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SKILL DETAIL
revops-stack-rationalization
mbfinotti/revops-skills/revops-stack-rationalization
Run a macro, periodic review of the full RevOps/GTM tool stack against the revenue workflows it serves and decide, tool by tool, what to keep, consolidate, replace, or cut - four-channel inventory, function-level overlap map, TIME scoring, a renewal-triggered action calendar, and re-sprawl governance. Use whenever the user mentions stack rationalization, GTM tool consolidation, a revops stack audit, a GTM stack review, SaaS sprawl, too many sales and marketing tools, cutting tooling spend, redundant GTM tools, or platform vs point solutions - even if they never say "rationalization". Covers B2B sales-led and B2C/e-commerce GTM stacks. Portfolio-level and periodic - not a pre-purchase checklist for one candidate tool, and not contract or legal negotiation.
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Installation
npx skills add https://github.com/mbfinotti/revops-skills --skill revops-stack-rationalization
Skill-Dateien
SKILL.md
Zuletzt synchronisiert · 24.09.2026
evals/evals.json›
{
"skill_name": "revops-stack-rationalization",
"evals": [
{
"id": 1,
"prompt": "I run RevOps at Verlane Analytics, 320 people, B2B sales-led. Our CFO pulled a seat-activity export off our SaaS admin console and sorted it ascending. Bottom of the list: a record dedupe/merge service, 4 seats, 8% of its features touched, $9K a year. Next up: a conversation-intelligence tool, 60 seats, $52K, and managers stopped reviewing calls about two quarters ago. Also on the list, a sales-engagement platform, 45 seats, $88K a year, 12% of seats logged in during the last 90 days, and honestly it overlaps the email module in our marketing automation platform for everyone outside the one team of three that uses it. CFO's instruction was literally \"cut the bottom three by utilization.\" Give me the cut list I can take back to him.",
"expected_output": "A verdict per tool anchored on business value rather than seat activity: the dedupe service kept despite being lowest on the utilization sort, the 45-seat sales-engagement platform identified as the stronger cut, enablement proposed for the conversation-intelligence tool, and every verdict carrying a business-value line plus a renewal window.",
"files": [],
"expectations": [
"Recommends keeping the 4-seat record dedupe/merge service rather than cutting it, despite it ranking lowest on the utilization sort",
"Names what breaks if the dedupe service is removed - duplicate records corrupting routing, attribution, or forecast rollups - as the business-value justification for keeping it",
"Identifies the 45-seat, $88K sales-engagement platform as a stronger cut candidate than the 4-seat, $9K dedupe service",
"States explicitly that utilization is a diagnostic input and never the cutoff for a cut decision",
"Recommends enablement rather than a cut for the conversation-intelligence tool, on the grounds that managers stopped reviewing calls",
"Keeps \"do nothing\" available as a valid verdict for at least one low-utilization flag",
"Does not deliver a cut list ordered by utilization percentage",
"Attaches a one-line business-value justification to every cut or downgrade verdict it proposes",
"Attributes the value-over-utilization principle to Scott Brinker / chiefmartec rather than stating it unattributed",
"Declines to cut exactly three tools merely because the CFO asked for three",
"Flags the missing renewal date and notice window per tool as required before any cut verdict is final",
"Does not treat the dedupe service's low seat count as evidence of low value"
]
},
{
"id": 2,
"prompt": "Northvale Robotics, I'm the sales ops lead. Today is March 1. Four contracts I need to deal with: (1) sales-intelligence database, $140K/yr, term ends May 31, 90-day notice, auto-renews - we're pretty sure we want to replace it; (2) ABM display platform, $60K/yr, term ends June 30, 60-day notice, auto-renews - nobody has run a campaign on it in eight months; (3) conversation intelligence, $34K/yr, term ended Feb 28 and it already rolled over, 30-day notice, auto-renews - usage is low but our sales manager wants it; (4) dedupe service, $9K/yr, term ends Dec 15, 30-day notice, no auto-renew, works fine. Rank these by urgency and tell me what to do with each. Cost is the CFO's main concern so I assume we start with the $140K one and work down.",
"expected_output": "The four contracts ordered by notice-window-opens date rather than annual cost, with the window date computed per contract, an action deadline set back from it by a stakes-scaled negotiation lead time, and a scheduled future action for the contract whose window already closed.",
"files": [],
"expectations": [
"Orders the four contracts by notice-window-opens date rather than by annual cost",
"States explicitly that urgency comes from the notice window, not the cost column",
"Computes the sales-intelligence database's notice window as opening March 2 (May 31 term end minus 90 days)",
"Computes the ABM display platform's notice window as opening May 1 (June 30 term end minus 60 days)",
"Flags the sales-intelligence contract as effectively out of time because its window opens the next day, and recommends a bridge term or renegotiation instead of assuming a clean migration inside the window",
"Treats the conversation-intelligence contract's window as closed for this term and schedules a re-score plus recertification ahead of the next window rather than proposing action now",
"Gives the $9K dedupe service a low-urgency action despite it being the cheapest contract, noting it does not auto-renew",
"Sets each action deadline earlier than that contract's window-opens date, backing off a negotiation lead time",
"Varies negotiation lead time by stakes - days for an elimination, a quarter or more for a replacement or renegotiation - rather than applying one fixed lead time to all four",
"Does not rank the four contracts by annual cost as the user assumed",
"Attaches a dated action deadline to all four contracts, including the one whose window has closed",
"Carries the auto-renew flag per contract as its own field, distinct from the notice window"
]
},
{
"id": 3,
"prompt": "I'm writing the board memo for our stack consolidation at Brightmoor Devices and I've collected the stats. Here's what I have: 70% of CRM implementations fail; the average B2B team relies on tools from 23 separate vendors; a Forrester 2025 B2B marketing benchmark found companies with 5 or fewer core tools report 23% higher marketing-attributed pipeline per headcount; and Gartner says reducing the GTM stack by 30% yields 15-25% more revenue per rep within 12 months. Tighten this into a one-page case for going from 41 tools down to about 12. Punchy, numbers up front.",
"expected_output": "A memo that refuses all four supplied figures as untraceable, replaces them with sourced benchmarks carrying source and edition, keeps the unquantified directional claim about adoption-driven consolidation failure, and reframes the goal away from a target tool count toward removing duplicate spend per function.",
"files": [],
"expectations": [
"Refuses to repeat the \"70% of CRM implementations fail\" figure and states it has no traceable original source in any variant",
"Refuses the \"23 separate vendors\" figure as a benchmark, at most attributing it as one vendor blog's unattributed claim",
"Rejects the \"Forrester 2025 ... 23% higher marketing-attributed pipeline per headcount\" claim as unlocatable",
"Rejects the \"Gartner ... 30% stack reduction yields 15-25% more revenue per rep\" claim as not traceable to Gartner",
"Keeps the underlying direction that consolidations fail on adoption and behavior rather than data, stated without any failure percentage attached",
"Substitutes at least one sourced benchmark and names both its source and its edition or survey date",
"Warns that repetition of a precise figure across many sites is not corroboration in this domain",
"Declines to endorse \"41 tools down to about 12\" as a goal expressed in tool count",
"Reframes the target as eliminating duplicate spend on the same function rather than reaching a smaller number",
"Does not invent a replacement statistic or a precise savings percentage to fill the gap left by the rejected figures",
"Names the edition or survey date alongside every benchmark figure it does cite"
]
},
{
"id": 4,
"prompt": "Kestrel Freight here. IT pulled our corporate card expense report and found 14 GTM tools bought outside procurement, about $210K a year in total. Our VP of Ops wants all 14 cancelled inside the month and a standing policy that any tool not bought through procurement gets cut the moment it's discovered. One wrinkle I noticed while looking at the data: the CRM add-on procurement bought us 18 months ago sits at around 40% engagement, and a prospecting tool the SDR team expensed on a card is at about 55%. Write me the cancellation plan and the policy language.",
"expected_output": "A response that treats the 14 card-bought tools as evidence of unmet need before waste, refuses \"bought outside procurement\" as a standalone cut criterion, runs each through the same value and overlap test as sanctioned tools, and designs an intake gate with a fast SLA instead of a blanket cancellation.",
"files": [],
"expectations": [
"Treats the 14 shadow-bought tools as evidence of unmet need before treating them as waste",
"Cites the Productiv engagement comparison - roughly 54% for self-selected tools versus roughly 40% for IT-issued ones - and names the source",
"Points out that the proposed policy contradicts the company's own usage data, where the card-bought prospecting tool outperforms the procurement-bought CRM add-on",
"Rejects \"bought outside procurement\" as a cut criterion on its own",
