How to choose IT communication tools that align with business needs

IT teams aren’t struggling to communicate; they’re overwhelmed with options. Tickets come in through email, messaging, your company's intranet, and dozens of other channels.

Communication between support agents and engineers happens over chat apps, more emails, and comments in your IT tools. Anyone trying to get the latest update on a specific ticket has to switch between half a dozen tools, and they’re still not sure they’re getting full context.

IT leaders can solve this problem. They just need to make intentional, proactive decisions at the tooling level. It goes beyond comparing features; it’s about making infrastructure-level decisions. 

In this guide, you’ll learn how to diagnose the problems with your existing stack, apply the right criteria for choosing better tools, and build a path towards consolidating tools.

The real cost of a misaligned communication stack

In most organizations, communication tools are added reactively. A need arises, leaders are forced to make a decision quickly, and they add a new tool to their stack. That tool can sit in your stack for months (or even years), even when it starts causing more problems than it fixes, simply due to the inertia of deprecating a tool and transferring data to a new one. 

This approach leads to communication sprawl, an accumulation of platforms that fragment communication rather than streamlining it. This phenomenon leads to several hidden costs, such as:

• Context switching: The more tools your team has to switch between to get full context on their work, the longer it takes them to complete that work. This leads to frustration, inefficiency, and missed opportunities.
• Duplicated workflows: When your teams don’t all communicate with the same tools, it’s hard to know who’s working on what. That leads to people doubling up on work and leaders not knowing which version of a task is the most up-to-date one.
• Lack of visibility: Where does a leader go to get full visibility on the work your IT team is doing? What if they need everyone to report on their work?
• Inconsistent security policies: Multiple communication tools lead to unclear governance, which leads to potential security risks. Without clear guidelines as to what data can go through which channels, it’s all too easy to share sensitive data with the wrong recipient accidentally.

• Budget inefficiency: This reactive approach to building a communication stack often leads to multiple overlapping tools, which means you’re potentially doubling up on licenses that could be used for different purposes.

  The costs of a misaligned communication stack aren’t limited to licenses and occasional frustration. Your collaboration technology stack can undermine every critical project, your data security priorities, and even your basic ability to respond to IT tickets and needs in a timely fashion.

5 criteria for business-aligned tool selection

Before you add any tool to your communication stack, you need to evaluate it thoroughly against your needs and other existing tools. Here are five criteria your IT team can use to do this.

Workforce fit

Even communication tools designed specifically for IT use aren’t one-size-fits-all, because no two IT teams are the same. Some teams are globally distributed, meaning they need a tool that supports multiple languages—or even on-the-fly translation. Others are hybrid, and their communication tools need to allow them to prioritize asynchronous communication over meetings and calls.

Identify the factors that make your workforce unique, and evaluate potential communication tools based on those factors.

Integration depth

When you integrate your communication tools with other platforms (e.g., your ITSM software), you can significantly streamline workflows. Instead of exclusively relying on third-party integration solutions, research built-in integrations for each communication tool. You may be surprised to find significant integration support that can help you save on dedicated integration solutions you don’t really need.

Security and compliance

Your organization needs to keep customer data secure in a way that end users for certain chat tools don’t. That means some of the most popular communication tools may not be secure enough for your IT team. When choosing IT communication tools, you need to evaluate their compliance with general security frameworks (e.g., SOC 2, ISO 27001) and those specific to your region or industry (e.g., GDPR, HIPAA).

A business communication tool also needs robust security features, like role-based permissions and access control.
 

Total cost of ownership

The monthly (or yearly) cost of a tool is far from the only cost you’ll pay for it. Consider potential integration needs, maintenance costs, implementation costs, and any training required for your team. More complex tools may support more complex workflows, but the training and implementation costs could make it prohibitively expensive.
 

Scalability and vendor partnership

Any tool you deploy should scale with you, but this is especially true of communication tools. A tool’s roadmap should align with your priorities, ensuring that future launches and updates help you get more out of it. AI is an especially important consideration when evaluating communication tools, including available features and whether any of your data will be used for training.
 

A practical path from evaluation to consolidation

No matter how fragmented your current communication tool stack is, you can use this process to choose and deploy tools that fit your team’s needs.

