Case study · Strategy & vision
One Partner Identity Unlocked Five Initiatives
I introduced a universal company identifier that turned essential database clean-up into the foundation for five strategic initiatives.
The context
Our lead-distribution platform contained many duplicate partner accounts. The same company could appear several times—once per service or country—and we had no reliable way to identify a business uniquely across European markets. This fragmented data held back the launch of a new platform and prevented us from building dependable partner-level models.
The challenge
I needed to give every partner a single identity across services and countries, even though no suitable internal identifier existed and the work was initially seen as unglamorous clean-up.
How I approached it
I proposed using a third-party business identifier as the unique key, enriched with our own partner data. We integrated the lead-distribution platform with the external company database, importing identifiers with confidence scores from 7 to 10 and enabling teams to add companies through its search functionality.
I structured the implementation as a phased programme. First, we enabled multiple service configurations for each partner. We then migrated duplicate accounts into a single primary account. To build support for this largely invisible work, I positioned it not as database clean-up, but as shared infrastructure for several roadmap priorities.
What it delivered
What began as a single technical epic became the foundation for five broader initiatives: the new platform, subscription models, refund, churn and lifetime-value predictions, a partner portal, and up-front creditworthiness checks by finance. The programme established the unique partner identity each of these capabilities depended on.
Looking back
I learned that work labelled as unglamorous clean-up can become strategic infrastructure when it resolves a shared constraint. Creating one partner identity across services and countries did more than remove duplicate accounts: it gave the new platform, subscription models, predictive models, partner portal, and finance checks a dependable foundation.
I also learned the value of sequencing change and making invisible work legible. The phased approach—from supporting multiple service configurations to migrating duplicates into a primary account—helped build support. The principle I carry forward is simple: when several priorities depend on the same missing foundation, make that dependency explicit and build the foundation first.