Resolving tech stack tension: Conversations with 10 business leaders from Europe’s largest enterprises

When you run fast and far without a warm-up, your muscles tend to feel the burn in the days that follow. But sometimes, sprinting straight out of the blocks is the only thing you can do – as business leaders across Europe discovered all too painfully in 2020.

When the pandemic struck, the luxury of planning, evaluating, and strategising before making big decisions about digital transformation went out the window. For many enterprises, moving fast to transform their tech stack was key to survival, and everyone from the C-suite to IT teams and employees across different functions rose admirably to the challenge.

But several years on from this panicked sprint, what muscle pains have enterprises been left with? Are tech stacks serving the people who use them, or simply exhausting them? How are IT teams managing everything that’s changed? And crucially – with another crisis on the horizon, albeit of a very different nature – are businesses feeling confident they can handle the economic downturn to come?

To find out, Smartsheet sat down with business leaders and IT experts at enterprises across Europe. Our conversations uncovered some fascinating insights, from the prevalence of shadow IT to tech stack fatigue, along with some key strategies for tackling the future.