Case study · Stakeholders & conflict
Two Departments, One Focused Rebuild
I met conflicting sales and marketing needs without heavy custom development—and uncovered a critical pricing requirement before it was coded.
The context
We were rebuilding the customer database underpinning our platform. Sales wanted a subscription model, while marketing wanted an integration with a major social advertising platform. Both teams needed their solution immediately, but engineering capacity was limited.
The challenge
I needed to serve both departments without adding unnecessary complexity or derailing the core database rebuild.
How I approached it
For marketing, I selected a no-code data connector rather than assigning engineers to build and maintain a custom integration.
For sales, I worked with our sales and finance teams to configure subscription billing in our existing accounting software. This allowed us to test the model through real invoices before investing in native platform functionality.
What it delivered
Both teams received workable solutions quickly, while the database rebuild stayed on track. Processing real invoices also revealed that pricing needed to vary by vertical and country—a requirement we might otherwise have implemented incorrectly in code.
Looking back
I learned that serving urgent needs does not always require new product functionality. The no-code connector gave marketing a workable route, while configuring billing with sales and finance let us test subscriptions through real invoices. If I did this again, I would use those real-world tests even earlier, before discussing native implementation.
The principle I carry forward is to solve the immediate business problem with the simplest workable approach while protecting the core work. Limited engineering capacity made that discipline necessary, and the outcome showed its value: both departments moved forward, the rebuild stayed on track, and we uncovered pricing differences by vertical and country before encoding the wrong assumptions.