Is a Bad Tech Stack Costing Your Firm?

Using this deliberate, focused approach can help your firm build a tech ecosystem where data flows, collaboration improves, and client work scales smoothly. By Ian Vacin | Digital Exclusive – 2025

 

It’s a story that probably sounds familiar to a lot of firm leaders: You’ve invested in all kinds of technology to help your firm become more efficient—new software, new portals, and new artificial intelligence (AI) tools—but things somehow feel less efficient than they did before. Data is harder to see and costs are rising; clients are growing frustrated with repetitive requests and confused by multiple portals; and staff members are spending hours chasing information, reentering data, and fixing mistakes, leaving less time for clients and strategic work.

Research shows that the smallest firms have about nine pieces of technology, the largest firms have about 18, and the industry average falls in the middle around 14. But how do all those pieces fit together in practice? In many cases, they don’t—and those bad tech stacks are bogging firms down.

Of course, the answer isn’t to give up on technology—or worse, just keep adding new tools. Instead, firms should take a deliberate and focused approach to their tech ecosystem needs, one where data flows, collaboration improves, and client work scales smoothly. Here are two steps that can successfully get your firm’s tech stack to where it needs to be.

1. Evaluate Uncoordinated Technology

As firms grow to encompass more staff, clients, and services, they inevitably end up with more systems and tools to manage it all. For instance, in my work, I’ve seen a medium-sized firm that had eight portals for clients to navigate through—almost one for every piece of tech in the firm. The result? Their communication and integration between systems suffered, leaving their clients confused and staff frustrated. If their goal was to use technology to make things easier and more efficient, they did neither.

A good way for any firm to start tackling this kind of problem is to better define and understand the various components of its tech stack by dividing them into these three tiers:

• Core back-office features: These are essential tools that enable your firm to manage its work, such as workflow and project management platforms, data analytics and reporting solutions, and team collaboration applications.
• Front-office and customer relationship management components: These are the components that’ll help with client communications and engagement.
• Revenue generating tools: These tools should specifically relate to the firm’s underlying service foci, such as taxes or client accounting services.

By categorizing your tools and systems in this three-tier approach, you can identify which ones fulfill each role and spot any areas of overlap by asking questions like:

• Are all these systems interacting properly and efficiently?
• Are there redundancies?
• Can anything be eliminated or streamlined to make things easier for clients and staff?

2. Simplify Your Stack

Now that you have a clearer picture of your firm’s tech needs and capabilities, the next step is realigning your tech stack to focus only on the elements and solutions that address key priorities. That means having a tech selection process that involves:

• Prioritizing the infrastructure: Focus on your top strategic priorities and margin opportunities, addressing the biggest workflow issues first.
• Reviewing the tech options for your top priorities: Keep in mind that any new app or tool will need to be integrated with the current systems the firm is using.
• Evaluating vendors: Take time to understand what differentiates one vendor to the next and which ones might be worth shortlisting.
• Deciding what belongs in the stack: Focus on three to five criteria that are most important to your team, such as workflow fit, scalability, ease of use, and price.
• Assigning a weight to each chosen characteristic: This process helps develop an equation for your qualitative analysis.
• Scoring the options: Use a simple 1 (poor) to 5 (excellent) scale for each option based on your chosen criteria.
• Testing the winner: Sign up for a free trial, watch a product demo, or upload your data to try it out for a few weeks. Ask yourself, does the tech product live up to expectations? Will it solve the identified problems? If not, shift to your second-place winner and repeat the process.

Overall, most firms don’t have too little tech—they have too little tech integration. As a result, many end up stuck with the same bloated tech stack they’ve always had. That’s because change (and change management) is hard. It’s always easier to add a new piece of tech than to look under the hood and decide it’s time to rip out some of the older stuff that’s holding you back.

If your firm is serious about real efficiency, ask yourself these key questions: What’s costing you the most? What’s disrupting your workflow? What’s confounding your staff? What’s alienating your clients? In doing so, you can find the answers to the overlaps, gaps, and problem areas in your current tech stack. With time, your workflow efficiency will improve, your clients and staff will thank you, and your firm’s growth trajectory will start to look more like what you hoped it would.

Ian Vacin is the co-founder and chief partnerships officer at Karbon, a maker of AI-driven accounting practice management software, and the co-author of “Scale With Purpose: The Service Entrepreneur's Guide to Intentional Growth.”

Related Content:

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• What You Need in a CAS Tech Stack: Combining the right software and applications can help your CAS practice produce higher earnings and bring added value to your clients.