"Puts each of the 14 tools through the same business-value and function-overlap test applied to sanctioned tools",
"Recommends an intake gate with an approval SLA of roughly 3-5 business days",
"States that a slow approval gate produces the shadow IT it exists to prevent",
"Lists the intake gate's required fields: business justification, intended users, data types, and expected duration",
"Includes an automated duplicate-check against the tool registry as part of the intake gate",
"Does not recommend cancelling all 14 tools within the month as asked"
]
},
{
"id": 5,
"prompt": "Ambleside Health, 1,400 employees, I'm the RevOps director. I exported our contract repository this morning: 62 GTM tools with costs and end dates. That's the full inventory as far as I'm concerned. Finance also has AP data but pulling it is a hassle and it'll just be the same list with more steps. Separately, I know for a fact people across marketing and sales have been signing up for AI writing and research tools on their own since about January - not sure that matters for this. Let's skip ahead to scoring the 62 and producing verdicts.",
"expected_output": "A response that refuses the repository export as the working inventory, builds the union of four discovery channels, and promotes network/CASB telemetry out of its default position because unsanctioned AI usage is suspected at enterprise scale.",
"files": [],
"expectations": [
"States that the contract repository undercounts by construction, because it only holds what already cleared procurement",
"Builds the working inventory as the union of four discovery channels rather than from one export",
"Names all four channels: contract repository, AP/expense export, SSO logs, and network/CASB telemetry",
"Ranks network/CASB telemetry highest on tools surfaced that no other channel sees",
"Notes that the contract repository and the AP/expense export are the lowest-effort channels because finance already holds both",
"Promotes network/CASB telemetry above its default position, citing the suspected unsanctioned AI usage and the enterprise scale",
"States that network telemetry is the only channel that sees unsanctioned AI tools",
"Cites Zylo's 2026 AI-visibility figures - 60% of IT leaders lacking visibility into generative-AI tools in use, 77% finding AI running without IT's awareness - with the source named",
"Recommends interviewing finance specifically about expense-channel purchases",
"Does not accept the 62-tool repository export as the working inventory",
"Runs a dedicated AI-tool discovery pass as its own step rather than folding it into the general inventory"
]
},
{
"id": 6,
"prompt": "Torvale Systems, 900 employees, B2B sales-led, I'm head of RevOps. Our CRM vendor has offered a three-year deal at 28% off list if we move sales engagement, conversation intelligence, CPQ and forecasting onto their suite and drop the four point tools we use for those. Their forecasting and conversation-intelligence modules aren't shipping yet - they're on the roadmap for next year with AI agents built in - but the rep says the discount only holds if we sign before quarter end. Our CRO also wants to take the opportunity to redo lead scoring and the territory rules during the same cutover so we only disrupt the team once. Build me the consolidation plan.",
"expected_output": "A consolidation plan conditioned on a preserved alternative vendor and a risk owner per failure mode, scoped to capabilities the suite ships today rather than roadmap ones, with process logic frozen during cutover and a parity walkthrough plus adoption ownership before migration.",
"files": [],
"expectations": [
"Requires a named alternative vendor to be kept under active evaluation as a condition of the consolidation verdict",
"States that full consolidation transfers pricing power to the suite vendor",
"Refuses to treat suite versus point solutions as settled, citing Gartner's near-parity capability utilization of 57% suite versus 59% point",
"Flags that consolidating onto forecasting and conversation-intelligence modules shipping \"next year\" is a bet on a roadmap rather than a purchase",
"Cites the Gartner mid-2025 survey (n=413) finding that 45% of martech leaders running AI agents say vendor agent capabilities miss promised performance",
"Scopes the mandate to what the suite covers at parity today and keeps a named specialized tool where the suite's version is materially worse",
"Warns that an over-reaching single-platform mandate drives reps to route around it and rebuild a shadow stack, leaving the org paying for both",
"Refuses to change lead scoring and territory logic during the platform cutover window",
"States that process logic must be frozen during cutover and changed separately, before or after the migration",
"Names a risk owner per consolidation failure mode",
"Names an adoption owner and an enablement plan before the migration rather than after it",
"Requires a workflow-level parity walkthrough with the heaviest users of each point tool before the verdict is finalized"
]
},
{
"id": 7,
"prompt": "I do growth ops at Dunmara Goods - direct-to-consumer, 140 people, we sell through our own storefront plus two marketplaces. No SDRs, no AEs, nobody does outbound. We're carrying 31 tools: an email/SMS platform, two separate analytics tools, three attribution tools, a CDP, loyalty, reviews, a helpdesk, a subscription manager, and a pile of smaller things. My CFO wants this cut down. Every consolidation writeup I read assumes a CRM sitting at the middle of everything and a sales team using it, which is not us at all. Can you still run a proper review on a stack like ours?",
"expected_output": "The review adapted to a B2C/e-commerce motion: no sales-engagement layer assumed, the centering on a data or engagement layer offered as an inference, benchmark transferability flagged, overlap search aimed at analytics/attribution/messaging, with the four-channel inventory, renewal cadence, TIME scoring, and value-over-utilization rule applied unchanged.",
"files": [],
"expectations": [
"Confirms the review runs on a B2C/e-commerce stack that has no sales-engagement layer",
"States that the stack likely centers on the data/warehouse or engagement layer rather than on a CRM",
"Labels that centering as a reasonable inference rather than a benchmarked finding",
"Warns that this domain's published benchmarks are B2B-SaaS-centric, instead of implying they transfer to a DTC stack",
"Directs the overlap search at the analytics, attribution, and messaging categories where duplicates cluster",
"Applies the four-channel inventory union without modification for this motion",
"Applies the renewal-triggered cadence without modification for this motion",
"Applies TIME scoring without modification for this motion",
"Applies the value-over-utilization rule without modification for this motion",
"Does not map an SDR or sales-engagement layer onto the stack"
]
},
{
"id": 8,
"prompt": "Ferrolane Media. We finished the review last quarter - killed 9 tools, $340K in annualized savings, everyone's happy. Now the CEO wants a standing quarterly dashboard for this. Her words: the headline number is tools cut, we started at 44, we're at 35, and she wants 25 by year end. Build me the dashboard spec: metrics, definitions, targets.",
"expected_output": "A dashboard spec that refuses \"tools cut\" as the headline metric and replaces it with spend per workflow, redundant-function count, pre-window renewal review rate, and re-sprawl rate, plus honesty checks on realized savings and post-consolidation adoption.",
"files": [],
"expectations": [
"Refuses \"tools cut\" as the headline success metric",
"States that counting tools cut rewards cutting count instead of redundancy, inverting the goal of the review",
"Includes spend per workflow served, tracked as a trend",
"Includes redundant-function count, tracked as a trend",
"Includes the share of renewals reviewed before their notice window opened, with a target near 100%",
"Includes net new tools entering outside the intake gate as a re-sprawl rate, with a target near zero",
"Includes realized savings measured against the verdict register's original projections",
"Includes surviving-tool adoption after each consolidation as an honesty check",
"States that a consolidation whose adoption drops has failed regardless of what the spend line shows",
"Declines to endorse \"25 tools by year end\" as a target expressed in tool count"
]
},
{
"id": 9,
"prompt": "Halvorsen Logistics. I am the entire RevOps team - one person. We have 38 GTM tools. Board meeting is in seven weeks and the CFO wants decisions on the table by then. There is no engineering capacity I can draw on, no dedicated systems admin, and no IT function at all - I'd be doing every hour of this myself. This is a one-off cost cut for this fiscal year, not the start of a standing program; leadership has been clear about that. What do we actually do in seven weeks, and what's the highest-value play?",
"expected_output": "A plan that deletes internal build and platform consolidation from the register with the constraint that removed each one named, recommends downgrades and duplicate eliminations timed to windows opening inside seven weeks, states the ranking basis aloud, and names the conditions that would promote consolidation in a later cycle.",
"files": [],
"expectations": [
"Deletes internal build from the option register and names the constraint that deleted it - no engineering capacity",
"Deletes platform consolidation migrations from this cycle and names the constraints that deleted them - the analyst-only effort ceiling and the seven-week deadline",
"Removes the ruled-out options rather than parking them at the bottom of a ranked list",
"Recommends seat/tier downgrades and duplicate eliminations as this cycle's actions",
"States the ranking basis explicitly rather than leaving it implied by the order of rows",
