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Template: Quarterly Tech Stack Review Agenda for Operations Leaders

UUnknown

2026-02-10

9 min read

A ready-to-use agenda and scoring template to run a decision-focused quarterly tech stack review for ops leaders—score tools, cut overlap, and save costs.

Stop Losing Time and Budget to Tool Sprawl: a ready-to-use agenda and scoring template for your next quarterly review

If your ops team juggles a dozen paid subscriptions, duplicate workflows, and a backlog of integration tickets—this agenda is for you. Use it to run a focused, evidence-driven quarterly tech stack review that surfaces unused tools, clarifies owner accountability, and produces actionable next steps (conserve cash, consolidate, or sunset).

Below you’ll find a complete meeting agenda, a practical tool-scoring template, a rubric you can copy into Notion/Asana/Google Sheets, plus checklists for pre-reads and follow-up. This is built for operations leaders who need decisions, not opinions.

Why a quarterly tech stack review matters in 2026

In late 2025 and early 2026 the landscape changed: an explosion of AI point tools, more vendors offering full-suite platforms, and the rise of usage-based and outcome-based pricing. That means two simultaneous pressures for ops leaders:

New entrants and frequent pilots increase tool churn and hidden costs (subscription + integration + training).
Vendors increasingly bundle features, so overlapping point tools are easier to replace by a single platform that improves integration and observability.

Most organizations now treat tool governance as part of operational risk management. The quarterly review is the operational governance loop that prevents “tech debt by subscription.” Recent industry coverage (e.g., MarTech on tool sprawl and platform consolidation analyses from 2025–2026) shows teams that adopt disciplined reviews reduce stack costs and onboarding time by double digits.

What this template helps you do (fast)

Run a 60–90 minute decision-focused meeting that surfaces facts, not opinions.
Score each tool on value, usage, overlap, cost-efficiency, and risk.
Produce immediate next steps: retain, consolidate, renegotiate, or sunset.
Create a repeatable cadence with owners, KPIs, and a lightweight audit trail.

Pre-meeting checklist (what to collect 7 days before)

Billing records for the last 12 months (SaaS expense by vendor).
SSO/Okta/Gateway for each tool and seat counts.
Usage metrics (DAU/MAU, key feature events, last login distribution) from product analytics or vendor dashboards.
Integration map (which tools push/pull data to others) — export from your integration platform or draw a simple diagram.
Support & ticket volume related to each tool (Jira, Zendesk tags).
License commitments & renewal dates (60/90/180 days visibility).
Short stakeholder survey (1–3 question pulse) sent to 10–15 power users per tool.

Assign a data collector (Ops Analyst) and distribute the pre-read package 48–72 hours before the meeting.

Suggested 90-minute meeting agenda (copyable)

0–5 min — Opening & desired outcome
Leader states the objective: reduce cost, remove duplicates, and name owners. Confirm decisions you will make in this session (e.g., list of candidate tools to sunset or negotiate).
5–15 min — Stack health snapshot
Ops Analyst runs a one-slide summary: total annual SaaS spend, number of active tools, monthly churn additions, number of integrations, and top 5 high-usage tools.
15–45 min — Tool scoring review (10–12 tools)
For each tool present 3 facts (cost, active users, primary workflow supported) plus the scoring row from the template. Focus discussion on tools in the gray zone (net score between 9–14 on a 5-metrics scale).
45–60 min — Overlap & integration conflicts
Review integration map and identify direct overlaps (e.g., two CRMs, two email automation tools, multiple AI summarizers used for the same workflow). Tag candidates for consolidation.
60–80 min — Decision and action planning
For each candidate decide: Retain, Consolidate (with target platform), Negotiate (contract), or Sunset. Assign owners and deadlines. Estimate immediate savings or required effort.
80–90 min — Quick wins & next steps
Identify 1–2 quick wins (e.g., cancel duplicate tool, migrate one workflow) and schedule a 30-day follow-up.

Tool scoring template (copy this into Sheets or Notion)

Use a 1–5 scale (1 = poor/low, 5 = excellent/high). Add weights if you prefer (weigh Value and Usage higher).

Tool	Category	Annual Cost	Active Users	Value	Usage	Overlap	Integration Health	Risk	Net Score	Decision	Owner
Example CRM	CRM	$48,000	120	5	4	2	4	3	22	Retain	Head of Sales Ops
AI Email Assist	Comms	$6,000	15	3	2	4	3	4	16	Consider Sunset	Head of Ops

Scoring Rubric (recommended):

Value — How critical is the tool to a core revenue or ops workflow? (5 = mission-critical)
Usage — Active adoption: % of intended users who use it weekly/monthly. (5 = >75% weekly active)
Overlap — Degree of feature duplication with other tools. (5 = no overlap; 1 = complete duplication)
Integration Health — Reliability of data flows and API connections. (5 = fully integrated and stable)
Risk — Vendor risk (security, compliance, renewal exposure). (5 = low risk; see FedRAMP & compliance guidance for public sector considerations)

Net Score = sum(Value + Usage + Overlap + Integration Health + Risk). Highest scores indicate strong candidates to keep. Set thresholds: >20 = retain; 15–20 = evaluate for consolidation; <15 = candidate for sunsetting.

