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MarkdownAugust 17, 2026
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DOCUMENTStack Rationalization Lab › The rationalization case

Rationalization case, Northwind Logistics

Erwan·August 17, 2026

Example output. Northwind Logistics is an invented company used to show the shape and the level of detail of this deliverable. None of these figures are a benchmark.

01The case for rationalizing the Northwind stack

Today: 34 tools, $412,800 a year. Target: 11 tools, $318,400 a year.

02The target stack
ToolAbsorbsAnnual cost
Salesforcecustomer records, pipeline, forecast$118,000
Google Workspaceemail, calendar, file storage, external docs$43,200
HubSpot Marketingcampaign email, landing pages, marketing contact record$34,200
Zendeskall ticketing, both queues$31,000
ZoomInfocontact data$22,000
Notioninternal wiki, ops trackers, documentation$12,900
Clayenrichment and list building$9,600
Calendlyscheduling and inbound routing$9,800
Sigmareporting$18,000
1Passwordcredentials$8,400
Datadogmonitoring$11,300
03The money
Current annual spend: $412,800
Target annual spend: $318,400
Contract saving: $94,400 a year
One-off migration cost: not established. You did not give internal day rates, and the only external cost identified is a Zendesk plan change. Do not put a migration number in front of a CFO that you cannot source.
Time saving: real but not counted here. It is not a contract saving and it should not be in the headline figure.
04Migration order

Wave 1, weeks 1 to 3. Nothing depends on it. Marketo off. Calendly seat reduction. Dropbox partner folder to a Google shared drive. Must be true first: the Marketo notice letter is sent before 2026-08-31.

Wave 2, weeks 4 to 8. One decision blocks it. Intercom ticket queue into Zendesk. Confluence into Notion. Must be true first: someone decides whether in-app chat survives. If it does, budget a smaller Intercom plan and the saving drops by roughly $9,000.

Wave 3, weeks 9 to 12. Cleanup. Loom export then removal. Airtable trackers into Notion databases. Chili Piper off once Calendly routing is proven on live inbound for two weeks. Must be true first: Calendly routing has handled real inbound without a missed lead.

05Objections, and the answer
Tool removedWho objectsWhat they will sayThe answer
Marketonobody named"we might need that list"The list has not synced in 14 months and HubSpot has been the record since. Export it to CSV before the notice date and the objection has no object.
IntercomHead of Marketing"support tickets in Zendesk is fine, but in-app chat is how we catch churn signals"Correct, and that is why the proposal removes the ticket queue and asks a separate question about chat. The two are being decided separately on purpose.
Confluencethe 23 active users"everything is in there"Everything is in there for 23 people while 142 are already in Notion. Migration is a page export, and the alternative is paying $7,200 a year for a second wiki.
Chili PiperVP Sales"inbound routing is revenue, do not touch it"Agreed, which is why it is last and gated on two weeks of proven routing on Calendly. If routing misses a lead, this line does not happen.
DropboxIT"the freight partners have the link"One folder, two partners, one email each. The link changes, the folder does not.
06What this makes worse
Zendesk becomes a single point of failure for all customer contact. Today an outage leaves Intercom standing. After Wave 2 it does not. That is a real reduction in resilience and it is the honest price of the $24,000.
Notion carries the wiki, the trackers and the documentation. Concentration risk on one vendor, and the export path out of Notion is worse than the one out of Confluence.
Wave 3 puts inbound routing on a tool that has never carried it here. The two week proving period is the mitigation, and it is why this wave is last.
07What is missing
Internal day rates. Without them the migration cost stays unnumbered, and the payback period cannot be computed.
The Zendesk plan quote for the merged queues. The $31,000 above is the current plan plus the seats the Intercom queue needs, which is arithmetic, not a quote.
A decision owner for in-app chat. Wave 2 cannot start without one.
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