"States that platform consolidation is the highest long-run value option even though the constraints rule it out here",
"Names the conditions that would promote platform consolidation in a later cycle",
"Promotes tools whose notice windows open inside the seven-week horizon to the front of the working order",
"Notes that the one-off mandate demotes the intake gate, renewal-triggered cadence, and governance work relative to a compounding mandate",
"Names which stated constraint moved which option in the ranking",
"Does not propose a full portfolio migration as a deliverable inside the seven weeks"
]
},
{
"id": 10,
"prompt": "Wrenmoor Software, B2B, I'm the RevOps manager. Here's our list, 22 tools with annual cost: CRM $120K, marketing automation $74K, sales engagement $46K, conversation intelligence $38K, CPQ $41K, e-signature $16K, enrichment vendor A $30K, enrichment vendor B $22K, scheduling $8K, CDP $60K, BI $35K, reverse ETL $24K, a CSV-to-CRM sync utility $18K (no public API, support takes a week to answer, we mostly use it for one nightly file drop), a gifting platform $12K, an intent data provider $55K, a call-routing tool $9K, a chat widget $14K, a survey tool $6K, a contract repository $11K, a commissions tool $28K, a QBR deck builder $7K, and a competitive-intel subscription $19K. The gifting platform and the QBR deck builder don't really attach to anything we do anymore, honestly. We have two GTM engineers on staff. Just give me the cut list - we've already discussed this internally to death.",
"expected_output": "A run that refuses to jump to a cut list: interview questions asked one at a time, revenue workflows mapped before tools, orphan tools flagged as findings, two to three review designs proposed with a recommendation tied to an interview answer, a buy-vs-build checkpoint on the sync utility with no invented capability threshold, and section-by-section validation.",
"files": [],
"expectations": [
"Does not produce a cut list before running the interview",
"Asks interview questions one at a time rather than delivering a block of questions at once",
"Maps the revenue workflows first and the tools onto them second",
"Flags the tools serving no workflow on the map - the gifting platform and the QBR deck builder - as a finding in their own right",
"Proposes two to three candidate review designs with trade-offs before building any deliverable",
"Names the one-time portfolio sweep with renewal overlay as the default recommendation for a first cycle",
"States which interview answer drove the review design it recommends",
"Runs a buy-vs-build checkpoint on the thin, integration-hostile CSV-to-CRM sync utility",
"States the GTM-engineering hiring trend - roughly 205% year-over-year growth in postings, per Bloomberry - rather than inventing a capability threshold",
"Does not state a numeric threshold of engineers, hours, or team size above which building beats buying",
"Tags tools as system-of-record versus system-of-engagement and holds those writing to the record system to a stricter standard",
"Validates the deliverable section by section with the user rather than emitting the whole thing at once"
]
}
],
"trigger_queries": [
{
"query": "We're carrying something like 45 GTM tools and finance wants a rationalization plan before the budget cycle closes.",
"should_trigger": true
},
{
"query": "Our CRO thinks half the sales stack overlaps. Run a stack review and tell us what to consolidate or cut.",
"should_trigger": true
},
{
"query": "Renewals keep auto-firing before anyone looks at the tool - I want a review that runs off the renewal calendar.",
"should_trigger": true
},
{ "query": "revops stack audit", "should_trigger": true },
{ "query": "GTM tool consolidation plan", "should_trigger": true },
{
"query": "We have way too many sales and marketing tools and I can't defend any of them to the board.",
"should_trigger": true
},
{
"query": "Help me decide platform versus point solutions across our whole revenue stack.",
"should_trigger": true
},
{
"query": "SaaS sprawl is out of control on the go-to-market side.",
"should_trigger": true
},
{
"query": "New CRO started and wants to know what every tool in the revenue org does and whether we keep it.",
"should_trigger": true
},
{
"query": "I need a keep, consolidate, replace or cut verdict for each of our 30 martech and sales tools.",
"should_trigger": true
},
{
"query": "Post-merger we now run two of everything on the GTM side. Where do we start?",
"should_trigger": true
},
{
"query": "Can you help me build a redundant-tool map across marketing and sales?",
"should_trigger": true
},
{
"query": "Our software spend went up 40% and nobody can say which tools actually drive revenue.",
"should_trigger": true
},
{
"query": "Run a TIME assessment across our revenue tooling portfolio.",
"should_trigger": true
},
{
"query": "How do I figure out which of our GTM tools are duplicates of each other?",
"should_trigger": true
},
{
"query": "Finance wants 20% off the martech line by Q1. What's the process?",
"should_trigger": true
},
{
"query": "We bought three enrichment vendors over four years and I only found out last week.",
"should_trigger": true
},
{
"query": "Set up a recurring review so tools don't pile back up after we clean house.",
"should_trigger": true
},
{ "query": "annual gtm tech stack review", "should_trigger": true },
{
"query": "Board efficiency push - they want a story about tooling discipline in the revenue org.",
"should_trigger": true
},
{
"query": "Half our tools were bought on somebody's credit card. How do I even build the real inventory?",
"should_trigger": true
},
{
"query": "What do I do with tools nobody logs into but that we can't obviously kill?",
"should_trigger": true
},
{
"query": "I want to stop paying for the same capability twice across marketing and sales.",
"should_trigger": true
},
{
"query": "Our CRM vendor is pitching us on moving everything onto their suite - how do I evaluate that across the whole stack?",
"should_trigger": true
},
{
"query": "We're being asked to justify every line of the revenue tech budget before renewal season.",
"should_trigger": true
},
{
"query": "how to cut saas spend in the revenue org",
"should_trigger": true
},
{
"query": "Is there a framework for deciding what to keep versus rip out across a whole tool portfolio?",
"should_trigger": true
},
{
"query": "Our marketing ops lead and our sales ops lead each bought a scheduling tool. This keeps happening.",
"should_trigger": true
},
{
"query": "I inherited a stack I didn't build and I need to form an opinion on all of it.",
"should_trigger": true
},
{
"query": "We're a DTC brand with about 25 marketing tools and I suspect a lot of overlap.",
"should_trigger": true
},
{
"query": "Nobody owns the renewal dates for our revenue tools and we keep getting surprised.",
"should_trigger": true
},
{
"query": "What governance stops the tool count creeping back up after a cleanup?",
"should_trigger": true
},
{
"query": "Give me a defensible cut list for our revenue tech stack.",
"should_trigger": true
},
{
"query": "Our stack grew faster than our revenue and the CFO noticed.",
"should_trigger": true
},
{
"query": "Should we consolidate onto one platform or keep best-of-breed across the GTM stack?",
"should_trigger": true
},
{
"query": "We need to reduce redundant spend across sales, marketing and CS tooling.",
"should_trigger": true
},
{ "query": "portfolio review of revenue tooling", "should_trigger": true },
{
"query": "Every team bought their own AI tool this year and I have no idea what we're paying for.",
"should_trigger": true
},
{
"query": "How often should we review the whole go-to-market tool portfolio?",
"should_trigger": true
},
{
"query": "I want a per-tool decision with a deadline attached, not just a spreadsheet of costs.",
"should_trigger": true
},
{
"query": "We're doing a tech stack rationalization for the revenue org next quarter.",
"should_trigger": true
},
{
"query": "My CEO asked why we pay for 38 tools and I need a real answer.",
"should_trigger": true
},
{
"query": "Which of our revenue tools are we merely tolerating versus actually investing in?",
"should_trigger": true
},
{
"query": "Layoffs cut the team in half and the tool count didn't move.",
"should_trigger": true
},
{
"query": "Time to decide what stays in the revenue stack for next fiscal year.",
"should_trigger": true
},
{
"query": "Can you help me map our revenue workflows to the tools that serve them and find the orphans?",
"should_trigger": true
},
{
"query": "After we consolidate, how do we keep people from buying shadow tools all over again?",
"should_trigger": true
},
{
"query": "Usage reports say 60% of our sales tools sit idle. What do I do with that?",
"should_trigger": true
},
{
"query": "We're spending $1.2M a year on go-to-market software and I need to bring that down without breaking anything.",
"should_trigger": true
},
{
"query": "Who should own the lead source field in our CRM and how often does it need refreshing?",
"should_trigger": false
},
{
"query": "Design a field dictionary with write-precedence rules for our CRM.",
"should_trigger": false
},
{
"query": "Which product usage events predict churn about 90 days out?",
"should_trigger": false
},
{
"query": "Build a weighted customer health score banded red, yellow and green.",
"should_trigger": false
},
{
"query": "Set up a discount approval matrix for deals going over 30% off list.",
"should_trigger": false
},
{
"query": "Our round-robin is assigning enterprise leads to SMB reps - fix the routing rules.",
"should_trigger": false
},
{
"query": "Our MQL threshold is producing garbage. Recalibrate the lead scoring model.",
"should_trigger": false
},
{
"query": "Audit our pipeline stage exit criteria against buyer-verifiable milestones.",
"should_trigger": false
},
{
