly resourced regions.
It became clear that their setup couldn’t scale without migrating to an all-in-one platform. And once they did, they launched more than 13 new programs across four states in a matter of months.
Read their full case study here
The real cost of disconnected systems
The real cost of disconnected systems
These challenges aren’t unique to any one industry. They show up in different ways — missed deadlines, inconsistent data, extra headcount just to keep tools in sync. But they all stem from the same root issue: systems that don’t work together.
Here are some of the ways that disconnect can cost you:
Here are some of the ways that disconnect can cost you:
Cognitive + time costs
Disconnected tools fragment your team's attention. It’s not just about switching tabs — it’s the constant reorientation, the friction of remembering where things live and the steep learning curves for new hires. Over time, that friction compounds and slows everyone down.
Examples:
Examples:
- Constant context switching
- Slower onboarding
- Manual syncing or duplicate data entry
- Institutional knowledge loss when workflows depend on individual tool experts
Financial costs
Tool-by-tool decisions often feel affordable in isolation. But once your stack grows, so do the hidden costs — from feature overlap to the admin work of managing vendors, contracts and surprise fees. It’s death by a thousand subscriptions.
Examples:
Examples:
- Redundant tools and overlapping features
- Surprise renewal fees
- Contract complexity and billing overhead
Performance + data costs
When systems don’t talk to each other, data gets messy. That makes it harder to trust reports, personalize customer communications or maintain reliable automations. And when teams operate from different sources of truth, alignment breaks down fast.
Examples:
Examples:
- Conflicting performance reports
- Incomplete customer views
- Broken or brittle automations
- Personalization gaps from unsynced systems (e.g. targeting customers with the wrong offers or timing)
Risk + operational debt
The more patchwork your stack becomes, the more fragile it gets. One integration failure or forgotten spreadsheet can bring down an entire process — and the security risks grow with every tool flying under IT’s radar.
Examples:
Examples:
- Integrations that silently fail
- Shadow spreadsheets and workaround tools
- Security vulnerabilities from unmanaged vendors
Where disconnected systems drag down every team
Where disconnected systems drag down every team
Tool sprawl may feel like an operations issue on the surface, but its effects ripple far beyond your ops team. When systems don’t connect, every department feels the strain in different ways, with compounding consequences. Bottlenecks get passed from one team to the next. Handoffs break. And the downstream cost of misalignment grows with every function you add.
Here’s how it plays out across teams:
Here’s how it plays out across teams:
Marketing
Campaigns are built on fragmented tools — one for emails, another for landing pages, others for webinars, lead scoring, and social. Each platform creates its own siloed dataset, making it hard to deliver consistent messaging, track reliable attribution, or scale personalization. Even small changes, like a copy tweak or segmentation update, require coordination across multiple tools — slowing down execution and blurring performance insight.
Sales
When CRM data doesn’t reflect marketing engagement or recent activity, reps miss key context. They chase cold leads, repeat outreach that already happened, or fail to act on buying signals. Every gap in the data creates friction — not just for the rep, but for the prospect on the receiving end of a disconnected experience.
Support
Without visibility into the full customer journey, support teams can’t easily see what was promised in marketing, what deals were made in sales, or previous support interactions. That lack of context leads to slower resolutions, inconsistent responses, and a disjointed support experience that erodes customer confidence.
Finance and operations
Scattered vendor contracts, duplicate tool subscriptions, and siloed usage data make it harder to forecast accurately or control spend. Ops leaders face a tangle of logins, renewal dates, and unclear ROI — not to mention the administrative burden of piecing together insight from disconnected systems.
And because tools rarely connect across functions, every handoff becomes a hazard. Marketing captures a lead, but sales never sees it. Sales closes a deal, but onboarding has no context. Support resolves an issue, but product never hears about it. These disconnects force operations teams into triage mode, stitching together processes that should’ve been seamless from the start.
And because tools rarely connect across functions, every handoff becomes a hazard. Marketing captures a lead, but sales never sees it. Sales closes a deal, but onboarding has no context. Support resolves an issue, but product never hears about it. These disconnects force operations teams into triage mode, stitching together processes that should’ve been seamless from the start.
Not sure? These early signs suggest your stack is working against you
Not sure? These early signs suggest your stack is working against you
Most teams don’t realize how much their systems are slowing them down until the symptoms pile up. If you’re seeing any of these, it may be time to reassess your setup.
Different teams using different tools for the same job
Marketing uses HubSpot to manage leads, while sales lives in Pipedrive. One department tracks projects in Asana, another in Trello. Without a shared system of record, alignment breaks down, reporting gets messy, and your view of performance becomes fragmented.
Campaigns slowed by manual workarounds
To launch a simple campaign, your team has to export lists from the CRM, clean the data in Excel, then upload it to the email platform. That kind of patchwork coordination creates delays, introduces risk, and eats up hours of productive time.
Attribution, data consistency, or handoffs breaking down
When systems don’t sync, marketing can’t see which channels drive qualified leads. Sales lacks full contact histories. Support operates without context. These disconnects create gaps in customer experience and leave teams guessing instead of acting on reliable data.
