Systems | Development | Analytics | API | Testing

2/5 My tidiest marketing table was the output of 28 functions

Part 1 ended with a question for anyone running an internal app: which sources does its most important output depend on? I thought I knew the answer for our marketing dashboard. On 9 August 2026 I found out I did not. Two months later, all 14 of our marketing sources land in one place, and the numbers we act on have changed. The full before-and-after list is in the second tab of the data map further down.

Data Fragmentation: Definition, Causes and Fixes

Data fragmentation is what happens when the same business facts live in more than one system, in more than one shape, with no agreed way to reconcile the copies. The same customer exists under three identifiers; the same revenue figure changes depending on which team you ask. That is not the same as running many tools. An organization can operate a dozen systems and still be coherent — if every tool’s data lands in one place, under shared identifiers, with terms defined once.