CIO briefing · 30 minutes · no demo
The Mid-Market Stack Consolidation Review
Your external-data-exchange stack on one page, with a cost against each line and a consolidates / stays / depends call on every one. Thirty minutes.
- You pay four vendors to move files and none of them talk to each other
- Your CFO asked what external file exchange actually costs and you had to go find out
- Two of those contracts renew within six months of each other
No demo. The stack map is yours regardless of outcome.
CIO briefing · worksheet
External Data Exchange Stack Map
A working artifact from your 30-minute consolidation review
- 01Your seven stack lines
- 02Annual cost per line
- 03Renewal date & owner
- 04Consolidates / stays / depends
01 · The seven lines
MFT, e-signature, DLP, SFTP, email gateway, audit, shared storage.
02 · Annual cost
What each line actually costs, including the ones nobody tracks.
03 · Renewal date and owner
When each contract comes up, and who internally owns it.
04 · Consolidates, stays, or depends
The call on every line, including the ones that stay.
Consolidation is sequenced off renewal dates, not off strategy meetings. The map is worth most in the window before your next anchor renewal lands. After it, you've waited a year for the same conversation.
What you leave with
The artifact is yours to use regardless of whether you ever work with us, which is why the blank worksheet is a download rather than a form.
- A one-page stack map filled in during the session: seven lines, cost, renewal date, owner, and a call on each.
- A total annual cost for external data exchange, which is usually the first time anyone has added it up across budget owners.
- A sequencing recommendation (renewal-driven, anchor-driven, or strategic) matched to your organization's appetite, and an anchor renewal date to plan against.
What we fill in together
Most mid-market IT leaders have never seen this stack mapped end-to-end on one page. Each tool was a rational decision at the time; they have rarely been evaluated together.
01
The seven lines
We walk the seven categories that make up external data exchange: your MFT or file-transfer platform, e-signature for sensitive documents, DLP or PHI/PII detection, legacy SFTP servers, the email gateway or secure mail, audit-prep and evidence-export tooling, and any shared drive or cloud storage doing external exchange in practice.
A good answer looks like: You can name the vendor on all seven lines, including the ones nobody owns any more.
02
Annual cost
Approximate annual spend against each line. This is the number your CFO will ask for and the one most teams have never totalled, because it sits across four budget owners and two renewal calendars.
A good answer looks like: A defensible total, with the lines you had to go and look up marked as estimates rather than quietly rounded.
03
Renewal date and owner
The renewal date and internal owner for every line. This is what turns the map from an inventory into a sequence: consolidation happens at renewals, so the calendar decides the order regardless of what the architecture would prefer.
A good answer looks like: Real dates. "Sometime next year" is the answer that means the renewal will pass without a decision.
04
Consolidates, stays, or depends
The call on each line: it folds into another tool, it stays where it is, or it depends on migration complexity you'd need to scope first. The 'stays' and 'depends' calls are the point. A map where everything consolidates is a sales pitch, not an assessment.
A good answer looks like: At least two lines marked 'stays'. If nothing stays, the map isn't honest.
The three sequencing paths
Consolidation is an 18-month operational program, not a single switching decision. The map points at one of three ways to run it, matched to your organization's appetite rather than to what a vendor would prefer.
You're fine
Renewal-driven
Consolidate one tool at a time as each contract comes up. Lowest risk, slowest unlock, no budget event. Frequently the right answer, and the one a vendor is least likely to recommend to you.
Worth pressing
Anchor-driven
Replace the largest single contract first, then fold adjacent tools in at their renewals. The common mid-market pattern: one funded decision that makes the following four cheap.
There's work
Strategic
Scope a single program against a target end-state architecture. Highest effort and the fastest unlock. Worth it when the current stack is actively blocking something, and hard to justify when it isn't.
Before you book
- Is this a sales call in disguise?
- No. We don't show you MnemoShare unless your own answers surface something that maps to what we do, and even then only if you ask. If the session ends with us telling you your current stack is fine, that's a normal outcome and we'll say so plainly.
- What if we're happy with our incumbent?
- Then you leave with a documented, dated artifact saying so, which is useful evidence in its own right for a board, an auditor, or a diligence questionnaire.
- Can I just have the worksheet without the call?
- Yes. The download is right there, no email required. It's designed to be self-serve. The session mostly saves you time and adds an outside read on your answers.
- Do I need the actual contract numbers?
- No. Approximate annual spend per line is enough to sequence with, because being out by 15% on a line changes nothing about the order. If you want the map to go to your CFO afterwards, you can fill in the exact figures later.
- What if most of our stack obviously stays?
- That's a legitimate and fairly common result, and the map documents it. Knowing that three of seven lines are right-sized is worth having in writing the next time someone proposes replacing them.
Four vendors, one job, and no one has ever seen the total.
Thirty minutes to put external data exchange on a single page with a number against it, and an honest call on which lines stay exactly where they are.
No demo. The stack map is yours regardless of outcome.