The martech assessment

Find out whether the platform is the problem before you replace it.

Usually it isn’t. I look at your business, marketing, customer experience, and technology strategies. Then I look at how your team works and at the platforms themselves. You get it in writing, with the evidence to put in front of your CEO or your board.

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What this answers

One question. How do you get your money’s worth from the martech you own, and which tools, if any, have to be replaced?

You get the answer with the evidence behind it, written down so somebody else can check it. Get that call wrong in either direction and it costs you six figures and a year.

How the work runs

Three parts, in a fixed order. Each one uses what the part before it found.

First, whether your business goals, marketing strategy, customer experience, and technology agree. Agreement on paper is easy to find. I look for it in what people do.

Second, how your team works, against how the org chart says it works. Who owns what, where work sits waiting, what people route around because the official way is too slow.

Third, what software you own, what’s switched on, what it costs, and what connects to what.

Out of those three comes the single problem that’s holding the rest back. Only one of the three is about software. When the stack can do the job and the team was never set up to run it, buying a new platform carries the problem across.

What you're risking

One fee, agreed in writing before I start. No hourly meter, no overage, and nothing owed for whatever you decide to do afterward.

If you don’t end up with a decision you can defend to your CEO or your board, I keep going until you do.

How the fee works

What it comes to depends on the scope of the work and how complex your stack is: how much there’s to assess, and how many people have to be brought into agreement. You get the number in writing before you commit a dollar.

Usually 30 to 90 days. Longer on a large or tangled stack, and you’ll hear that from me at the start rather than at the end.

What you get
Three things, in writing. Where your business goals, marketing strategy, customer experience, and technology agree, and where they only look that way. Findings that separate what your team can’t do yet from what the platform can’t do. The decision, with the evidence behind it: what to fix in the tools you own, and which of them, if any, to replace.
On the record

I evaluate technology decisions for a living, and I still hired Gene. He delivers, and he'll tell you the truth even when it means less work or revenue for him. The highest integrity I've worked with. I'd hire him again in a second.

Eric D. Brown, DSc, Fractional CTO/CIO and independent technology advisor
The detail, if you want it
What's not covered?

Implementation. Legacy systems already scheduled for retirement. Shadow IT, which tells me where the official way is failing, so I count it as evidence instead of assessing it as part of the stack.

A systems integrator can start building on Monday. I can’t, and I won’t pretend otherwise. What you get instead is an answer that’s allowed to be “change nothing.” A company with builders to keep busy can’t afford to give you that answer.

Who is this for?

Marketing organizations spending $1 million or more a year on martech, counting license fees, the people who run it, and what integration and data cost you.

If you already know what’s wrong and you need it built, hire a systems integrator. That’s the right call and this is the wrong practice.

Can I read the method instead of hiring you?
Yes. Every step of this assessment is published, in order, in my book Marketing Technology Transformation® . Buy it, run the assessment yourself, and never call me. I’d rather you did that than hired me on faith.
Why are there no case studies or client names?
You wouldn’t post your stack problems on LinkedIn where your competitors can read them. My clients feel the same way about theirs, and they hire me partly because I hold that line. What you can check instead is the method, published in full, and the people who went on the record about working with me.
Have you done this before?

The work, yes. I can’t name the clients or tell you what we found.

The framework as a published, named sequence is newer than the work inside it. Every part of it I’ve done many times over 30 years, from the vendor side, the consultancy side, the brand side, and the agency side. What’s new is that it’s written down in one order, which is why you can read the whole thing and decide for yourself whether the sequence makes sense.

Who does the work?
I do. You’re not paying for a bench of junior consultants. When an engagement needs more hands I can bring in specialists I’ve worked with for years, chosen for your problem. I write findings down as I go, so if I’m out for a week the work isn’t sitting in my head.
What if your findings contradict my systems integrator or my platform vendor?
That’s the reason to get an independent assessment. I hold no vendor certifications, no reseller agreements, no implementation quota, and no referral fees from anyone, so no finding is worth more to me than any other. If the evidence says your systems integrator built something only they can maintain, that’s what it says, and you take documented evidence into that conversation instead of a hunch.
Who is accountable if the assessment is wrong?
We both are, for different parts. I’m accountable for the expertise, the difficult questions, identifying the real constraint, and telling you the moment I think the engagement is at risk. You’re accountable for access to people and information, timely decisions, clearing internal obstacles, and acting on what we agree.
You assess, and then what?

I don’t build it, and I don’t want to. That’s what keeps the assessment honest.

If you want help with what comes next, I can help you pick the partner who builds it, manage that work, and help you hold them to what the assessment said you needed. Only if you ask. It’s never a condition of working with me.

I work for you, not the partner. Our agreement puts it in writing: no commission and no fee from any partner I recommend, ever. I put names in front of you and you make the decision. That work is scoped and priced on its own.

Handing over a document and disappearing is the consulting habit I built this practice against.

How fast can we start?
Usually a couple of weeks, depending on what’s on my desk. I take a small number of clients on purpose, so you’re not sitting in a queue.

An honest, confidential conversation about what's happening in your stack. If I don't think I can help, I'll tell you.

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