After twenty-five years in the marketing technology industry, I’ve seen that each generation of platforms promises transformation. CRMs, CDPs, marketing automation, business analytics, AI-driven everything – you name it, I’ve implemented it. Each platform made the same pitch: once it’s in place, clarity will follow, performance will improve, and the company will finally see the whole customer story.
But collecting the dots never fulfilled that promise.
The true potential only emerged when the connections between those points were established, aligned and continuously maintained.
This surveillance is so common that it has become the decisive failure point of digital transformation. The platform is purchased under the promise of ROI. Yet the lack of connecting design – the pipelines, mappings, identity binding, attribution flows and event relationships – undermines the entire justification for the investment.
Platforms collect information.
Connections create meaning.
And without meaning, no technology will ever achieve the transformation it was purchased for.
Platforms are not the panacea, they are the canvas
Every organization approaches a major platform implementation as if the tool itself will solve the fragmentation that slows growth. But even the most advanced systems cannot extract intelligence from disconnected inputs.
- A CRM with partial identity information becomes a glorified notepad.
- A CDP without real-time event streams becomes a stagnant repository.
- A marketing automation system without behavioral triggers becomes a planning tool.
- AI-powered inconsistent signals become confidently inaccurate.
The tool is only as smart as the connections that feed and connect the input. You can collect every dot imaginable and still not see the image, because the image only appears when the dots are arranged, not when they are collected.
The overlooked failure point in digital transformation
In almost every digital transformation (DX) I’ve seen, the organization invests heavily in the platform and hardly in the connection structure needed to make it usable. Strategy teams align their objectives. Costs and licenses are aligned during purchase. Leadership is aligned with timelines. But the integration layer – the real foundation of the transformation – is treated as a technical detail rather than a business requirement.
This is where the ROI evaporates.
This is where expectations fall apart.
This is where transformation quietly fails.
The reason is simple: the platform can only deliver value if the connections are in place to support it. The data flows must be clear. The identity paths must be unified. The event relationships need to be mapped. The journey must be visible. Without these, the tool becomes an expensive, underperforming island.
Events and Travel: The Most Misunderstood Relationship in MarTech
Another analogy helps clarify the point: the journey and the events that compose it.
Events (clicks, views, taps, interactions, page loads, purchases, logins, replies) are like individual dots. Every event can be important or meaningless. Most organizations treat them as isolated signals. But events only become meaningful if you can illustrate how they influence the journey.
- A product view is not relevant unless you can see whether that view led to a comparison.
- A comparison is not relevant unless it adds to the consideration.
- A consideration is not relevant unless it encourages someone to purchase.
- And a purchase is not relevant unless you can trace it back to the reason for it.
Events are important not because of what they are, but because of how they relate to each other.
The power of trajectory analysis, behavioral modeling, and predictive scoring comes not from capturing more events, but from linking them in ways that reveal pathways, friction, influence, and intent.
You can’t optimize a journey you can’t see.
And you can’t see a journey without the connections between the events.
Data entry points define the entire ecosystem
Every data-related challenge stems from the same underlying problem: disconnected inputs.
Missing identity fields disrupt visibility across multiple channels.
Inconsistent attribution paths disrupt the customer journey.
Delayed or unstructured events disrupt automation logic.
Individual sales activities hide revenue signals.
Unassigned offline behavior creates duplicate profiles.
The points exist.
The events exist.
The journeys exist.
But the connections between them are incomplete.
And that is the root cause of every underperforming platform implementation.
AI raises the stakes even higher
With the rise of machine learning, organizations often hope that algorithms will compensate for inconsistencies in their data. But AI is much less forgiving than previous systems. A model cannot infer relationships between events if the connections do not exist. It cannot build journeys if the paths are broken. It cannot personalize if identity is broken. It cannot optimize if the signals have no structure.
AI does not replace the need for connections.
It increases their importance.
The companies that get real value from AI don’t succeed because of extraordinary models; they succeed because they have built extraordinary connections.
When everything finally connects
Once the integrations are properly designed, rigorously maintained, and synced across teams, the transformation becomes instantaneous.
- Events begin to form coherent journeys.
- Travels reveal the true influences on conversion.
- Automation responds at the right time instead of afterwards.
- Insights correspond to reality and not to assumptions.
- Sales and marketing see the same customer, not parallel versions.
- AI models are starting to predict instead of guessing.
- Executives are finally witnessing the promised ROI.
- The platform did not get ‘better’.
The organization eventually connected it.
The mandate for MarTech leaders moving forward
After a quarter century in the business, the conclusion is unmistakable: the future of marketing technology does not belong to the companies with the most tools, the largest stacks, or the most aggressive platform adoption.
It belongs to the companies that treat connections– no points, no data, no events – as the key value driver.
A pile doesn’t have to grow; it must unite.
A platform does not need more functionalities; more connections are needed.
A transformation does not require more tools; it needs more structure.
Platforms connect the dots.
Events determine the moments.
Journeys build connections.
And the journeys reveal the truth.
Key Takeaways
- Connections (not platforms) unlock potential: The value of your data lies in how well your systems connect, translate and sync it.
- Events are only important if they are related to travel: Events are raw signals; travel gives them context, meaning, and actionable meaning.
- Digital transformation fails at the integration layer: Organizations consistently underinvest in the connections that justify the expenditure.
- Identity resolution is fundamental: Without unified identity pathways, personalization and attribution collapse.
- AI requires complete connections: Machine learning amplifies the quality (or shortcomings) of the signals it receives.
- Governance between teams is essential: Definitions, triggers, timelines and transfers must be uniform across the organization.
- The ecosystem – not the platform – creates the transformation: True ROI only happens when every event, system, and journey are connected.
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