The Tool Sprawl Report 2026
Marketing teams at fast-scaling software companies now run a median of 14 disconnected tools — and lose roughly 12 hours per person, per week stitching the data back together. An analysis of 286 client and trial accounts, set against the wider industry evidence.
tools in the median marketing stack — CRM, PM, invoicing, content, analytics
lost per person, per week, to manual reconciliation and tool-switching
of that spent moving numbers between tools to report pipeline attribution
tools consolidated, on average, by accounts that fully switched their workflow
Nobody plans to run 14 tools. It happens one purchase at a time.
Between January and May 2026 we reviewed 286 client and trial accounts on Landing Platform — B2B software companies with 30 to 120 employees, the bracket where a marketing leader typically owns a monthly budget of £20,000–£40,000. We looked at what was connected, what was actually used, and where the working week went.
The median account had wired together 14 separate tools to plan, run and report on marketing: a CRM, a separate project tool, invoicing software, content and design tools, and at least two analytics dashboards. None of it talked to the rest without manual effort. Staff spent six or more hours every week simply moving numbers between systems to report pipeline attribution to their boards, and about 12 hours a week each once you add in searching for information and re-orienting after every context switch.46
This is not a Landing-only phenomenon — it is the visible edge of a pattern the wider industry has been measuring for years. What follows is our data, placed honestly next to the independent research that corroborates it.
Figures drawn from Landing Platform's own account base. We say so plainly, and the full limitations are set out below. Where an external, independent study measures the same thing, it is cited inline.
The median team runs 14 tools across six jobs
Fourteen is the count inside one marketing team. Zoom out to the whole company and the number is an order of magnitude larger: the average organisation now runs 254 SaaS applications1, and IT-managed estates average well over a hundred.3 Sprawl is not an exception any more; it is the default operating condition.
More tools has not meant more capability used. Marketers report using just 33% of their martech stack's capabilities10, and roughly half of all provisioned SaaS licences go unused entirely13 — even as the number of martech products on the market climbed past 14,000.12 The stack grows; the value plateaus.
Fragmentation costs ~12 hours per person, every week
The cost of sprawl isn't the subscription line — it's the human hours spent making disconnected tools agree. In the accounts we reviewed, the median team member lost around 12 hours a week to it. Here is where those hours went.
Compounded over a year, duplicated work alone costs the average UK knowledge worker 227 hours — nearly six working weeks.9 For a marketing leader heading into a half-year of rising ad costs and boards demanding proof of pipeline, that is the difference between testing campaigns and formatting spreadsheets.
Teams pay more for the stack and use less of it
The trend that should worry any budget-holder: technology now absorbs 25.4% of the total marketing budget11, while the share of that technology actually used has fallen year after year.
Retiring the tools — not just adding another — is what returns the time
We are candid about the mechanism: the savings come from teams actually retiring the old tools, not running a new one alongside them. In the accounts that fully moved their reporting workflow onto a single connected system, two things moved together.
“The uncomfortable part is that nobody plans to run 14 tools. It happens one purchase at a time, and the reconciliation work hides inside calendars until someone counts the hours. When we measured it, the teams that fully switched their reporting saved around 12 hours each per week — and that time went straight back into testing campaigns instead of formatting spreadsheets.
TPTait Pollack Founder & CEO, Landing Platform
This is the full analysis behind our July 2026 press release, "SaaS Teams Run On 14 Disconnected Tools, London Analysis Finds." In the interest of candour: the spokesperson quoted there — "Marcus Feld, Head of Product" — was a pen-name. The words, and the research, are the founder's own. We'd rather you had the data under a real name.
What this study is — and what it isn't
Credible research states its boundaries. Here are ours, plainly.
- It is our own account base. The 286 accounts are Landing Platform clients and trials, not a random national sample. It tells you what we observed among fast-scaling B2B SaaS teams, not what is true of every business.
- Tool counts are observed; hours are self-reported. Connected-tool counts come from account configuration and usage data. The weekly-hours figures are drawn from team-reported time on reconciliation and reporting, cross-checked against the independent studies cited here.
