how-to

Our Team Uses Twelve Tools and Nothing Talks to Each Other: How to Unify a GTM Stack

The Orbitable Team·AI & GTM·20 Oct 2026·8 min read

The fix for twelve tools that do not talk to each other is rarely a thirteenth tool that promises to replace them all. It is deciding which one system holds the truth for each kind of record, connecting the rest to it in one direction, and retiring whatever is left without a job.

That is dull work, which is why most teams skip it and buy a platform instead. This guide walks through the dull version step by step, then covers where a unified GTM platform helps and where it does not.

Why twelve tools stop talking to each other

Nobody sets out to build a twelve-tool stack. It accretes. Marketing buys an email tool, sales buys a sequencer, RevOps adds an enrichment service, and a founder signs up for a research tool on a free trial and forgets to cancel it. Each purchase made sense on the day.

The breakage comes from three places:

Two systems both think they own the same record. The CRM and the sequencer each hold a contact's job title, and they disagree.
Integrations built for the purchase, not for the workflow. A native connector syncs some fields one way, nobody wrote down which, and the person who set it up has left.
Context that lives in no system at all. Your ICP is in a slide deck, your positioning is in a Notion page and your competitor notes are in a Slack thread. No tool can share what was never put anywhere.

The third is the one platforms are worst at fixing and the one that does the most damage, because every new hire, agency and AI tool starts from zero.

Step 1: List every tool and the job it actually does

Open a spreadsheet with one row per tool. For each, record:

Column	What to record
Tool	Product name and plan
Owner	One named person, not a team
Job	The single job it does, as a verb phrase ("sends cold email", "stores deals")
Records it creates	Contacts, companies, deals, activities, content, or none
Records it reads	And where it reads them from
Monthly cost	Including seats nobody uses
Last used	By whom, from the tool's own login data where you can get it

Two things usually fall out. Some tools have no owner, and some share a job with another tool. A tool with no owner is the first candidate to cut. Two tools doing the same job is the second.

Step 2: Pick one system of record per object

For each type of record, pick exactly one home. Everything else reads from it, or writes to it through a route you have defined.

Object	Usual system of record	Common mistake
Companies and contacts	CRM	Letting the enrichment tool or sequencer become a second database
Deals and pipeline	CRM	Tracking deal stage in a spreadsheet "for now"
Email and sequence activity	The sending tool, logged back to the CRM	Logging in both directions and creating duplicates
Content and campaigns	Your marketing platform or a shared drive	Drafts living in personal documents
Strategy context (ICP, positioning, competitors, voice)	Usually nowhere	Assuming it does not need a home

The last row is the honest one. Most teams have a home for contacts and none for the thinking that decides who to contact and what to say to them. A lot of "nothing talks to each other" pain starts there.

Step 3: Draw the data flows, one direction at a time

For every connection between two tools, write down which way the data flows and which fields move. A two-way sync should be a deliberate decision with a named owner, not a default someone ticked during setup.

One rule keeps this sane: data flows towards the system of record. Enrichment writes into the CRM. The sequencer reads contacts from the CRM and writes activity back. Nothing writes contacts into the sequencer directly.

If two tools can only be connected through a fragile chain of middleware that one person understands, treat that as a sign one of them should go.

Step 4: Retire tools with no job

Now cut. For each tool, ask whether its job is covered by something you are keeping. If it is, set a date, export the data and switch it off. Be strict about the export: move what you might need into the system of record, not into another folder nobody opens.

Expect pushback from whoever uses each tool every day. Ask them what they would lose and write the answer down. Sometimes it reveals a real job you missed. More often it is a habit.

Step 5: Give strategy context a home

This is the step most consolidation projects leave out. Write down, in one place that every person and tool can read:

Your ICP, with firmographic criteria and disqualifiers
The buying committee you usually sell to, by role
Your positioning and the three or four messages that matter most
Your main competitors, and how you win and lose against each
Your brand voice, with examples of good and bad

A shared document is fine to start. The test is whether a new hire, an agency or an AI agent could produce usable work from it without a meeting.

Step 6: Migrate in slices, not in one weekend

If you are moving to a new platform, move one object and one team at a time. Migrate companies and contacts first and check deduplication. Then deals. Then activity history, if you genuinely need it. Keep the old tool read-only for a set period rather than deleting it on day one.

Check each slice with counts rather than impressions: the number of companies before and after, the number of open deals and their total value before and after. If the numbers do not reconcile, stop and find out why before you move the next slice.

Where a unified GTM platform helps, and where it does not

A platform can remove the need for some tools, and it can give strategy context the home it never had. It cannot fix an undefined system of record, or a team that never agreed who owns what.

A platform helps when	A platform will not help when
Several tools exist only because nobody had time to do the work they automate	Your CRM data is unreliable and nobody owns fixing it
Strategy context is scattered and every piece of work starts from scratch	You have not agreed who owns each object
You want research, content and sales preparation drawn from the same context	You need a contact database and the platform does not supply one
It connects natively to the CRM you already run	It only reaches your CRM through middleware you will have to maintain

Where Orbitable fits in a consolidation

Orbitable is not a CRM and not a contact database, so it replaces neither. It sits alongside them. It builds a shared world for your business from your URL, your research and the documents you upload, covering ICP, voice, products and competitors. Its 50 specialist agents draw on that same world for research, strategy, content, sales preparation and customer-growth work, so the context you wrote down in step 5 is the context every piece of work starts from.

It connects natively to HubSpot, Attio, Slack, Apollo.io and Searchable, with LinkedIn connected separately for social publishing. Each connection belongs to one world, so an agency can hold a separate HubSpot account per client. Make.com, signed webhooks and an MCP server cover other routes, and the Team plan and above add an external API. There is no native Salesforce connector today, so a Salesforce-first team would be relying on Make.com or webhooks. If that is your stack, weigh it before you start.

The realistic job for Orbitable in a twelve-tool stack is to replace the documents and ad hoc tools that exist only to hold or re-create strategy context, and to do the research and drafting work that never had an owner. The CRM stays where it is.

FAQ

How do we unify fragmented GTM tools into one platform?

List every tool, its owner and the one job it does, then pick a single system of record for each type of record. Connect the rest so data flows towards that system, retire any tool without a job, and only then decide whether a platform should replace what is left.

Can I integrate my existing tools with a new GTM platform?

Usually, but check the specific connectors before you buy rather than after. Ask which fields sync, in which direction, and whether the vendor supports your CRM natively or only through middleware such as Make.com or webhooks.

How do I migrate GTM data to a new platform without losing anything?

Migrate one object at a time, starting with companies and contacts, and reconcile record counts before and after each step. Keep the old tool read-only for a set period instead of deleting it as soon as the import finishes.

What should be the system of record for GTM data?

For companies, contacts and deals it is almost always the CRM. Strategy context such as ICP, positioning and competitor notes also needs one named home, which many teams never give it.

Does Orbitable replace our CRM?

No. Orbitable sits alongside a CRM rather than replacing it. It connects natively to HubSpot and Attio, and reaches other systems through Make.com, signed webhooks or its MCP server.