"query": "Which system is source of truth for subscription objects across our data estate?",
"should_trigger": false
},
{
"query": "Design our funnel stage set and decide the unit of analysis.",
"should_trigger": false
},
{
"query": "Build a metric tree from board level down to IC with an owner per branch.",
"should_trigger": false
},
{
"query": "Deals are vanishing between demo and proposal - where's the leak and what's it worth?",
"should_trigger": false
},
{
"query": "Structure the monthly board revenue deck so the miss doesn't blindside anyone.",
"should_trigger": false
},
{
"query": "I'm a sales ops analyst - how do I get to a director-level RevOps role?",
"should_trigger": false
},
{
"query": "Write the scorecard and interview loop for our first RevOps hire.",
"should_trigger": false
},
{
"query": "Which RevOps newsletters and podcasts should I be following?",
"should_trigger": false
},
{
"query": "Our forecast is off by 30% every quarter - diagnose why.",
"should_trigger": false
},
{
"query": "Flag every stale deal in this quarter's pipeline and give me a disposition per deal.",
"should_trigger": false
},
{
"query": "What has to be in the packet when sales hands a closed-won account over to CS?",
"should_trigger": false
},
{
"query": "Route my RevOps task to the right skill and set up the project context.",
"should_trigger": false
},
{
"query": "We're choosing between two conversation-intelligence vendors - build me an evaluation scorecard for the purchase.",
"should_trigger": false
},
{
"query": "Negotiate down our CRM renewal quote - what levers do I have with the vendor?",
"should_trigger": false
},
{
"query": "Review the auto-renewal clause in this vendor MSA and tell me whether it's enforceable.",
"should_trigger": false
},
{
"query": "Pick a tech stack for our new internal web app - React or Svelte?",
"should_trigger": false
},
{
"query": "Generate a blueprint document of our codebase's technology stack.",
"should_trigger": false
},
{
"query": "Our AWS bill doubled this quarter - find the waste.",
"should_trigger": false
},
{
"query": "Rank our observability vendors by cost and tell me which two to cut.",
"should_trigger": false
},
{
"query": "Consolidate the engineering team's project management tools.",
"should_trigger": false
},
{
"query": "Define ARR, NRR and magic number for our SaaS metrics dashboard.",
"should_trigger": false
},
{
"query": "Should we launch a free tier to drive acquisition?",
"should_trigger": false
},
{
"query": "Build a free tool that attracts developers to our site.",
"should_trigger": false
},
{
"query": "Set up Terraform stacks for our multi-environment infrastructure.",
"should_trigger": false
},
{
"query": "Migrate our app from React Query to TanStack Query v5.",
"should_trigger": false
},
{
"query": "Audit our Chrome extension's devtools integration.",
"should_trigger": false
},
{
"query": "Which CRM should a 20-person startup buy?",
"should_trigger": false
},
{
"query": "Write the implementation plan for migrating off our old marketing automation platform onto the new one.",
"should_trigger": false
},
{
"query": "Train the sales team on the new sequencer we just rolled out.",
"should_trigger": false
},
{
"query": "Build the business case for buying an ABM platform we don't have yet.",
"should_trigger": false
},
{
"query": "How much should we budget for martech next year as a share of marketing spend?",
"should_trigger": false
},
{
"query": "Our CRM has 400 unused custom fields - which ones do we delete?",
"should_trigger": false
},
{
"query": "Design the org chart for a revenue operations team of six.",
"should_trigger": false
},
{
"query": "Run a security review of our vendors for SOC 2 compliance.",
"should_trigger": false
},
{
"query": "Build a data warehouse schema for our revenue reporting.",
"should_trigger": false
},
{
"query": "Which marketing channel should we cut - paid search or paid social?",
"should_trigger": false
},
{
"query": "We're renewing our office productivity licenses - Microsoft or Google?",
"should_trigger": false
},
{
"query": "Find the duplicate contact records in our database and merge them.",
"should_trigger": false
},
{
"query": "Write the RFP for a new CPQ vendor.",
"should_trigger": false
},
{
"query": "How do I get my team to actually use the CRM we already pay for?",
"should_trigger": false
},
{
"query": "Compare the pricing tiers of the three sales engagement platforms on our shortlist.",
"should_trigger": false
}
]
}
references/benchmarks-and-figure-grading.md›
# Benchmarks and Figure Grading
Stack-size, utilization, spend and consolidation benchmarks, each with the source and edition to cite it by, plus the figures that must never be repeated. This domain's benchmark series move year to year - always cite the edition, never present a figure as a universal constant. When two sources conflict, the ranked source list below decides which number wins.
## Sourced benchmarks
| Figure | Value | Source, edition |
| ---------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Average SaaS apps per org | ~275-305 (median 240) | Zylo SaaS Management Index, 2026 edition (platform telemetry: 40M+ licenses, ~$75B tracked spend) |
| Apps by segment | ~152 (<500 employees) vs ~660 (10,000+ employees) | Zylo, 2025 edition |
| Competing app-count figure | ~342 average | Productiv (different customer base - not comparable to Zylo's; cite whichever by name) |
| License utilization | 54%, up from 47% | Zylo, 2026 vs 2024 editions - utilization rising is not proof value rose |
| Average annual license waste | $19.8M (down from $20.9M) | Zylo, 2026 edition - enterprise-skewed sample; benchmark framing only, never a projection for the user's org |
| Renewals per year / spend at renewal | ~211 renewals; 87% of software spend | Zylo, 2026 edition - the mechanical case for renewal-triggered cadence |
| Renewal price shocks | 79% of IT leaders hit a price increase at renewal in 12 months; 78% hit unexpected consumption/AI charges; 61% cut projects over unplanned SaaS costs | Zylo, 2026 edition |
| Shadow IT share of apps | over a third | Zylo, 2024 edition |
| Shadow IT share (competing figure) | ~56% | Productiv - different methodology; cite by source |
| Shadow-IT engagement vs managed | 54% vs 40% - self-selected tools get used more | Productiv |
| AI-tool visibility gap | 60% of IT leaders lack visibility into generative-AI tools in use; 77% found AI running without IT's awareness | Zylo, 2026 edition |
| SaaS-cost ownership clarity | only 31% of orgs have a defined FinOps/IT/procurement split; under half can allocate SaaS cost to a business unit | Zylo, 2026 edition |
| App-consolidation rate | fell 14% → 5% YoY while AI-native spend surged | BetterCloud (separate source from Zylo) |
| Suite preference | 59% (2020), 60% up from 42% (2022) vs 25% best-of-breed | Gartner surveys |
| Capability utilization, suite vs point | 57% vs 59% - point solutions slightly higher | Gartner - the parity finding that undercuts "point tools sit unused" |
| Vendor AI-agent under-delivery | 45% of martech leaders running agents in pilot/production say vendor agent capabilities miss promised performance | Gartner, mid-2025 survey, n=413 |
| Sales-stack size | 89% of companies use fewer than 11 sales tools | DealHub/Pavilion 2025 Benchmark Report |
| Seller tool overwhelm | 70% of B2B sellers feel overwhelmed by the number of technologies required | Gartner Seller Skills Survey, Jan-Mar 2024, n=1,026 (sentiment, not utilization) |
| GTM-engineering growth | ~205% YoY growth in job postings, ~100 new listings/month | Bloomberry analysis of ~1,000 postings, 2024→2025 |
| CRM as B2B stack center | 42% of B2B orgs | MarTech.org / MartechTribe analysis |
| Martech landscape size | ~15,000+ tracked products, growth near-flat ("peak martech"), with heavy churn under the flat headline | Scott Brinker, chiefmartec.com, annual landscape counts |
| Martech landscape count and churn, dated | 15,384 tracked solutions, up 9% YoY from ~150 in 2011 (~100X growth) - alongside an 8.6% vendor churn rate the same year, i.e. growth and churn both real at once | Scott Brinker/chiefmartec.com annual landscape census, 2025 edition |
| Martech stack capability utilization | 33% (2023), down from 42% (2022) and 58% (2020) - a second consecutive year of decline, n=405 marketing leaders | Gartner Marketing Technology Survey, Aug 2023, via Gartner press release |
| Martech stack utilization, later edition | 49%, partial recovery from 33% - but only 15% of organizations qualify as high performers on strategic goals and ROI | Gartner Marketing Technology Survey, 2025 edition |
| Cause of the utilization drop | overlap among solutions 30%, talent to drive adoption 28%, ecosystem complexity/sprawl 27% | Gartner, same series, Oct 2022 |
| Martech share of marketing budget | 25.4% (2023); orgs using >50% of their stack were significantly less likely to face budget cuts | Gartner CMO Spend Survey, Aug 2023 |
| Martech spend forecast | $131B (2023) to $216B (2027); marketers prioritize functional consolidation over vendor consolidation | Forrester, Jan 2024, via secondary coverage (primary report paywalled) |
| Sales-tool overwhelm (Salesforce) | sales teams average 10 tools per deal; 66% of reps overwhelmed; 94% of orgs plan to consolidate within 12 months | Salesforce State of Sales, 2023 (vendor-run survey, conflict of interest: Salesforce sells the consolidation target) |
| Composability adoption | 71% of martech/marketing-ops respondents have a cloud data warehouse in their stack; of those, 61.3% say more than half their apps integrate with it | Scott Brinker, chiefmartec.com composability survey, 2024 |
Directional-only (vendor's own data, magnitude unverified): Vertice claims companies starting renewal negotiation more than 90 days out save materially more than those starting inside 30 days - use the direction (start early), never the percentage.
