Most businesses can name every tool in their tech stack — CRM, accounting software, and project management platform. Far fewer can give a clear, complete account of their communication stack: the phone system, video conferencing platform, chat tools, conference room technology, and everything in between.
That gap exists for a reason. Communication tools tend to accumulate organically. A phone system got put in place years ago. A video platform gets adopted by the whole company because one team started using it. A chat tool gets added on top. Nobody sits down and designs the communication stack as a deliberate system — it just grows, tool by tool, decision by decision, until nobody has full visibility into what's actually in place or whether it's working.
An audit fixes that. Here's a practical framework for reviewing your current communication stack and identifying where the gaps are costing you.
WHY THIS MATTERS MORE THAN YOU'D THINK
Communication tools are easy to overlook because they are woven into the infrastructure — background systems that aren't the focus of anyone's day, even though everyone depends on them constantly. That invisibility is exactly why problems accumulate unnoticed. A platform that's slightly inefficient, a redundant tool nobody remembers signing up for, a conference room setup that frustrates remote employees — none of it shows up as a line item, but all of it has a cost.
An audit surfaces those costs. It also frequently surfaces savings opportunities — unused licenses, redundant platforms, contracts that auto-renewed without review — that more than justify the time spent conducting it.
STEP 1: INVENTORY EVERYTHING
Start by building a complete list of every tool currently in use for communication and collaboration. This step alone often produces surprises — most organizations underestimate how many tools have accumulated over time.
Your inventory should include:
Phone systems — traditional PBX, VoIP, cloud phone platforms
Video conferencing platforms — Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet, and any others in use across departments
Chat and messaging tools — Slack, Teams chat, or any other internal messaging platform
Conference room hardware — cameras, microphones, displays, room controllers in every meeting space
Email and calendaring systems
Any specialized communication tools — contact center software, SMS platforms, customer-facing chat tools
Don't rely solely on what IT has documented. Survey department heads directly — it's common for teams to adopt tools independently that never made it onto a central inventory.
STEP 2: MAP USAGE AGAINST COST
For every tool in the inventory, identify what it costs and how actively it's being used. This is where redundancy and waste typically surface — licenses for platforms that have been largely abandoned in favor of something else, subscriptions that auto-renewed without anyone reviewing whether they're still needed, or multiple tools serving the same function across different departments.
A few specific things to look for:
Licenses provisioned for employees who no longer work at the organization or no longer need that tool
Two or more platforms serving the same core function — for example, both Zoom and Teams licensed organization-wide with no clear standard
Legacy systems still being paid for out of habit, with no clear owner or justification
Usage data showing low adoption of a tool the organization is paying full price for
Most platforms provide usage analytics through their admin portals. If a tool doesn't offer that visibility, that's worth noting as its own finding.
STEP 3: EVALUATE THE EXPERIENCE, NOT JUST THE TOOLS
A communication stack can look complete on paper and still produce a frustrating day-to-day experience. The audit needs to go beyond inventory and cost to assess how well the tools actually serve the people using them.
Talk to employees directly. A short survey or a few informal conversations will surface more useful information than any usage report. Ask what's frustrating, what they avoid using, and what workarounds they've developed. The workarounds are often the most telling data point — they reveal exactly where the official tools are falling short.
Walk through the conference rooms. Physically test every meeting space. Does the technology work reliably? How long does it take to start a meeting? Is the audio and video quality acceptable for remote participants? Rooms that look fine on an asset list can perform poorly in practice.
Check remote participant experience specifically. Ask someone joining meetings remotely to describe what their experience is actually like. It's frequently very different from what people in the room perceive, and it's an area where problems hide easily because the people experiencing them aren't physically present to flag the issue in real time.
Review IT support tickets. Recurring tickets tied to the same tools or the same rooms are a reliable indicator of infrastructure that isn't performing the way it should — even if it technically functions most of the time.
STEP 4: ASSESS PLATFORM FRAGMENTATION
One of the most common findings in a communication audit is fragmentation — different departments standardized on different platforms, with no organization-wide consistency. Sales runs Zoom because that's what clients use. Operations runs Teams because that's the Microsoft 365 default. Leadership uses whatever the executive assistant set up years ago.
Fragmentation creates real costs: licensing redundancy, inconsistent conference room hardware requirements, IT support complexity, and friction every time someone needs to collaborate across the fragmented boundary. An audit should explicitly assess whether fragmentation exists and, if so, what it's costing the organization in both dollars and friction.
STEP 5: IDENTIFY SECURITY AND COMPLIANCE GAPS
Communication tools often handle sensitive information — client conversations, internal strategy discussions, and regulated data depending on your industry. An audit should confirm that every tool in the stack meets the organization's security and compliance requirements, not just that it functions well.
Are all communication platforms covered by appropriate data handling agreements for your industry?
Is multi-factor authentication enabled across communication tools, particularly for admin-level access?
Are AV devices and conferencing hardware on a properly segmented network?
Is there a clear policy and technical control for meeting recordings — where they're stored, who can access them, and how long they're retained?
STEP 6: BUILD A PRIORITIZED ACTION PLAN
An audit without action is just a document. The final step is translating findings into a prioritized plan — what needs to be addressed immediately, what should be planned for the next budget cycle, and what's worth monitoring but doesn't require immediate action.
Prioritize based on a combination of cost impact, employee experience impact, and risk. A security gap involving PHI or client financial data should outrank a minor licensing redundancy, even if the redundancy is easier to fix. A conference room that consistently frustrates client-facing meetings should outrank a chat tool inefficiency that only affects internal communication.
NOT SURE WHERE TO START?
A thorough communication stack audit takes time and a level of technical and organizational visibility that most internal teams don't have the bandwidth to dedicate to it. At Vivo, we conduct technology assessments that cover exactly this ground — inventory, cost, experience, fragmentation, and security — and translate the findings into a clear, prioritized plan.
If your organization has never formally audited its communication stack, there's a good chance the findings would surprise you.