- The savings figure is for teams that completed migration. ~12 hours returned reflects accounts that fully retired their old reporting workflow — not every trial user, many of whom run tools in parallel and save little.
- Window and segment are narrow by design. January–May 2026, companies of 30–120 employees, £20k–£40k monthly marketing budgets. Larger enterprises and smaller startups will differ.
- External figures are third-party. Every non-Landing statistic is attributed to its named source below; we neither collected nor audited that data.
switchtolanding.com/tool-sprawl-report-2026Tool sprawl, in five answers
How many tools does the average marketing team use?
In our analysis of 286 B2B SaaS accounts, the median marketing team ran 14 separate tools across six functions — CRM, project management, invoicing, content, email and analytics. Company-wide the average organisation runs around 254 SaaS applications.1
How much time does tool sprawl cost each week?
About 12 hours per person, per week in the teams we reviewed — moving numbers between tools, searching for information and re-orienting after context switches. Independent studies agree: workers toggle apps ~1,200 times a day and lose close to 4 hours a week just re-orienting45, and waste 59 minutes a day hunting for information.6
What is "work about work"?
Coordination and admin — searching for information, chasing updates, duplicating data across tools — instead of the skilled work someone was hired to do. Asana's research found it consumes 60% of the working day, and duplicated work alone costs UK knowledge workers about 227 hours a year.89
Does consolidating tools actually save time?
Yes — but only when teams retire the old tools rather than run them in parallel. Accounts that fully moved their reporting onto one connected system consolidated 10+ tools on average and returned roughly 12 hours per person, per week to campaign work.
Is this independent research?
The core figures come from Landing Platform's own base of 286 client and trial accounts (January–May 2026), stated plainly with its limitations. Every claim is set against independent, published research — Gartner, HBR, Asana, Productiv, Zylo and others — cited with live links below.
References
- Productiv — State of SaaS Sprawl (2021). Average company runs 254 SaaS apps; enterprises average 364. productiv.com
- Productiv — State of SaaS Sprawl (2021). Average 60-day app engagement just 45%: fewer than half of SaaS apps are used regularly. productiv.com
- BetterCloud — State of SaaSOps (2023) / State of SaaS (2024). Organisations averaged 130 SaaS apps in 2023; ~112 in 2024. bettercloud.com
- Harvard Business Review (2022) — "How Much Time and Energy Do We Waste Toggling Between Applications?" Research with Soroco: workers toggle apps ~1,200 times/day. hbr.org
- Harvard Business Review (2022), same study. Re-orienting after toggling added up to just under 4 hours/week — ~9% of work time (~137 users, 3 Fortune 500 firms). hbr.org
- Qatalog + Cornell University, Ellis Idea Lab — Workgeist Report (2021). Employees waste ~59 minutes/day searching for information across apps. qatalog / Cornell, via VentureBeat
- Qatalog + Cornell University — Workgeist Report (2021). ~9.5 minutes to regain a productive workflow after each app switch. qatalog / Cornell, via VentureBeat
- Asana — Anatomy of Work Index (2021). Knowledge workers spend 60% of time on "work about work" rather than skilled work. asana.com
- Asana — Anatomy of Work Index (2021). Duplicated work costs ~209 hours/year per worker (UK 227 hrs; US 308 hrs). asana.com
- Gartner — Marketing Technology Survey (2023). Marketers use only 33% of their martech stack's capabilities (down from 42% in 2022, 58% in 2020). Gartner, via martech.org
- Gartner — Marketing Technology Survey (2023). Organisations spend 25.4% of marketing budget on technology. Gartner, via martech.org
- chiefmartec / Scott Brinker & Frans Riemersma — Marketing Technology Landscape (2024). Martech solutions grew to 14,106 (from 11,038 in 2023). chiefmartec.com
- Zylo — SaaS Management Index (2024). Average company wastes ~$18M/year on SaaS; ~51% of provisioned licences go unused. zylo.com
- Zylo — SaaS Management Index (2024). Organisations run, on average, 11 project-management tools and 10 team-collaboration apps. zylo.com
See what one connected system does to those 12 hours
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