Your martech stack isn't broken. It's decaying.
Like every complex system, marketing technology naturally drifts toward disorder. Not because you failed, but because that's how systems work.
The Second Law of Martech: understand why your stack gets harder to maintain, and what you can do about it.
Free diagnostic · 25 questions · ~15 minutes
Sound familiar?
These aren't failures. They're symptoms of a predictable pattern.
More tools, less clarity
You've added capabilities, but now it's harder to know what data is where, what's connected to what, and who owns what.
Documentation is always stale
The system has evolved past what's written down. Only a few people know how things actually work.
Simple things take longer
What should be quick changes require navigating complex dependencies, workarounds, and tribal knowledge.
Key people are bottlenecks
A few team members hold critical context. When they're busy (or leave), things slow down or break.
The cost of change keeps rising
Every new request feels heavier. Not because the team isn't capable, but because the accumulated complexity makes everything harder.
This isn't bad management. This isn't bad technology choices. This is entropy.
The state of enterprise martech
Based on B2B martech complexity research, 2024-2025
The Framework
The Second Law of Martech
In thermodynamics, the second law says entropy always increases in closed systems. The same principle applies to your marketing technology.
"Without deliberate, ongoing energy input, every martech stack will naturally drift toward greater disorder, higher operational friction, and declining marginal value."
Energy is Required
Maintaining order requires constant, deliberate effort. Left alone, systems naturally decay.
Complexity Compounds
Every new tool, integration, and process adds potential disorder. The cost isn't linear. It multiplies.
Visibility Enables Action
You can't manage what you don't measure. Understanding where entropy accumulates reveals where to focus.
The entropy curve
As entropy increases, the cost to extract value from your stack rises, even when nothing appears "broken."
The stack still works. The cost to get value keeps rising. Each domain represents an area where entropy accumulates.
Stack Complexity
Tool sprawl, integration burden, redundant capabilities
Data Decay
Quality erosion, identity gaps, conflicting sources of truth
Process Exceptions
Workarounds, undocumented shortcuts, tribal knowledge
Human Load
Key person dependencies, context-switching, burnout risk
Governance Decay
Stale docs, unclear ownership, access control drift
Why another tool won't fix this
The instinct is to solve complexity with technology. But that's often what created the problem in the first place.
New tools add integrations
More connections, more data flows, more potential failure points.
New tools require learning
Another interface, another mental model, another set of documentation.
New tools don't remove old ones
Legacy systems rarely get fully deprecated. They linger, accumulating entropy.
What works instead
-
Visibility first: know where entropy is accumulating before acting
-
Process before platform: establish governance, then choose tools
-
Subtraction over addition: sometimes the answer is less, not more
Free Diagnostic
The Entropy Scan
25 questions. 15 minutes. A clear picture of where your martech stack is accumulating entropy, and where to focus first.
What it measures
- → Stack Complexity:Tool sprawl, integration burden, redundancy
- → Data Decay: Data quality erosion, identity resolution gaps
- → Process Exceptions:Workarounds, undocumented shortcuts
- → Human Load:Bottleneck dependence, context-switching burden
- → Governance Decay:Documentation staleness, ownership ambiguity
What you get
- → Entropy Profile:Your score across all five domains
- → Likely Failure Modes:Where problems will emerge first
- → Focus Areas:Where to intervene for highest impact
- → No sales pitch:Just useful diagnosis, no pressure
Email-only capture. No spam. No follow-up calls.
What happens next
The scan is just the beginning. Here's how the process works.
Complete the scan (~15 min)
Answer 25 questions about your current martech operations. Be honest. The results are only useful if they're accurate.
Get your entropy profile
Instantly see your scores across all five domains. Identify which areas are accumulating the most disorder.
Understand your failure modes
Learn which problems are likely to emerge based on your entropy profile, before they become crises.
Decide your next move
Use the insights however you want. Address it internally, share it with leadership, or reach out if you want expert guidance.
No obligation, no pressure. The scan provides value whether or not you ever work with us. This is a diagnostic, not a sales funnel.
About
Why I built this
After years of working in martech (implementing platforms, managing migrations, cleaning up messes), I started noticing patterns.
The same problems kept appearing in every organization, regardless of budget, team size, or technology choices. Smart people, reasonable decisions, and yet the stack always seemed to get harder to manage over time.
That's when I realized: this isn't a people problem. It's a systems problem. Entropy isn't a bug. It's a fundamental property of complex systems. Understanding that changed how I approach martech operations.
The Second Law of Martech is my attempt to share that understanding. Not as a sales pitch, but as a framework that helps teams see their challenges more clearly.
The Entropy Scan is the practical application: a way to measure where disorder is accumulating in your specific situation, so you can make informed decisions about where to focus your limited energy.
"Understanding entropy doesn't eliminate it. But it does tell you where to invest your energy, and where not to."
Your stack isn't failing. It's evolving toward disorder.
That's not a character flaw. It's physics. The question isn't whether entropy exists. It's whether you can see it clearly enough to manage it.
Take the Entropy Scan25 questions · 15 minutes · Free and no-pressure
Already know where your entropy is? Let's talk about what to do about it →