## Practitioner positions worth quoting
- Scott Brinker (chiefmartec.com), the utilization caveat: value is what matters, utilization by itself doesn't - his analogy is judging a music-streaming subscription by the share of the catalog actually played. Only two legitimate uses of a utilization flag: surfacing unused features worth enabling, and finding tools delivering no value to cut or downgrade. Buying a new tool can be correct even when the stack is underutilized. On self-reported utilization surveys: "Is there any quantitative analysis being done here at all by respondents, or is it just gut feel?"
- Lauren Nickels (Blackline): reduce redundancy, not count - "stop buying tech that is only necessarily helpful to one group."
- Rosalyn Santa Elena (The RevOps Collective): RevOps owns the stack or "at least [has] a ton of input"; the partner set depends on whether IT/PMO even exists. Separately, on the consolidation debate itself: a bigger tech stack often produces smaller results, and stack decisions should follow a defined go-to-market blueprint rather than precede it.
- Jeff Ignacio (UpKeep): at startups RevOps owns the stack end to end - "you can't wait for a centralized IT department."
- Gabe Rothman (VP of Revenue Operations, Rescale): a rare on-record reversal running the opposite direction of most consolidation case studies - he initially pushed workflows into Salesforce-native features, then reconsidered as AI tooling matured and now prefers specialized point tools that surface insight outside the CRM over forcing everything into one platform.
- Jeremey Donovan (then Insight Partners): "probably a hundred percent" of the portfolio ran stack audits as an efficiency lever; annual audit plus a named accountable owner per tool, because committee buying means "no one's job is really on the line."
- Jeff Ignacio (RevOps Impact newsletter): a capability-tier model in priority order - System of Record (marketing automation, CRM, contract management), Data Integrity (enrichment, BI, ETL/reverse ETL, warehouse), then Workflows and Automation (sales engagement, CPQ, notifications, scoring, calendaring, enablement) - plus a 5-step assessment framework (revengine.substack.com, May 2024).
- Rhys Williams (Domestique) and Sarika Garg (Cacheflow), on the RevOps Co-op webinar series: audit current state, then run a biweekly business-systems-council meeting to prioritize the roadmap, align it to GTM strategy, and execute in recurring sprints. Williams's scope framing: review anything that touches the customer journey, and tools should support strategy and process, never guide them.
- Before/after case with real figures (rare - most public cases are vendor-published): Marq, migrating off Salesforce/Marketo/Zendesk/Workato onto a HubSpot suite over 90 days, reduced technology costs by roughly 50% and saved $77,000/year in license fees alone (HubSpot case study, ~2023). Treat as one vendor-published case, not a norm - no published case in this search quantified the migration cost or the 12-month post-consolidation reality.
- Two more named companies with attributed outcomes, both from a single sales-intelligence vendor's own blog (Salesmotion.io) and unverifiable outside it: Cytel (2,000-person life sciences analytics company), consolidating five research tools into one, cut account research time 50% and account planning prep time 30%; Cacheflow (CPQ startup later acquired by HubSpot), which reports realizing full value within 24 hours of implementation with prep time down 60%. Treat both purely as vendor-reported, same tier as the Marq case above - not independently audited.
## Ranked sources (strongest first)
1. Scott Brinker, chiefmartec.com - the foundational writing on value-vs-usage; annual landscape report is free and ungated.
2. Frans Riemersma, MartechTribe - co-produces the landscape count; owns the 15-question Do More / Do Less / Start / Stop stack-benchmarking instrument (practice-level, benchmarked against outperformers - distinct from TIME's per-application scoring).
3. Zylo SaaS Management Index - best portfolio-level telemetry available; enterprise-skewed, vendor-owned.
4. Productiv - weaker recency, but the only public source measuring feature-level (not login-level) engagement.
5. Gartner - TIME framework, the martech and seller surveys; mostly paywalled, public summaries usable.
6. Jen Bergren (jenbergren.com) - the named practitioner quotes on stack ownership above.
7. LeanIX/SAP and Ardoq - the most complete free TIME implementation guides; Ardoq also pairs TIME with the US CIO Council playbook's Review/Reward/Refresh/Remove variant.
## Blocklist - never cite these
- "70% of CRM implementations fail" (also seen as 47-70%): no traceable original source in any variant. The underlying direction - consolidations fail on adoption and behavior, not data loss - is consistent across sources and safe to state as a pattern, without the percentage.
- "The average B2B team relies on tools from 23 separate vendors": traces only to vendor blogs repeating an unattributed report. At most, attribute as "one vendor blog's claim" for order-of-magnitude flavor.
- Hyper-specific figures with no locatable original source ("8.3 tools per SDR", per-rep dollar-waste and revenue-lift claims attributed to unnamed benchmark reports): exclude entirely - these read as AI-generated content manufactured to look data-backed.
- Confidently-named audit frameworks from single-author content-marketing sites (five-layer frameworks, complexity indices, N-week assessment methodologies): none corroborated by an independent source, a dataset, or a named practitioner with a track record. If a dimension checklist from them is useful (utilization, integration quality, cost-to-value, strategic alignment), propose it as this review's own generic dimension set, never as a borrowed named framework.
- "Forrester 2025: companies with 5 or fewer core tools report 23% higher marketing-attributed pipeline per headcount": repeated across several 2026 consultancy sites, attributed to a "Forrester 2025 B2B Marketing Benchmark" that could not be located. It would be the only outcome metric tied to tool count in this whole domain if real - treat that as the reason to be suspicious of it, not as reason to want it true.
- "Gartner: reducing the GTM stack by 30% yields 15-25% more revenue per rep in 12 months": traces only to an AI-generated knowledge base (Pulse RevOps), not to Gartner. Likely confabulated - do not cite, even informally.
- Standing red flag for this domain: a precise percentage or dollar figure with no locatable original source stays out no matter how many pages repeat it - SEO content manufactures apparent consensus by repetition, so cross-source repetition is not corroboration here.
references/renewal-calendar-audit-example.md›
# Worked Example: Renewal-Calendar Audit
The renewal calendar is the review's binding constraint: the average org manages ~211 SaaS renewals a year, and renewals carry ~87% of software spend (Zylo, 2026 edition). Most of the money only becomes movable at a renewal - so the calendar, not the scoring, decides when a verdict can act.
## Calendar schema
One row per contract (a vendor can hold several):
| Field | Why it exists |
| ---------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Tool / contract | The unit is the contract, not the vendor - terms differ per contract |
| Named owner | The accountable person per tool; committee ownership means nobody answers for the renewal |
| Annual cost + payment terms | From the contract or AP data, never estimated |
| Term end date | The anchor everything else is computed from |
| Auto-renew flag | Auto-renew plus a missed notice window locks in a full extra term |
| Notice window | Typically 30-90 days before term end; read it from the contract, never assume |
| Verdict (from the TIME pass) | Links the calendar to the register |
| Action deadline | Computed - see below |
| Recertification date | Access/ownership/need recheck scheduled before auto-renew fires - the governance link |
## Action-deadline arithmetic
```
notice-window opens = term end - notice period
action deadline = notice-window opens - negotiation lead time
```
Set negotiation lead time by stakes, not a constant:
- An Eliminate needs days: confirm nothing breaks, give notice.
- A renegotiation or Migrate needs a quarter or more of lead.
Direction to keep, magnitude to drop: one procurement vendor's own data (Vertice) claims starting more than 90 days out saves materially more than starting inside 30 days - treat as directional support for early starts, never cite the percentage.
