In 2026, taking a strategic approach to system integration is a must

You’re spoilt for choice

The image below illustrates the marketing technology landscape in 2026, showing hundreds, if not thousands, of solutions spanning advertising, content, social media, sales, data, and management. Compare it to the MartechMap from a few years ago, and you’ll notice things are looking a little crowded.

“Everything today is powered through services, networks, third-party solutions, and increasingly AI platforms,” says Mark Whiting, our Vice President, Technology. “What was once a website that could have been built by one or two developers is now a crazy organism with integrations to marketing automation, consent management, ecommerce inventory management, and beyond.”

Research backs it up. According to a 2022 study, large organizations use an average of 367 different software tools, and individuals use an average of 52 spreadsheets, software apps, and systems every single week.

With businesses presented with more choice than ever, there’s a need for strategic synchronization. It’s not enough to pick a platform, plug it in, and hope for the best. Instead, integration should be considered and thoughtful, so everything connects to the existing infrastructure in a way that powers things forward.

You’re probably leaning on AI  

We don’t need to tell you how much AI has disrupted the B2B landscape. Externally, it’s altered the way buyers research, businesses market, and sales funnels flow. Internally, businesses are using it to rewire infrastructures, optimize processes, and accelerate workflows.

That’s all well and good, but it puts the stability of your systems and the integrity of that foundation on the line.

Think of it this way. AI can only optimize what it has access to, and it’s only going to provide solutions that are as good as the data that goes into it. The less strategic your approach to system integration, the more blind spots AI will expose, the more wrong data it’s going to pull, and the more intricacies it’s going to miss. In some cases, the AI may break altogether.  

Your customer experience matters

B2B buyers have changed. They’re independent, fluent in digital tools, and want experiences that mirror what they’re used to in B2C. They don’t have time for friction, which is the direct result of poorly synced systems.

“You see it with restaurants all the time,” Mark says. “The website will throw you sideways to a third-party booking app. It’s not what you want but you have to go through it because the company doesn’t know how to do it itself, which makes the experience frustrating.”

Because you're not in control of that third-party experience, your customers could question the legitimacy of where they’ve been pushed to and whether it’s a scam and may even jump ship.

“A buyer should be able to go to a company, click, give a bit of information, and leave,” Mark says. “When you’re beholden to somebody else’s platform, and that platform has been designed to be as broad as possible, it’s like fitting a square peg into a round hole, and the experience can come off wrong.”  

Your team needs to feel empowered

With so much changing so fast, empowerment and agility are key. Keep in mind that 75% of B2B buyers now prefer a rep-free experience and are using an average of 10 channels across their purchasing journey. They expect seamlessness between those channels, so it’s important that your team stays agile and in control if and when it wants to make changes on the fly.

If it takes you longer than it should to publish a blog post, product uploads never work, or you need a developer every time you want to change something on your website, your team’s not as empowered as it should be.

Mark says those issues likely come down to your AX, or the admin experience. “If every question your marketing manager asks comes back with an answer that involves spending development money to make it happen, it probably means you have a systems problem.”

It's time to sync your systems

If you’re looking to take a strategic approach to system integration, or still not sure if you need to, Mark says the answer may lie in speaking to your customers.

“Especially in B2B, companies can be reluctant to reach out to customers or distributors in case they don’t give a glowing review or say it’s hard to deal with their business, but in order to solve these problems, you need to think like a customer. Those kinds of conversations inform the strategic work and help you understand how people are trying to find you, how they want to engage with you, and at what point you ask them for something like an email address in exchange for a PDF.”