Example scoring logic and recommended decision rules

If Net Score > 20 and Cost per Active User < 12 months of value → Retain.
If Net Score 15–20 and Overlap > 3 → Evaluate for consolidation (map equivalent features and migration effort).
If Net Score < 15 and Usage < 3 → Sunset (pilot users have low adoption; schedule deprovisioning in 30–60 days).
If Risk <=2 (high risk) but Value >=4 → Create mitigation plan and negotiate SLAs before the next renewal.

How to collect reliable usage metrics (sources and queries)

Good decisions need good data. Here are fast sources to pull objective usage metrics:

SSO logs (Okta, Azure AD): extract last-login and app assignment counts.
Billing exports (Stripe, SAP Concur, procurement): map spend to cost center and renewal dates.
Vendor dashboards: export DAU/MAU when available and key feature event counts.
Integration platform data (Workato, Zapier logs): count successful runs and failures per tool.
Support tickets tagged by tool: number of tickets per month, average resolution time.
User pulse (Typeform/Google Forms): 1–2 question adoption survey e.g., "Which tool do you use for X workflow?"

Practical tip: automate the SSO and billing extracts into a quarterly report so the Ops Analyst only needs to refresh the CSV before each meeting. If you need help operationalizing the extracts or staffing the role, consider guidance on hiring data engineers and building extraction kits.

Common outcomes and how to act on them

Immediate cancellation — Low usage, non-critical, and no contractual penalties. Cancel and reclaim seats. Communicate deprovision plan to impacted users.
Consolidation project — Build a small migration plan (pilot, data export, training) and estimate resource hours. Assign a PM and timeline (30–90 days depending on complexity). If a migration has compliance implications, follow a formal migration plan.
Renegotiate — Use usage evidence to reduce seats or move to a usage-based plan. Combine with a consolidation roadmap to strengthen negotiation position.
Retain but optimize — Keep the tool but implement training, champions, or automations to increase value (e.g., templates, role-specific onboarding).
Risk mitigation — If a critical tool has security or compliance risk, create an urgent remediation plan with the vendor and legal teams; the security checklist for AI tooling is a useful reference for AI-specific controls.

Post-meeting follow-up template (use in Asana or Notion)

Create a project/board called "Quarterly Tech Stack Review — Q[Number] YYYY"
For each tool action item create a task with: Owner, Due Date (30/60/90 days), Acceptance Criteria (what indicates success), and Estimated Savings/Effort.
Schedule a 30-day checkpoint for quick wins and a 90-day review for consolidation outcomes.
Store the scoring spreadsheet and integration map in a shared folder (tag with quarter and year).

Advanced strategies for 2026 and beyond

As you run quarterly reviews, consider these higher-level tactics that are gaining traction in 2026:

Tool observability — Build dashboards that combine SSO, billing, and integration reliability metrics to detect tool rot early; see designing resilient operational dashboards for practical patterns.
Internal marketplace — Offer a curated internal app store with approved integrations and templates to reduce shadow IT.
SaaS bargaining calendar — Centralize renewals and negotiate across categories (bundle discounts if several products are on the same vendor platform).
AI governance — With more AI-powered point tools in 2026, include a governance check in each review for data privacy and hallucination risk; reference the AI desktop agent security checklist when defining controls.
Outcomes-based vendor relationships — Push for SLAs tied to adoption and uptime, not just feature availability.

Future prediction

By the end of 2026, expect more vendors to push modular suites that cover multiple categories. Ops leaders who can demonstrate regular, data-driven consolidation will be in a strong position to reduce total cost of ownership while improving reliability and onboarding speed.

"The biggest efficiency wins come not from buying better tools, but from choosing fewer, better-integrated ones." — Ops Strategy

Case example (concise)

Small B2B company, 60 employees: Q4 2025 review identified 14 tools; three were overlapping marketing automation and two separate knowledge base tools. They used the template above to score and decide: sunset two low-use AI tools, consolidate KBs into one platform, and renegotiate CRM seats. Result: 18% lower SaaS spend and a 30% drop in onboarding time for new hires by Q2 2026.

Checklist for your first run (copy this into your meeting invite)

Attach: billing summary, SSO export, integration map, and the scoring sheet.
Invitees: Ops lead (chair), Finance, IT/Security, Product, 1 power user per major function.
Duration: 60–90 minutes.
Deliverables: scored list, decisions per tool, owners & deadlines, projected savings.

Final practical tips

Keep the review focused on data. Opinions are useful, but decisions should tie back to the scoring sheet.
Limit deep-dive discussions to post-meeting working sessions—this meeting should make decisions, not solve migrations.
Automate data pulls where possible (SSO + billing) so the review cadence is low-effort; if you need to standardize extracts, see advice on building extraction kits.
Use the same scoring rubric each quarter to track trendlines.

Call to action

Ready to run your quarterly review? Download the editable scoring spreadsheet, Notion template, and a one-page slide deck you can use as the pre-read. Use these templates for your next review and reduce SaaS drag on your ops team. If you want a ready-made workshop, schedule a 60-minute facilitation with our ops coaches to run the first review and hand you the finished scorecard and migration plan.

Download the templates now and book a facilitation slot to make the next quarter count.

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