## Worked mini-calendar (today = March 1)
| Contract | Cost | Term end | Notice | Auto-renew | Verdict | Window opens | Action deadline |
| ------------------------------ | ---- | --------------- | ------ | ---------- | --------- | ------------ | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Sales-intelligence database | high | May 31 | 90d | Yes | Migrate | Mar 2 | now - window opens tomorrow; renegotiate to a bridge term or the migration runs against a live meter |
| ABM display platform | mid | Jun 30 | 60d | Yes | Eliminate | May 1 | Apr 15 - confirm no live campaigns, then notice inside the window |
| Conversation-intelligence tool | mid | Feb 28 (passed) | 30d | Yes | Tolerate | closed | none this term - it just renewed; schedule re-score + recertification for Nov, before next window |
| Dedupe service | low | Dec 15 | 30d | No | Invest | Nov 15 | Oct 1 - renew early only if a multi-year discount is on the table; no urgency, no auto-renew |
Reading the table: urgency comes from the window column, not the cost column. The cheapest contract can be the most urgent row, and the row whose window already closed (conversation-intelligence) produces a scheduled future action, not a shrug - that scheduling is what converts a one-time audit into a renewal-triggered operating cadence.
## Failure case - the wasted verdict
A portfolio sweep finishes in April and scores the sales-intelligence database Eliminate: solid evidence, duplicate function, clear replacement path. Its contract auto-renewed March 2 with a 90-day notice window that opened the previous December - while the review was being scoped. The verdict is correct and worthless for twelve months, and the spend line the review promised to move doesn't move.
The prevention is structural, not analytical:
- Build the calendar **first** (Workflow step 4 precedes scoring).
- Sort the review's own working order by window-opens date.
- Route every future window into a standing trigger: review fires per tool per window, with the annual synthesis layered on top for portfolio patterns.
## Recertification linkage
Tie each renewal to a recertification pass before auto-renew fires. Confirm three things:
- The named owner still exists.
- The business need still stands.
- Access/integration tokens are still warranted.
An unused tool keeps licenses, admin access, and live tokens long after the need has passed, making a missed renewal a privilege-persistence problem, not only a cost problem. This single linkage is what prevents re-sprawl between cycles instead of re-discovering it at the next audit.
references/time-scoring-worked-example.md›
# Worked Example: TIME Scoring Pass with Renewal Overlay
TIME (Gartner) scores each tool on two axes: technical fit and functional fit. Each combination assigns one of four verdicts:
- High technical / high functional: **Invest**
- High technical / low functional: **Tolerate**
- Low technical / high functional: **Migrate**
- Low technical / low functional: **Eliminate**
Gartner's own authors stress the goal is maximizing value, not reducing spend. Tolerate verdicts decay: they need re-scoring each cycle, never a permanent pass.
The High/Low binary below is the fastest usable version. Ardoq's public TIME implementation operationalizes it with more granularity for a reader who wants it: score business value as the sum of strategic fit, features and usability, functional fit and criticality (each 0-3), and technical fit the same way; a tool scoring 0-3 on both axes gets an automatic Eliminate. Use the finer scale only when the binary produces ties that block a real decision - it adds arithmetic, not new judgment.
The example below is illustrative - generic tool categories, invented but realistic scores. The scoring logic and overlay mechanics are the transferable part; the verdicts are not benchmarks.
## The stack slice (B2B sales-led, mid-market)
A 10-tool slice of a larger inventory, after the overlap map flagged two duplicate functions (enrichment, scheduling).
| Tool | Function | Technical fit | Functional fit | TIME verdict | Value evidence (one line) |
| ------------------------------ | ------------------------ | ------------- | -------------- | ------------ | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| CRM platform | System of record | High | High | Invest | Every revenue workflow terminates here; 100% of forecast built on it |
| Marketing-automation platform | Nurture, scoring, email | High | High | Invest | Sources the majority of qualified pipeline |
| Sales-engagement platform | Sequencing, outreach | High | Low | Tolerate | Adopted by one team of three; overlaps the marketing platform's email module for the rest |
| Data-enrichment service A | Firmographic enrichment | High | High | Invest | Feeds routing and scoring; match rate verified quarterly |
| Data-enrichment service B | Firmographic enrichment | Low | Low | Eliminate | Duplicate function; lower match rate on the same test set; nothing writes to the CRM from it |
| Conversation-intelligence tool | Call recording, coaching | High | Low | Tolerate | Managers stopped reviewing calls two quarters ago - flag for enablement before any cut decision |
| Scheduling tool A | Meeting booking | High | High | Invest | Embedded in every routing flow |
| Scheduling tool B | Meeting booking | High | Low | Eliminate | Duplicate function, bought by one team on expense; migrate its three users to tool A |
| E-signature service | Quote/sign | Low | High | Migrate | Business-critical but fails on the CRM integration weekly; replace, don't cut |
| Data-hygiene/dedupe service | Dedupe, record merge | High | High | Invest | 3 seats, 9% of licensed features used - and it protects forecast integrity (see the negative example) |
## The renewal overlay
A verdict without an action window is a wasted verdict. Overlay the calendar before ranking actions:
| Tool | Verdict | Renewal | Notice window | Action |
| ------------------------- | --------- | ------------- | ------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Data-enrichment service B | Eliminate | 4 months out | 60 days | Act this cycle: give notice inside the window; migrate any residual lookups to service A first |
| Scheduling tool B | Eliminate | 11 months out | 30 days | Queue: set a calendar action for month 9; migrate users now (cheap), cancel at the window |
| Sales-engagement platform | Tolerate | 2 months out | 90 days | Window already closed - auto-renew will fire. Renew at the smallest tier, re-score next cycle |
| E-signature service | Migrate | 7 months out | 60 days | Start replacement evaluation now; the migration must complete before month 5 to use the window |
The sales-engagement row is the point of the overlay: a correct Tolerate-toward-Eliminate trajectory is worth nothing this cycle because the notice window closed before the review ran - which is the argument for renewal-triggered cadence over calendar-triggered.
## Negative example - the utilization-only cut, done wrong
A reviewer sorting the inventory by seat-activity percentage flags the dedupe service first: 3 seats, 9% feature utilization, lowest usage in the stack. Verdict proposed: Eliminate.
Wrong, and the error is the method: usage was used as the cutoff instead of a diagnostic. The tool's function is invisible in login data - it deduplicates records in nightly jobs, and duplicate account records corrupt routing, attribution, and forecast rollups within a quarter of its removal.
The business-value check (what breaks if this disappears?) reverses the verdict to Invest. The 40-seat sequencer with no adoption and a duplicate function is the cut; the 3-seat service protecting the system of record is not comparable - this is the Brinker caveat operationalized.
Two remedies beat the cut for tools flagged on low utilization:
- **Enablement**: the conversation-intelligence row - managers stopped using it; teach before cutting.
- **Do nothing**: secondary users meant to touch a tool rarely are not waste.
SKILL.md›
---
name: revops-stack-rationalization
description: Run a macro, periodic review of the full RevOps/GTM tool stack against the revenue workflows it serves and decide, tool by tool, what to keep, consolidate, replace, or cut - four-channel inventory, function-level overlap map, TIME scoring, a renewal-triggered action calendar, and re-sprawl governance. Use whenever the user mentions stack rationalization, GTM tool consolidation, a revops stack audit, a GTM stack review, SaaS sprawl, too many sales and marketing tools, cutting tooling spend, redundant GTM tools, or platform vs point solutions - even if they never say "rationalization". Covers B2B sales-led and B2C/e-commerce GTM stacks. Portfolio-level and periodic - not a pre-purchase checklist for one candidate tool, and not contract or legal negotiation.
license: MIT
metadata:
author: Maya-Beth Finotti
version: "1.4.9"
---
# RevOps Stack Rationalization
You are a RevOps stack strategist. Review the entire GTM tool portfolio against the revenue workflows it serves and produce decision deliverables: a verdict per tool, timed to that tool's renewal window, plus the governance that stops the stack re-sprawling afterwards. "Stack rationalization" is Scott Brinker's term (chiefmartec.com): simplify the stack to what the team can use effectively - with his own caveat built in, that utilization alone is never the business case.
Stay at portfolio altitude. Evaluating one candidate tool before purchase (fit, integration burden, cost checklist) is a different, narrower job - here the unit of analysis is the whole stack and the review recurs; recommend, never execute the migrations.
## Ground Rules
- Anchor every verdict on business value, never on utilization alone. Low-frequency tools can cover critical edge cases; a 3-seat data-hygiene service protecting forecast integrity is not comparable to a 40-seat unused sequencer (Brinker's explicit caveat - see [references/benchmarks-and-figure-grading.md](references/benchmarks-and-figure-grading.md)).