Step 1: Audit your current stack

It starts with knowing where you’re at. Inventory every communication tool, including active user counts and licensing costs. Map out the workflows that involve these tools, so you know where they’re seeing the most use, where they may be causing problems, and where they may not be replaceable. You can time this audit with the end of your fiscal year or the end of the quarter to match other auditing processes.
 

Step 2: Map tools against business objectives

The five criteria listed above will allow you to choose IT communication tools that align more closely with your broader objectives. You can also use them to identify the overlaps, redundancies, and gaps in your current stack. Any tools that serve identical functions in different departments should be your first targets for consolidation. Other targets for consolidation include tools that don’t meet security requirements, won’t scale with you, or contribute to miscommunications.
 

Step 3: Build a phased migration plan

A phased migration means you don’t immediately deprecate a tool and migrate everyone to the new one. An instant migration can create significant issues, from security lapses to missing data. When you migrate to a new tool, start with a single business unit or region. Measure adoption rates and impacts on workflows, then expand from there with a revised approach. Internal champions in each team should drive adoption and be the first line of support for colleagues.
 

Step 4: Establish governance and feedback loops

Each communication tool should have a clear owner who’s responsible for maintaining documentation, correcting behavior, and setting policies for that tool. Your overall internal communication strategy should be owned jointly by IT and Operations, even for tools only your IT department uses.

You also need regular feedback loops so everyone can express their opinion on how tools are used, what they should be used for, and whether alternatives may be more effective. These can be part of broader employee feedback policies, like frequent surveys and 1-on-1 meetings with managers.
 

FAQ: Choosing IT communication tools

What is communication tool sprawl?

Communication tool sprawl refers to the unplanned accumulation of communication tools, often as a reaction to perceived needs or gaps in your existing tool stack. This leads to issues IT leaders need to be aware of:

• Fragmented visibility as communication happens in parallel channels.
• Inefficient budget spending as teams use multiple overlapping tools.
• Duplicated workflows and lost productivity.
• Security risks from a lack of visibility and governance.

How do you align IT communication tools with business goals?

To align IT communication tools with business goals, you first need to map out the workflows involved. Say an employee has an IT issue. How does that initial issue reach IT? How does communication happen as that issue is worked on? How many communication channels are involved? Mapping this out lets you match tools to business outcomes, evaluating them according to workforce composition, integration requirements, compliance obligations, and total cost of ownership. This allows you to fit tools to how people work, rather than the other way around.
 

What criteria matter most when evaluating enterprise communication platforms?

When evaluating enterprise communication platforms, use these five criteria:

• Workforce fit: Does the platform fit the way your teams work? Anything from the way you handle tickets (desk-based vs. hybrid workforce) to multilingual support teams can make some communication tools completely unsuited to your team.
• Integration depth: When an enterprise communication platform can natively integrate with the other tools you use, it prevents miscommunications and closes gaps in your workflow.
• Security and compliance posture: While some tools may be suitable for personal communication, they aren’t well-suited to enterprise needs. Platforms like Discord or Telegram don’t have the security protocols that enterprise organizations need.
• Total cost of ownership: A platform’s monthly subscription is rarely the only cost you’ll pay for it. Evaluate potential costs for integrations, maintenance, and third-party implementation experts.
• Scalability: Whether it’s through the platform’s built-in features or your partnership with a vendor, an enterprise communication platform should scale efficiently as your needs grow.
   

What’s the first step in consolidating communication tools?

The first step of consolidating communication tools is doing a comprehensive audit of every communication tool in use. That includes tools your IT team may not be aware of initially (i.e., shadow IT). Go beyond just listing the tools your team uses. Capture the number of active users each tool has, licensing costs, contract terms, and integration dependencies. Match tools against business goals to see which are a good fit and which need to be deprecated.
 

How can IT leaders measure ROI on communication platforms?

Measuring ROI on communication platforms can be done with these metrics:

• Active participation rates.
• Cross-functional response times.
• Reduction in context switching.
• Employee satisfaction.
• Compliance incident rates.

Keep IT and other departments aligned

IT departments often work under strict guidelines, and proper communication is essential for meeting SLA requirements. But a fragmented communication tool stack prevents IT professionals from doing their best work. By transitioning from a reactive approach to a proactive one, you can eliminate tool sprawl and build a more focused stack that supports your workflows instead of hindering them.