Difficulty escalating complex issues
Outdated CRM systems
FA-02
Data Sovereignty Fragmentation
Systemic Anatomy
Systemic Description
Customer identity, preferences, and transaction history exist in disconnected functional databases (Sales CRM, Operations PMS, Loyalty) with no unified record accessible in real-time at service delivery.
Root Cause Type
Data Governance Absence
Why It Recurs
Departments independently procure SaaS solutions optimized for their function without enterprise-level data integration requirements or enforcement.
Governance Failure
No central Data Governance authority with power to mandate integration standards; customer data 'ownership' is politically contested across business units.
Scope Boundary
Does not explain data entry errors, inadequate data collection, or privacy/compliance issues unless directly caused by fragmentation across systems.
Structural Risk Profile
Decision Frequency
medium
How often decisions of this type are made in the affected context.
Blast Radius
cross-domain
The scope and scale of impact when this friction manifests.
Reversibility
costly
The ease with which decisions affected by this friction can be undone.
Time to Impact
delayed
The delay between decision and observable consequence.
Decision Fallout
Typical Decisions
- Allowing business units to select vendors without IT integration certification
- Operating separate databases for loyalty and operational delivery without synchronization
Delayed Effects
- High-value customers are invisible during service recovery moments
- Personalization engines fire irrelevant offers based on incomplete profiles
Early Warning Signals
- Staff asking customers for information already stored elsewhere in the company
- Different departments reporting conflicting metrics for the same customer action
Manifestations
Confusing fare class differences
Fragmented customer data systems
Inflexible payment terms
Poor CRM integration for corporate accounts
Inadequate reporting for expense tracking
Poor data analytics for corporate travel patterns
Confusing visa requirements information
Outdated visa information databases
Difficult redemption processes
Poor data integration across systems
Unclear about available services
Inadequate CRM for tracking guest preferences
Poor recognition of loyal guests
Limited personalization based on loyalty data
No pre-arrival customization options
Poor CRM integration with PMS
Limited ability to pre-select preferences
Limited data analytics for guest segmentation
Resolution Boundary
Decision Level
executive
This friction requires executive-level resolution because it involves adjudicating between competing business unit interests and imposing integration requirements that constrain departmental autonomy. Lower-level initiatives lack the organizational authority to mandate cross-functional data standards or override business unit procurement decisions.
This friction cannot be resolved locally.
Type of Change Required
Customer Data Ownership Clarification
- Fragmentation is sustained by ambiguous ownership of customer records across organizational boundaries. The change required involves explicitly designating data stewardship responsibility and resolving political contests over customer relationship ownership.
Data Governance Authority Establishment
- Data fragmentation persists because no organizational entity has cross-functional authority to mandate integration standards. The required change involves creating a governance structure with decision rights that supersede business unit autonomy in data architecture matters.
Procurement Authorization Redesign
- Departmental tool proliferation continues when vendor selection authority resides entirely within business units. The friction recurs until procurement decisions above a certain threshold require certification of data integration compatibility as a mandatory approval criterion.
What Does Not Work
- MDM implementations fail when deployed without organizational mandate to enforce compliance. These projects address the symptom while leaving intact the business unit autonomy that created fragmentation in the first place.
- Building individual connections between systems creates an unsustainable web of dependencies. This approach fails structurally because it treats fragmentation as a technical problem rather than a governance problem, and scales poorly as system count increases.
- Efforts to improve data quality within one functional area fail because the constraint is architectural, not operational. Cleaning data in isolation does not address the absence of synchronization mechanisms across systems.
AERIM
AERIM is the operating system designed to resolve the structural conditions described above. It addresses the governance, coordination, and decision architecture failures that the Friction Atlas documents. AERIM operates at the resolution boundary where local fixes fail and systemic change is required.