- Target redundancy, not raw tool count. The goal is stopping duplicate spend on the same function, not hitting a smaller number (Lauren Nickels, Blackline).
- Treat shadow IT as evidence of unmet need before treating it as waste: self-selected tools measure higher engagement than IT-issued ones (Productiv: 54% vs 40%). A cut list that equates "bought outside procurement" with "cut candidate" argues against its own usage data.
- Never present suite-vs-point-solution as settled. Suite preference is rising, but best-of-breed utilization sits at parity (Gartner: 57% suite vs 59% point) - and full consolidation transfers pricing power to the suite vendor. Every consolidation verdict must name the alternative vendor kept under evaluation to preserve negotiating leverage.
- The renewal calendar is the binding constraint. A correct verdict landing after the notice window closes is a wasted verdict; time every action to a window.
- "Do nothing" is a valid verdict for a low-utilization flag - e.g. secondary users meant to touch a tool rarely. Enablement is the most underused remedy for genuine underutilization; cutting is not the only response.
- Name the source and edition behind every cited figure. Never cite the circulating unsourced statistics - "70% of CRM implementations fail", "the average B2B team uses tools from 23 vendors", or any hyper-specific number with no locatable original source. The blocklist and the sourced replacements live in [references/benchmarks-and-figure-grading.md](references/benchmarks-and-figure-grading.md).
- Rankings below are defaults, not laws. Re-rank against the user's known context - an in-house engineering team, a SaaS-management platform already deployed, a board deadline - and say which answer moved which option.
## B2B and B2C / E-commerce
- **B2B sales-led:** the stack centers on the CRM as system of record (42% of B2B orgs name it the stack center - MarTech.org/MartechTribe). Sales-engagement, conversation-intelligence, enrichment, and forecast tooling are all in scope alongside martech.
- **B2C / e-commerce:** martech-heavy, with no SDR/sales-engagement layer at all. The stack likely centers on the data/warehouse or engagement layer rather than a CRM - state this as a reasonable inference, not a benchmarked finding, whenever it appears in output. Duplicates cluster in analytics, attribution, and messaging categories.
- Warn B2C readers that this domain's published benchmarks are B2B-SaaS-centric - flag it rather than implying parity.
- **Identical in both, apply without modification:** the four-channel inventory union, the renewal-triggered cadence, the value-over-utilization rule, TIME scoring itself, and the intake gate.
## Interview
Ask before proposing anything. One question per message; multiple-choice where possible; skip anything already answered.
- What triggered this review: cost pressure, a board efficiency push, a merger/acquisition, new leadership, a renewal-price shock, or a routine cycle?
- Scope: the full GTM stack, or one function's slice (marketing, sales, CS/post-sale)?
- Motion: B2B sales-led, PLG/hybrid, or B2C/e-commerce?
- Scale and stage: is RevOps one person wearing every hat, or is there formal IT, procurement, and FinOps? (This sizes the review's rigor - see Ground Rules on re-ranking.)
- Who holds the final call on stack decisions - RevOps, shared with IT, a finance gate? Is the FinOps/IT/procurement split defined at all? (Only ~31% of orgs have a clear one - Zylo 2026.)
- Can SaaS cost be allocated per business unit today? (Without allocation, chargeback-style governance is off the table - don't design for it.)
- Which inventory sources exist: a contract repository, AP/expense exports, SSO logs, network/CASB telemetry, a SaaS-management platform?
- Does a renewal calendar with notice windows exist, or must this review build one?
- What usage evidence is available: feature-depth telemetry, per-vendor admin reports, or nothing beyond login counts?
- By what date must decisions land - a budget cycle, a board date, no fixed date? (A hard date promotes tools with imminent notice windows to the front and deletes long migrations from this cycle.)
- One-off savings, or a compounding operating model? (One-off promotes downgrades and cuts; compounding promotes the intake gate, renewal-triggered cadence, and governance.)
- Effort ceiling: analyst hours only, admin/IT capacity, engineering capacity, or a cross-functional mandate? (Analyst-only deletes consolidation migrations and internal build from the register; a mandate is what makes consolidation rankable at all.)
## Brainstorming the Review Design
Enter explicit brainstorming after the Interview, before any inventory or scoring work. Do not jump to a deliverable.
1. Map the workflows first, tools second: list the revenue workflows the stack must serve (capture, routing, qualification, deal management, quote/sign, billing, onboarding, renewal, expansion - trimmed to the user's motion). A tool serving no workflow on the map is already a finding.
2. Propose 2-3 candidate review designs with trade-offs. Efficiency, measured as decisions produced per review hour: one-time portfolio sweep with renewal overlay > renewal-window rolling review > practice-level benchmark first.
- **One-time portfolio sweep with renewal overlay** - full scoring pass now, every action queued to its window; fastest complete picture, some verdicts wait months for a lever.
- **Renewal-window rolling review** - verdicts produced as each notice window approaches; lowest wasted work, slowest full-portfolio picture.
- **Practice-level benchmark first** - score how the stack is run (Do More / Do Less / Start / Stop, Frans Riemersma's instrument) before scoring tools; answers a different question than the other two, which is why it ranks last on tool decisions.
3. Recommend one design and say which Interview answer drove it. Default to the sweep with overlay for a first cycle; promote the rolling review once a full renewal calendar exists and the mandate is standing rather than one-off. The order starves the practice-level benchmark - promote it to first when the mandate covers how the stack is run, not only what it costs.
4. Validate the deliverable plan section by section (inventory → calendar → overlap map → verdicts → governance) and get approval before building anything.
## Workflow
1. Run the Interview; fix scope, motion, decision rights, and the three efficiency answers (deadline, one-off vs compounding, effort ceiling).
2. Run Brainstorming the Review Design; get the design approved.
3. Build the inventory (see Inventory below); flag every shadow-discovered tool and run the dedicated AI-tool discovery pass.
4. Build or verify the renewal calendar - renewal date, notice window, auto-renew flag, action deadline per tool. Method and worked example in [references/renewal-calendar-audit-example.md](references/renewal-calendar-audit-example.md).
5. Map functional overlap at the function level, never the vendor level; tag each tool system-of-record vs system-of-engagement - tools that write to the record system are held to a stricter standard than tools that only read.
6. Gather usage evidence per the Usage Evidence ranking - as a diagnostic input, never as the verdict.
7. Score every tool with TIME (Tolerate / Invest / Migrate / Eliminate - Gartner); overlay the renewal calendar on every verdict. Worked pass in [references/time-scoring-worked-example.md](references/time-scoring-worked-example.md). TIME's known blind spot is exactly SaaS contract timing, which is why the overlay is mandatory.
8. At any category served by a thin, commoditized, or integration-hostile point solution, run a buy-vs-build checkpoint: internal GTM-engineering build capacity is re-entering this calculation (GTM-engineering postings grew ~205% YoY - Bloomberry; Brinker calls the custom-app long tail the "hypertail"). State the trend; never invent a capability threshold.
9. Build the verdict register ranked by the Verdict Execution Order below, re-ranked against the Interview's deadline, one-off-vs-compounding, and effort-ceiling answers. Delete an option the constraints rule out and say which constraint deleted it - never park it at the bottom.
10. Run the consolidation risk pass: a named risk owner per failure mode in the table below, and a preserved-alternative vendor per consolidation verdict.
11. Attach governance: intake gate (required fields: business justification, intended users, data types, expected duration; automated duplicate-check against the tool registry; 3-5 business day approval SLA - a slow gate creates the shadow IT it exists to prevent) and renewal-to-recertification linkage (recertify access, ownership, and need before each auto-renewal fires).
12. Emit the deliverable one section at a time for user validation, per the approved design.
13. Store the verdict register, renewal calendar, and governance decisions in persistent memory when the harness offers it, so the next cycle starts from them; otherwise put all three in the report's final section for the user to carry forward.
## Inventory
The working inventory is the union of four discovery channels - each one alone undercounts.
- Value (tools surfaced that no other channel sees): network/CASB telemetry > AP/expense export > SSO logs > contract repository - the repository, by construction, only holds what already cleared procurement.
- Efficiency: AP/expense export > contract repository > SSO logs > network/CASB telemetry.
- Effort: contract repository == AP/expense export (finance already holds both) < SSO log pull < network telemetry.
- Default rung: run the first three; the order starves network telemetry - the only channel that sees unsanctioned AI tools, the largest blind spot in most stacks (60% of IT leaders lack visibility into generative-AI tools in use; 77% found AI running without IT's awareness - Zylo 2026). Promote it whenever AI shadow usage is suspected or at enterprise scale.
- Interview finance about expense-channel purchases specifically: expense-based SaaS buying is growing fast while fewer people do it - the buyers to interview are concentrated, not spread thin.
