Making sense of the enterprise marketing technology (EMT) landscape can easily overwhelm even the most dedicated martech aficionado. 2018’s “Martech 5000” is astonishingly closer to 7,000 vendors, rendering vendor differentiation difficult and vendor selection a nightmare.

Forrester recommends starting this process by categorizing vendors in terms of systems of insight (SOI) and systems of engagement (SOE). But that’s just the beginning of your task. You’ll then need to understand how these SOI and SOE address modern marketing’s core responsibilities: customer understanding, brand strategy, and brand experience. And that’s where Forrester can provide a great deal of assistance. We’ve published a reference model to help you map these responsibilities to their supporting technologies.

And in an update to our latest report, “Complement Your EMSS With Best-Of-Breed Point Solutions,” we’ve further mapped 82 critical technologies into seven distinct categories, and we’ve cross-referenced them with Forrester Wave™ evaluations that provide deep dives into 52 of them. Look to the downloadable interactive spreadsheet to explore these technologies. You’ll be able to input the technologies in use at your firm to see how your EMT ecosystem stacks up.

EMSS Or Point Solutions?

But, you ask, what about enterprise marketing software suites (EMSS) versus best-of-breed point solutions? Can’t I just get everything I need from a marketing cloud portfolio? Sadly, no. Your EMSS of choice does indeed make an excellent starting point for assembling your unique EMT ecosystem, but no single vendor offers a 100% complete marketing solution. In that light, our interactive spreadsheet provides details on how seven EMSS vendors address our 82 technology requirements with native and third-party solutions. It also provides a list of the best-of-breed vendors for each of the 82 technologies. And, so you don’t get confused by all the acronyms: We’ve also included 82 detailed definitions to guide you.

It may all still sound a bit daunting, but this single spreadsheet will serve as a tremendous reference guide. It also auto-populates visually oriented diagrams — which coincidentally lend themselves to a quick copy/paste into slide form. And everything is color-coded to highlight whether a technology aligns with SOI or SOE, closing the loop to where we recommended you start in the first place.

Vendors, look to the tool for evaluating your native capabilities, partner networks, and the overall competitive landscape. End users, let the tool help you traverse the complex vendor landscape, rationalize your current investments, and address gaps in your EMT ecosystem.

If you have questions, feel free to send me an email or set up an inquiry. If you want to discuss your EMT ecosystem, we’re here to help.