The Frankenstack: When Your Tech Stack Becomes a Monster

What happens when companies add tech without a plan. The wild mess of tools that maybe kind of work together, but mostly don't. Five apps to send one message, three different subscriptions for the same thing.

Bert's definition: A squirrel's nest of tools acquired over years, maybe integrated, maybe not. Over 100 tools, different people using different systems, five tools that do the exact same thing.

First step: audit yourself. Bert's bad example of buying multiple AI services. Process is more likely to solve problems than new tools. You probably already have what you need.

"Does it spark joy?" applied to technology. Understand what you have and what problems you're solving. Manual data entry has 1-6% error rates - expensive in medical records, pharmacies, financial instruments.

Julianna's HR example: Payroll company offers benefits module with all employee PII already there. Instead of separate systems, integrate to avoid data transfer and errors. How many times do you email when you should use Teams?

Studies show 25% of time is wasted on context switching and rework. Emailing documents back and forth when you should use shared drives. Collapse work into places that don't require rework.

People get involved and it gets messy. Don't just send a memo sunsetting tools. Talk to teams, understand why tools were chosen. Microsoft shop? Move closer to Microsoft. Google shop? Move closer to Google.

Julianna's 70 critical data points matrix: Who enters data initially, who can change it, where it appears. Address entered at onboarding, employee can change it, HRBP has access. Clean one area, data flows everywhere.

Bureau of Labor Statistics: 26% of people wanted to leave jobs during COVID due to frustrations with "crap work." Automation gives us the opportunity to move past painful portions of data work.

Cross-ecosystem document flow problems. Data security considerations: What data are you handling? Who has access? HR silos exist for good reasons - they hold PII. Strategic decisions about necessary silos vs duplicated tools.

Are tools in the same functional category? Microsoft Teams AND Slack? Asana AND Monday.com? If you have multiples, ask why. You can't avoid silos, but make sure they're not duplicated.

What is your ultimate source of truth? So many disaggregated tools that executives can't know what's true. Example: 200 people with hundreds of duplicate names across two HR systems.

Sometimes you DO need specialized tools. Recruiting companies need applicant tracking systems, not payroll ATS. Hospitals need high-level permissions for EMRs. But always ask: do we have something that does this job just as well?

Core cause: New decision makers bring their preferred systems. "Because it sparks me joy" - developers wanted Slack over Teams. Applicable to everyone: government, education, solopreneurs. You probably already have what you need.