Less Tech, More Impact: Prioritizing Outcomes Over Features in Your Marketing Technology Stack

At the recent Inspired Business Media CMO Summit in London, our Global Director Andy Mullings delivered a thought-provoking presentation on technology assessment strategies. His talk, “Less Tech, More Impact,” challenged conventional approaches to Martech selection and offered practical guidance for organizations looking to optimize their technology investments. 

Key takeaways: 

• The true cost of technology extends far beyond the price tag – Hidden costs including integration complexity, procurement effort, and skill requirements can make seemingly cheaper solutions more expensive in the long run. 

• Disconnected technology is unacceptable in 2025 – Organizations waste valuable resources when employees spend time manually transferring data between systems instead of driving strategic value. 
• Prioritize outcomes over features – Before any technology assessment, define what you want to achieve, which channels matter, and what customer experience you aim to deliver
• Underutilization is rampant – With 74% of businesses using only 16% of available features, organizations must focus on maximizing existing capabilities before adding new tools. 
• Skills and change management are non-negotiable – Technology implementations fail without proper training and organizational adaptation, yet these critical components are often the first to be cut. 

Our team of experts can help you transform your marketing technology stack from a cost center to a strategic asset.

Contact us today to learn more about our Martech Assessment.

The $30 Billion Martech Waste Problem 

“When I’m looking at technology stacks for enterprise businesses, time and time again I see a piece of technology that’s not even being used. It’s not even been implemented. It’s costing hundreds of thousands of dollars,” Andy explained during his presentation. 

This observation aligns with industry research showing approximately $30 billion wasted annually on underutilized marketing technology. The problem has become so prevalent that in Q1 2025 alone, Bluprintx saw a 300% increase in customers requesting Martech assessments and health checks as organizations struggle with technology costs amid budget constraints. 

The consequences of this waste extend beyond financial implications. Andy shared a sobering example: “Unfortunately, recently I actually saw a friend of mine that was a CMO lose his job… New guy came in in North America and decided he wasn’t happy that those things hadn’t been addressed and unfortunately that person had been moved on.” 

The Marketing Technology Stack Assessment Trap 

When evaluating technology options, organizations often fall into the trap of comparing feature lists and initial price points without considering the total cost of ownership. Andy illustrated this through a case study comparing an enterprise marketing technology stack with a seemingly more cost-effective alternative. 

While the alternative stack appeared to offer significant savings (approximately $250,000), deeper analysis revealed: 

1. Integration challenges – “The first thing is these technologies don’t work well together. We’re going to need middleware to bring it together.” 
2. Hidden costs – Additional tools, plugins, and agency support quickly eroded the apparent savings. 
3. Skill availability – “The market leading stack has a huge market share. And what that comes with is lots of skills in the market, lots of people that you can hire, lots of agencies that you can support that technology with.” 
4. Operational complexity – More platforms meant more procurement effort, security reviews, and management overhead. 

When accounting for these factors, the “cheaper” solution’s total cost of ownership came within 7% of the enterprise stack, while introducing significantly more complexity and risk. 

Prioritizing Outcomes Over Features: A Strategic Imperative 

The central message of Andy’s presentation focused on outcome-based technology selection: 

“Prioritize outcomes over features. It’s really important that before we start any sort of technology assessment, we ask ourselves what do we want to achieve from the stack, what channels are important to us, what channels are going to deliver the results and what type of experience do we want to provide to our customers? And then from there we can decide what technology can deliver that.” 

This approach represents a fundamental shift from feature-focused evaluation to strategic alignment with business objectives. Industry research supports this shift, showing that organizations using outcome-based approaches achieve better long-term results than those fixated on feature comparisons. 

Five Strategies for Technology Stack Optimization 

Based on Andy’s insights and our experience working with global organizations, we’ve identified five key strategies for optimizing your marketing technology stack: 

1. Eliminate Disconnected Technology

“If we’ve got technology that doesn’t work in harmony with our technology stack, we should look to replace it with something with a native integration where it can plug in and we can get the most from those tools.” 

In 2025, manual data transfers between systems waste valuable resources and create unnecessary friction in your marketing operations. 

2. Maximize Existing Capabilities

“Too many businesses are focused on change… But when I actually look under the bonnet, they’ve not even looked at using all the features and functionality available.” 

Before investing in new solutions, ensure you’re fully utilizing your current technology. Andy shared an example of a company seeking advanced personalization tools when they hadn’t even activated the basic personalization features in their existing stack. 

3. Align Technology with Strategic Outcomes

“Does the technology that you have deliver the outcome that you want? If your business is just focused on something like transactional email marketing and it doesn’t need to do personalization or hyper segmentation, then just buy a cheap and cheerful email marketing tool.” 

Technology selection should be driven by business requirements, not by the allure of advanced features you may never use. 

4. Invest in Skills and Change Management

“Every time I put a proposal on the table for change management, they ask me to cut that out… It’s a fundamental part of any project that we help the business change. We support the people, we invest in training, we send them to workshops.” 

Technology implementations fail without proper training and organizational adaptation. These investments pay dividends through faster adoption and higher utilization. 

5. Consider Long-Term Evolution

“One of the great things about the market-leading technology, if you sign a multi-year, three or five-year contract, I can guarantee that the tool that you buy in year one will be different in Year 5. It will have evolved with the market.” 

When evaluating technology options, consider how solutions will adapt to changing market conditions and business requirements over time. 

Your Martech Assessment Action Plan 

Is your organization getting the most from its marketing technology investments? Are your teams spending time on value-added work, or are they bogged down with manual processes due to disconnected systems? 

At Bluprintx, we help organizations answer these questions through our comprehensive Martech Assessment methodology. Our approach focuses on: 

1. Identifying your desired business outcomes 
2. Evaluating your current technology utilization 
3. Uncovering hidden costs and inefficiencies 
4. Developing a roadmap for optimization 

Our experts can help you transform your marketing technology stack from a cost center to a strategic asset.

Contact us today to learn more about our Martech Assessment.