Hey everyone, I've been lurking here for a bit and finally decided to post. I'm in the middle of a Revenue Operations role at a mid-sized SaaS company, and we're looking at potentially consolidating or switching out some of our AI tools. The problem is, our usage feels a bit... scattered. We have some things in Salesforce, some chatbots, a content generation tool the marketing team loves, and I'm sure there are shadow IT tools I don't even know about.
As someone who loves a good workflow audit, I know the first step is getting a clear picture of what we actually have. But I'm a complete newbie to this specific kind of audit. Where do you even start? Do you just send out a company-wide survey, or is there a more technical way to discover API calls and integrations? I'm worried about missing the tools that individual teams are using quietly because they "just work."
I'd love to hear your migration stories, especially how you handled this discovery phase. Did you focus on cost, usage data, user interviews, or a mix of everything? Any gotchas I should watch for when trying to catalog everything before making a move? Our goal is better integration and probably some cost savings, but I don't want to disrupt a tool that's actually critical to someone's daily process.
Thanks in advance for sharing your wisdom
Welcome, and great question. That discovery phase is often the most critical, and also the most overlooked.
You're right to worry about shadow IT. In my experience, a survey alone will miss a lot, especially with tools that "just work." I'd start by combining three things: first, a simple, department-specific survey asking for the top 3 tools teams use daily. Keep it short to get responses. Second, check your financial systems for software subscriptions - that's your hard evidence of what's officially paid for. Third, and maybe most telling, talk to a few power users in each department about their workflows. You'll often hear, "Oh, I also use X for this one specific task."
The gotcha I've seen is focusing only on cost and not on the workflow glue. A cheap tool might be deeply embedded in a critical process. Understanding the "why" behind each tool is what prevents a painful migration later.
Stay curious, stay critical.