to retire martech without disrupting your operations: A five-step guide

Your organization must regularly audit your martech stack. You will probably identify several tools that you can retire for a variety of reasons during an audit.

You may have duplicate tools in your stack because of a merger, or an acquisition. Other tools within your stack may have gained functionality and made a tool redundant. Or, the tool isn’t used enough to justify its cost.

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What ever the reason, identifying which tools can be retired as part of a martech review is critical. What happens once you make that decision? How can you retire a software without creating a stir among users?

It is important to plan carefully and execute the process of retiring martech software. Follow these five steps.

Step 1: Identify the system integrations and processes that are dependent on each other

It is important to determine what other processes and systems depend on the tool that you plan to retire. This will help to avoid any disruptions to your business. This may be harder than you think if the tool is in use for many years and your organization is large. Other systems could use the API or export data from your tool without you even knowing.

It is even more difficult to identify systemic integrations than it is to specify manual processes that are not part of the tool, but are still dependent on it. A report is sent from the tool, which a team manually copies and pastes into another system. This type of manual workaround happens more than you think.

Talk to anyone and everyone in your organization that has any connection with the tool. Find the people who were involved in the initial implementation of the tool. You may be able to gain the institutional knowledge needed to fully understand the impact of retiring the tool.

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Step 2: Assess your data migration needs

As part of your retirement planning, you may have to consider a significant amount of data migration. In industries that are heavily regulated, such as healthcare or financial services, data retention is mandatory. ).

Document which data must be migrated, and where it should go. You can migrate data from an old platform into a new tool if you’re moving to a similar platform, such as converting from e-mail marketing software to smarketing automation. You can ask your new vendor about how previous clients handled data migration. You may find that they can offer professional services, or direct your IT team towards solid documentation on best practices.

What happens when you retire an old tool without replacing it? Where should this data be stored? Plan with your IT partner. Data can be stored in a SharePoint site, or a new database. It is important to consider who will need to have access to the data and how easily it can be accessed.

If data is only accessed occasionally, it might be enough to store the information in a database from which a member of the technology team can retrieve it once every blue moon. If non-technical people, like marketers or salespeople need to regularly access historical data, you’ll need a user-friendly solution.

Step 3: Determine the best time to retire, and create a plan.

You must determine the best time to retire a martech tool after evaluating your stack. It could be determined by several factors such as the conclusion of a project, the end date of a contract or the fiscal year. Make sure that your business will not be disrupted by the timing.

After you have set a target retirement date, create your project plan. Consider all downstream systems affected and the data migration requirements from Steps 1 & 2. By now, you should have the necessary information to create a project plan.

What if you are pushed past your target date by the work required to decouple or migrate systems? Negotiate with the vendor if your target date is based on contract to extend it month-to-month so you have the time to execute your plan.

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Step 4: Develop a communication plan

Communication is key when it comes to retiring a martech. Identify all those who need to be informed, including employees, agency partners, and external customers. Be transparent and give them enough notice. You should communicate the plan you have for moving data to a different tool, and what kind of support is available during this transition.

Focus your communication on the advantages of the new tool if you’re retiring an old tool. Share your training plan with users so they know that you will provide support for them to learn the new tool.

If you have a tight deadline, try to overlap the tools for a certain period of time. This will give users a chance to get used the new tool and still be able to do things the old-fashioned way.

Talk to users about the features and functions they rely on. Work to create a plan to address how these needs can be met by other tools or processes.

Step 5: Discontinue the martech tool, and sell any wins

After you’ve migrated all your data and trained your employees to use the new tool, it’s time to retire. Communication is critical in the period following tool retirement. Communicate to stakeholders what you have gained from retiring the tool.

What is the rate of adoption for this new tool among users? Have you received positive feedback from clients or sales about the new tool. Since the tool’s retirement, how many days have passed without any errors or disruptions in operations? With the savings made from retiring the tool, what new investments were made?

All of these questions can be used to remind stakeholders why the tool has been retired.

Removing old tools to make way for a new martech stack

According to studies, marketing organizations are using as many as 90 marketing cloud services. This overabundance of tools can reduce productivity. Many marketers believe that “less is better” and that removing duplicative tools or those which are underutilized can be the secret weapon of a team.

Retiring solutions with a solid plan will lead to a martech stack that is leaner, more cost-effective and more efficient.

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