Automations that stop at system boundaries
You’ve mapped out key automations — like assigning leads or sending follow-ups — but they break down when your tools can’t talk to each other. Maybe your CRM can’t trigger an email in your marketing platform, or your webinar tool doesn’t sync attendance data back to sales. That forces your team to rebuild the same logic across platforms, lean on clunky workarounds like Zapier, or give up on deeper, more dynamic workflows altogether.
Onboarding takes too long and feels overwhelming
New hires struggle to keep track of logins, workflows and tool owners. Without clear documentation or centralized systems, onboarding drags on, productivity lags, and critical knowledge stays siloed with a few long-time employees.
If any of this sounds familiar, it’s not just growing pains — it’s a sign your stack needs a deep clean. And the longer those cracks go unaddressed, the harder they get to fix.
If any of this sounds familiar, it’s not just growing pains — it’s a sign your stack needs a deep clean. And the longer those cracks go unaddressed, the harder they get to fix.
What a smarter, scalable system actually looks like
What a smarter, scalable system actually looks like
Choosing to consolidate isn’t just about trimming tools. It’s about creating the conditions for scale: fewer gaps to patch, fewer surprises to troubleshoot, and more room for strategy, speed, and alignment. That often means letting go of tools that worked fine on their own but weren’t built for a connected system.
A modern platform gives you a centralized, flexible foundation — one that simplifies the complex, scales with your team, and still leaves room to plug in specialty tools where they truly enhance your strategy.
Here’s what to look for when you're ready to move forward:
- ✅ A platform that covers core business functions: CRM, marketing, sales, payments, customer portals
- ✅ A shared data layer to keep reporting, targeting and personalization aligned
- ✅ Content and assets you can create once and repurpose across campaigns, channels, or teams
- ✅ Native automation and AI tools to reduce manual work and unlock smarter workflows
- ✅ Built-in user permissions and access controls to keep teams aligned and data secure
- ✅ Customization options that don’t require a developer or outside help
- ✅ A clear path for future growth — with features and integrations that evolve as your needs do
How to get buy-in from your team
How to get buy-in from your team
Consolidating your tools is a high-impact operational decision that affects how every team works, collaborates and delivers results. That means buy-in is critical.
Start by mapping your current stack. List every tool in use, along with its cost, owner, purpose and any overlapping functionality. Then identify the friction points:
➡️ Click to make a copy of our “martech stack audit” worksheet
These inefficiencies may seem small in isolation, but together they create lags, introduce risk and slow execution.
To build a strong case, estimate your total cost of ownership — not just subscriptions, but also the people, time and operational overhead required to keep disconnected systems working. When you connect those costs to missed opportunities or inconsistent performance, you shift the conversation from “What are we cutting?” to “What are we unlocking?”
Then, tailor your pitch to what matters most for each stakeholder:
When everyone can see how consolidation supports their goals, momentum and alignment builds.
Start by mapping your current stack. List every tool in use, along with its cost, owner, purpose and any overlapping functionality. Then identify the friction points:
- Where is time being lost to manual workarounds?
- Where is data getting stuck, duplicated or siloed?
- Which tools require extra oversight, custom work or internal “tool experts” to keep things running?
➡️ Click to make a copy of our “martech stack audit” worksheet
These inefficiencies may seem small in isolation, but together they create lags, introduce risk and slow execution.
To build a strong case, estimate your total cost of ownership — not just subscriptions, but also the people, time and operational overhead required to keep disconnected systems working. When you connect those costs to missed opportunities or inconsistent performance, you shift the conversation from “What are we cutting?” to “What are we unlocking?”
Then, tailor your pitch to what matters most for each stakeholder:
- Marketing wants faster campaign launches, clearer attribution, and the ability to personalize at scale without jumping through technical hoops.
- Sales needs accurate, up-to-date lead histories and real-time engagement data to prioritize the right opportunities and close faster.
- Finance focuses on reducing total cost of ownership — not just cutting subscriptions, but eliminating redundant tools and the admin work that goes with them.
- Leadership looks for systems that enable speed, insight and strategic alignment without adding complexity.
When everyone can see how consolidation supports their goals, momentum and alignment builds.
Final thoughts: Why this challenge belongs to ops — and what you can do next
Final thoughts: Why this challenge belongs to ops — and what you can do next
Tool sprawl creates drag across people, processes and performance. And because it touches every part of the business, it often falls to operations to untangle.
You don’t need a full system overhaul to start making progress. Map what’s in use, what it costs and where things break down. Then pinpoint the friction, estimate the real impact and build a case for change tied to results.
👉 Ready to audit your stack? Click here to book a call with our team.
You don’t need a full system overhaul to start making progress. Map what’s in use, what it costs and where things break down. Then pinpoint the friction, estimate the real impact and build a case for change tied to results.
👉 Ready to audit your stack? Click here to book a call with our team.
Related content
Related content
Learn how you can harness the power of your data to deliver high-quality customer experiences and manage business operations efficiently, at scale.
Find out how this team transformed their business by replacing their patchwork of tools with Ontraport’s all-in-one platform.
Customer Experience Automation (CXA) drives growth and gives you a competitive edge. Here’s how to pick the solution that’s right for your organization.
Features
© Ontraport 2024
playlist_add_check
PCI DSS, Level 1
security
Privacy Shield Certified