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CoreAudit· 45 minutes

Diagnose Stack Sprawl at a Fast-Growing Business Unit

RateGain Travel Technologies

Objective: Given a 35-tool inventory from a fast-growing business unit, separate genuinely active, integrated tools from shelfware, then check the inventory against the lesson's four signals that a stack migration is overdue.

You're the newly hired marketing ops lead reviewing a fast-growing business unit within RateGain Travel Technologies, the NSE-listed travel and hospitality SaaS company, that has accumulated classic Series B stack sprawl.

Separate the tools actually earning their keep from the shelfware, then check the inventory against the four signals that a migration is overdue.

Before you start

What you'll need

Free path (everything below is enough to finish)

Google Sheets
FreeFilter and count the tool inventory by usage and CRM connection

Free, and the inventory already arrives as a spreadsheet export

Claude
FreemiumCheck interview transcripts against the four overdue-migration signals

Free tier handles reading a few short transcripts against a fixed checklist

The process

2 steps

Step 01 of 02

Counting tool sprawl versus active usage

The lesson cites Brinker's 2024 data: enterprise teams run an average of 120 tools, but core integrated stacks average only 8 to 12. Tool count is vanity, active usage is the real metric.

The inventory lists 35 tools for this business unit. How many are actually integrated and used weekly, versus redundant or dormant?

Google Sheets— The provided 35-row tool inventory: columns tool_name, category, last_login_date, connected_to_crm.

Procedure

  1. Filter to tools with a last_login_date within the past 30 days, mark the rest 'dormant'.
  2. Filter to tools where connected_to_crm is TRUE, mark the rest 'disconnected'.
  3. Group by category and flag categories with 3+ tools doing the same job (e.g. three separate form tools).
  4. Count the tools that pass both the active-login and connected-to-CRM filters.
Sample output
35 tools total
14 dormant (no login in 30+ days)
11 not connected to CRM
Only 9 tools pass both filters -> matches the 8-12 active-core benchmark, not the 35-tool inventory count

Healthy

8 to 12 core tools pass both the active-usage and CRM-connection filters, matching the lesson's benchmark.

Unhealthy

Fewer than half the inventoried tools are actually active and connected, meaning the real spend problem is redundant, disconnected shelfware, not a genuine capability gap.

What this means

A 35-tool inventory doesn't mean 35 tools are needed, it means nobody has audited usage since the team scaled, and the fix is subtraction, not more integration work.

So what do I do about it?

SymptomActionEffort
Fewer than 12 tools pass the active-usage and CRM-connection filters out of a much larger inventoryCancel dormant/disconnected tools at next renewal and consolidate redundant categorieshalf day
YouYou can do this yourself, no engineering access required.

Step 02 of 02

Reading the four signals that a stack migration is overdue

The lesson lists four signals a migration is overdue: ops spends more time on workarounds than campaigns, attribution lives in scattered spreadsheets, new hires complain tools don't talk to each other, and manual CSV exports happen more than twice a week.

Given interview notes from three ops team members, how many of the four overdue-migration signals does this business unit actually show?

Claude— Three short interview transcripts from the ops team, pasted into a doc.

Procedure

  1. Read each transcript and check it against all four signals from the lesson.
  2. Mark each signal present or absent based on direct quotes, not assumptions.
  3. Count how many of the four signals are confirmed present.
  4. If 2 or more signals are confirmed, recommend budgeting a migration per the lesson's Series B guidance.
Sample output
Signal 1 (workarounds > campaigns): CONFIRMED - 'half my week is spreadsheet reconciliation'
Signal 2 (attribution in spreadsheets): CONFIRMED - 'we pull from 3 different exports every Monday'
Signal 3 (new hires complain): CONFIRMED - quote from a hire's first week
Signal 4 (manual CSV exports 2x/week): CONFIRMED - daily, not twice weekly

4 of 4 signals confirmed -> migration is overdue, not optional

Healthy

Zero or one signal confirmed, meaning the current stack still fits and a migration can wait.

Unhealthy

Two or more signals confirmed, meaning the team is already paying the cost of the old stack in lost time and lost pipeline.

What this means

Each individual signal can look like a minor process complaint; counted together against the lesson's framework, they add up to a clear, budgetable migration case.

So what do I do about it?

SymptomActionEffort
Two or more of the four signals are confirmed presentBudget a two-quarter Series B stack migration with a dedicated marketing ops hiredev ticket
YouYou can do this yourself, no engineering access required.

Final deliverable

An audit memo: the real count of active, integrated tools versus shelfware, plus a scored checklist of the four overdue-migration signals and a migrate-or-wait recommendation.

See a reference example
Sample output
Go Digit General Insurance, business unit stack audit (excerpt)

ACTIVE TOOLS: 10 of 28 inventoried pass usage + CRM-connection filters

SIGNALS: 1 of 4 confirmed (manual CSV exports, twice weekly)
RECOMMENDATION: consolidate redundant tools now, migration not yet urgent, revisit at next headcount review

Success criteria

You're done when you can:

  • Correctly separates active/integrated tools from dormant or disconnected ones using the provided filters
  • Scores all four overdue-migration signals against direct evidence, not assumption
  • Gives a clear migrate-now versus wait recommendation based on the signal count