Why Most Alberta Businesses Are Building Frankenstacks (And What to Do Instead)

Every time you solve a problem in your business, there’s a temptation to grab another tool. You’ve got a spreadsheet for tracking orders. A shared Google Doc for training. Maybe a Zapier recipe that sends a Slack message when someone fills out a form. Stored procedures to, well, you get the idea. One day, you blink and realize: your business looks like a abomination of disconnected systems, each one groaning under the weight of good intentions.

Congratulations, you’ve built a Frankenstack.

And you're not alone.

The Problem Isn’t the Tools, It’s the Thinking

Here’s the truth: tech isn't the problem. Bad systems are. Most businesses don’t design systems. They accumulate them.

They start out solving individual problems:

• "We need to track leads." Add a CRM.
• "We need to onboard faster." Add a Google Form.
• "We should automate follow-ups." Add Zapier.

Each choice is logical in isolation. But over time, your stack becomes a patchwork quilt of logins, spreadsheets, and SaaS subscriptions. There’s no central logic. No unifying brain. Just tools. Everywhere.

This is how businesses, especially in Alberta’s SME scene, end up stuck. They're doing more, but feeling less in control.

What a Frankenstack Looks Like (Yes, You Probably Have One)

Let’s make it real. If any of the following sound familiar, you might be living in a Frankenstack:

• Your CRM doesn't talk to your invoicing system
• Customer notes are scattered across Notion, Slack, and email
• Your onboarding checklist is in a Google Doc last updated six hires ago
• You have more than three tools doing something that sounds like "task management"
• You’re the only one who knows how your Zapier or Stored Database Procedures actually work (and even you are starting to forget)

It’s like duct-taping body parts together and hoping you built a person.

The Real Cost of Tool Fragmentation

This isn’t just a vibe issue. It’s a business drag:

• Employee training becomes a scavenger hunt
• Reporting becomes unreliable because data is everywhere
• Automation becomes fragile. One change and the whole flow breaks
• Your team spends more time managing tools than doing work

If your business feels chaotic, bloated, or like you need a spreadsheet to track your spreadsheets, it's probably not a people problem. It's a systems problem.

How This Happens (A Real-World Example)

Decades before SwiftRoot, I worked at agencies where the tech lead chose the stack. It made sense. You want the right tool for the right job. But that led to fragmentation across projects: some on Drupal, some on WordPress, others using weird custom CMS.

We weren’t building systems. We were building tech piles.

Each tool required its own procedures, its own updates, its own mental model. The result? Slower on-boarding, harder hand-offs, and many support challenges.

Multiply that over 10–20 internal tools inside a growing SME, and it becomes a nightmare.

What Healthy Systems Do Differently

Let’s be clear: this isn’t an anti-tech rant. I love tools. But I love systems more.

A healthy business operating system isn’t a bundle of tools. It’s a flow:

• Inputs (forms, web-hooks, user actions)
• Processing (logic, decision trees, approvals)
• Outputs (notifications, reports, automation)

Great systems feel invisible. They give you clarity, consistency, and control. Like a garden, not a warehouse full of random plants.

The SwiftRoot Way: Systems, Not Stacks

At SwiftRoot, we don’t add tech. We replace noise with logic.

When we build forms and tables, we start with questions like:

• What’s the single most important action someone needs to take here?
• What information needs to be visible to make that decision?
• Who owns that part of the process?

Then we reverse-engineer the interface from that. It’s why our forms and dashboards look simple. Because all the chaos is hidden behind good design and solid data plumbing.

We centralize logic. We standardize flows. And we make sure your system can grow without turning into a monster.

What to Do If You Think You Have a Frankenstack

If this post made you a little uncomfortable, good. That’s the point.

Here’s how to start fixing it:

1. Map your tools. List everything you’re using. Yes, everything.
2. Identify redundancies. Are multiple tools doing the same thing? Kill one.
3. Follow the data. Where does information enter? Where does it die? Is it a manual process?
4. Centralize decision-making logic. What needs a single source of truth?
5. Think in flows, not features. Tools should serve the flow, not the other way around.

Closing Thought: Don’t Patch. Design.

The Frankenstack isn’t a failure. It’s a side effect of growth without structure.

The good news? You don’t need more tools. You need a brain. And that brain is your system design.

In the next article, I’ll show you what a real Business Operating System looks like and how you can start building one without throwing away everything you’ve already got.

Until then, close a tab. Cancel a tool. And give your business one less monster to manage.