Somewhere in your marketing technology stack, there's a tool that nobody uses. Not "underused." Not "we use it for one thing." Nobody uses it. The login credentials have been lost. The integration was never completed. The person who championed the purchase left the company eight months ago. The annual renewal went through automatically because finance didn't flag it and nobody in marketing remembered to cancel it. That tool is the most expensive thing in your stack - not beca

AI is already being pushed into Marketing Operations by companies that, in some cases, do not seem to fully understand the operational environment they are entering. And that should make marketing leaders pause.

Next week I’ll be attending The MarTech Summit Madrid, taking place on 19 May 2026 at VP Plaza España Design. And, judging by the agenda, it looks like exactly the kind of event Marketing Operations needs right now: Less theoretical hand-waving, more practical conversation about how marketing teams are actually dealing with AI, data, customer experience, automation, sales alignment, and trust.

Every few years, a Marketing Ops team looks at its technology stack and has the same realisation you get when you open the “misc” kitchen drawer. Nothing in there is individually a bad idea. It’s just… a lot. Half of it does the same job. Some of it hasn’t been used since the last merger. One item is only kept because a former colleague swore it was “mission critical”, and nobody’s brave enough to ask what it actually does. That’s your MarTech stack.

There is a persistent belief that somewhere out there exists the perfect MarTech stack. The right combination of platforms. The right integrations. The right configuration. Once it is all in place, everything will finally click. Reporting will make sense. Campaigns will flow effortlessly. Data will be clean. Teams will move faster. Arguments will disappear.

MarTech is not the problem. It never was. It is a mirror. It reflects the choices, compromises, and assumptions baked into your operating model. If you do not like what you see, replacing the mirror will not help. Fix how you operate, and the stack will suddenly feel a lot less broken.

If you haven’t run a MarTech audit in over a year, you’re haemorrhaging money. You’re handing over 25% of your entire marketing budget to stuff that’s mostly idle.

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Undertaking a marketing technology (MarTech) audit can offer several significant advantages for a large company.

Basically put, a MarTech audit is a comprehensive evaluation of all the marketing technologies, platforms, and tools that a company uses.