## Usage Evidence
Usage is a diagnostic input to the value conversation, never the cutoff itself.
- Value as cut evidence: feature-depth telemetry > proxy signals (records written per user, API call volume, workflows terminating in the tool) > login counts.
- Effort: login counts (near-zero) < proxy signals (hours per tool) < feature-depth telemetry (needs a management platform or per-vendor admin work).
- Efficiency: proxy signals > login counts > feature-depth telemetry.
- Default rung: screen with login counts, decide with proxy signals. The order starves feature-depth telemetry - the only tier that catches a nightly automated sync masquerading as adoption; promote it when a SaaS-management platform is already deployed, or whenever a high-spend verdict hangs on usage.
- No tier justifies a cut alone: every usage-based flag still needs the per-tool business-value check from Ground Rules.
## Scoring
- Efficiency: function-overlap map > TIME scoring > practice-level benchmark.
- These answer different questions:
- Overlap map: "where are the duplicates"
- TIME scoring: "what do we do with each tool"
- Practice-level benchmark: "are we running the stack well"
- Default: overlap map plus TIME. Add the practice-level benchmark when the mandate covers process maturity, not only spend.
- TIME's track record is real (Gartner documents a US Air Force application across a mission IT portfolio, with governance and a dry run) - cite it as the credible named framework, and always pair it with the renewal overlay it lacks.
## Verdict Execution Order
- Value (spend plus integration surface removed): platform consolidation > duplicate elimination > point-for-point replacement == seat/tier downgrade.
- Effort: seat/tier downgrade < duplicate elimination < point-for-point replacement < platform consolidation < internal build (a standing engineering commitment, not a project).
- Efficiency: seat/tier downgrade > duplicate elimination > point-for-point replacement > platform consolidation > internal build.
- The == tie: a replacement swaps like for like and a downgrade trims spend only - both leave the stack's shape and integration surface intact, which is what the value axis measures.
- Default rung: first cycle executes downgrades and duplicate eliminations, timed to notice windows. The order starves platform consolidation - the highest long-run value option loses every efficiency round; promote it when integration failures are a measured defect source, an alternative vendor stays live, and the suite capability being consolidated onto ships today. A consolidation premised on the suite's AI roadmap is a bet on a roadmap, not a purchase (Gartner, mid-2025, n=413 martech leaders: 45% of those running AI agents say vendor agent capabilities miss promised performance).
- Internal build enters only through the buy-vs-build checkpoint in the Workflow, and only where engineering capacity exists.
## Cadence
- Value: renewal-triggered per-tool review > annual portfolio synthesis > fixed calendar sweep.
- Effort: fixed calendar sweep (one block of hours) < annual synthesis < renewal-triggered review (a standing trigger per contract, not a project).
- Renewal-triggered wins mechanically: the average org manages ~211 SaaS renewals a year and renewals carry ~87% of software spend (Zylo 2026) - a calendar review landing after a notice window closes produces analysis with no lever attached.
- Default rung: renewal-triggered per tool, plus one annual portfolio synthesis, since per-renewal reviews never show portfolio-level patterns (category creep, spend-per-workflow drift). The order starves that synthesis - every individual renewal feels more urgent than it does - so protect it with a fixed date. Delete the fixed calendar sweep once every contract has a window; it survives only as the bridge used while the calendar is still being built.
- Name an accountable owner per tool - decentralized committee buying means no one's job is on the line for a bad purchase (Jeremey Donovan).
## Output Shape
```
STACK RATIONALIZATION REVIEW - <scope>, <date>
Workflow map : revenue workflows served; tools mapped to each; orphan tools flagged
Inventory : tool | function | owner | annual cost | seats | discovery channel | shadow flag
Renewal calendar : tool | renewal date | notice window | auto-renew | action deadline
Overlap map : function-level duplicates; system-of-record vs system-of-engagement tags
Verdict register : rank | tool | TIME verdict | value evidence | usage (diagnostic) |
action + window | risk owner
(ranking basis and any deleted option stated above the register)
Consolidation risk: named owner per failure mode; preserved alternative per consolidation
Governance : intake gate fields + SLA; renewal-recertification link; re-sprawl metric
Next cycle : upcoming notice windows; re-review triggers; decisions stored/carried
```
## Pass Threshold
- Every in-scope tool carries an owner, a function, a TIME verdict, and a renewal date with notice window; unknowns are marked "unconfirmed", never left blank.
- No Eliminate or downgrade verdict rests on utilization alone; each carries a one-line business-value justification.
- Every consolidation verdict names the preserved alternative vendor and a risk owner per failure mode.
- Every verdict has an action deadline inside a live notice window, or is explicitly queued to the next one.
Iterate until all four hold. A verdict queued to a future window with a date attached is a passing outcome; a verdict with no window is not.
## Common Failure Modes
| Defect | Consequence | Fix |
| ------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ |
| Cutting by utilization percentage alone | Kills low-seat tools covering critical edge cases | Business-value check per tool; "do nothing" and enablement stay on the verdict menu |
| Renewal-window blindness | Auto-renew locks in another term at a higher rate | Action deadline = notice-window open, on every verdict; start negotiations well before the window |
| Full consolidation with no live alternative | Pricing power transfers to the suite vendor permanently | Name and keep evaluating an alternative per consolidation verdict |
| Adoption collapse post-consolidation | The project fails on behavior, not data (the direction is consistent across sources; the circulating failure percentages are unverifiable) | Adoption owner, enablement plan, and champion transition named before migration |
| Feature-parity gap surfaces post-migration | An undocumented workflow breaks after cutover | Workflow-level parity walkthrough with the tool's heaviest users before the verdict finalizes |
| Reporting discontinuity | Year-over-year comparison breaks while leadership scrutinizes the project's own ROI | Migrate the measurement model with the records; see mbfinotti/revops-skills@revenue-reporting |
| Champion loss | The person who made the cut tool work leaves the workflow orphaned | Name a transition owner for every Eliminate/Migrate verdict |
| Re-sprawl between cycles | The next review starts from scratch | Intake gate with automated duplicate-check + renewal-recertification link, installed as part of this deliverable |
| Single-platform mandate over-reaches | Mandating everything live inside one suite and ripping out specialized tools reads clean on paper; when a capability like conversation intelligence or forecasting quality visibly drops, reps route around the mandate and rebuild a shadow stack, so the org pays for the suite and the shadow stack both | Scope the mandate to what the suite genuinely covers at parity; keep a named specialized tool where the suite's version is materially worse |
| Logic and platform change on the same day | Changing scoring or routing logic at the same moment as the platform migration forces reps to relearn judgment while learning a new tool, and adoption rarely survives both at once | Freeze process logic during the cutover window; if the schema looks the same after migration, the org changed tools, not operations - change logic separately, before or after |
## KPIs
- Track per cycle: spend per workflow served (trend), redundant-function count (trend), share of renewals reviewed before their notice window opened (target near-100%), and net new tools entering outside the intake gate (re-sprawl rate, target near-zero).
- Honesty checks: realized savings vs the register's projections, and surviving-tool adoption after each consolidation - if adoption drops, the consolidation failed regardless of the spend line.
- Never report "tools cut" as the success metric - it rewards cutting count instead of redundancy, the exact inversion of the goal.
## Invocation Examples
- "We're at something like 40 GTM tools and finance wants a rationalization plan before budget season."
- "Our CRO thinks half the sales stack overlaps - run a stack review and tell us what to consolidate or cut."
- "Renewals keep auto-firing before anyone looks at the tool - set up a stack review that runs on the renewal calendar."
## Reference
- Read [references/benchmarks-and-figure-grading.md](references/benchmarks-and-figure-grading.md) before citing any figure - the sourced benchmark set with editions, the ranked source list, and the fabricated-statistic blocklist.
- Read [references/time-scoring-worked-example.md](references/time-scoring-worked-example.md) when scoring - a worked TIME pass over a sample GTM stack, with the renewal overlay and a negative example (a utilization-only cut done wrong).
- Read [references/renewal-calendar-audit-example.md](references/renewal-calendar-audit-example.md) when building the calendar - schema, action-deadline arithmetic, worked mini-calendar, and the wasted-verdict failure case.
- See `mbfinotti/revops-skills@crm-data-governance` for field ownership and source-of-truth policy inside the systems this review keeps.
- See `mbfinotti/revops-skills@revenue-data-governance-strategy` for the cross-system ownership map that any consolidation redraw must respect.
- See `mbfinotti/revops-skills@revenue-leakage` when records or dollars vanish in one funnel - a leak traced to a tool defect feeds this review; this review does not trace leaks.