When the Foundation is Broken: Rebuilding Targeting from the Ground Up
This is the story of recognizing the deficiencies of a system's foundational element, how it's stressing operations, and uncovering how deep the changes need to reach.
User Research
IN-DEPTH Conversation
Systems Thinking
Problem Spotting
IDEATE
Cross-functional Alignment
Background
The problem and why it mattered
Our enterprise targeting system was failing everyone. Clients rated targeting as their top reason for choosing us over competitors. But our internal users rated it as their biggest headache.
The disconnect was costing us.
Campaign managers were spending an extra 4-5 hours per campaign wrestling with targeting setup.
Sales demos would showcase capabilities that operations couldn't realistically deliver.
When campaigns went live, the targeting never matched what was sold, leading to awkward client conversations and reduced renewals.
We had a tool that looked good in a pitch but broke down in practice.
Investigation
Started with people using the system every day
Over two weeks, I ran remote and in-person sessions with campaign managers, solution architects, and sales reps. The patterns were clear:
"I have to set up the same targeting in three different places." - Campaign Manager
"I can't reuse anything. Every campaign starts from scratch." - Marketing Solutions Manager
"The estimation says one thing, but the actual reach is always different. I've learned to just wing it with clients." - Marketing Solutions Manager
Engineering stakeholder interviews
Then I talked to our engineering leads. I learned the front-end was loosely combining multiple back-end services that weren't designed to work together. The system was showing users options that didn't actually exist, and hiding options that did.
Everyone knew it was broken. Nobody knew how broken.
Problem spotting
Disconnect with reality
Even tenured users' interpretations of capabilities did not align with the configurations they would use for setup, resulting in issues when post-campaign reporting failed to support the pre-sales agreements.
The back-end model was insufficient, and the front-end was trying to combine different functions into a single object. Users were unaware of the system's capabilities and what it produced.
No ability to reuse
The pre-sales and campaign stages use different tools and involve different user groups with no method to transfer a targeting profile from one to the other, creating redundant work.
Systems thinking
Mapping the mess
I partnered with our lead front-end developer to map every single input, output, and connection point in the targeting flow. It took three weeks and filled an entire wall.
What we found was worse than expected. The "targeting object" everyone referred to was actually five different objects pretending to be one. Some settings lived in the line item. Others lived in the campaign. Some were in a separate service altogether. There was no single source of truth.
Forming a single source of truth
The bigger problem: making this work correctly would require tearing down and rebuilding core parts of the platform. That's a hard sell.
Ideate
Confirming the problems
I put together a presentation for product and engineering leadership. I socialized the illustration of the incomplete targeting object along with:
Current state: 4-5 extra hours per campaign × 200 campaigns per month = 800+ wasted hours monthly
User error rate: 47% of campaigns required corrections post-launch
Client complaints: Targeting was mentioned in 60% of negative feedback
The concept we socialized
Then I showed them the future state: a unified targeting object that could be created once and reused everywhere. I had mockups. I had user quotes. I had engineering validation that it was possible.
They approved addressing portions of the concept. They did not approve a full rebuild.
Results
Shipped some key improvements
We couldn't get the resources for the complete overhaul, so I focused on what would give users the most relief with the least engineering effort:
1. Unified the UI across pre-sales and execution tools
Same patterns, same language, same experience. Users could finally move between tools without relearning everything.
2. Made targeting profiles reusable
You could now save a targeting configuration and pull it into any tool. No more starting from scratch.
3. Streamlined the most common workflows
We cut the happy path from 47 clicks to 23.
Results over 18 months
Campaign setup time decreased by 1 hour per campaign (approximately 20%)
Error rate dropped from 47% to 31%
User satisfaction increased from 2.1 to 3.4 out of 5
Better, but not completely solved.
Looking back
What I'd do differently
I would have built a stronger coalition before proposing the full overhaul. Engineering leaders nodded along during discovery but backed away when it was time to commit. I should have involved them earlier and gotten them to co-own the problem.
I could have pushed for a pilot. Instead of asking for everything at once, I could have proposed rebuilding targeting for one channel first, proven the value, then expanded. Smaller ask, easier yes.
The real lesson: finding the problem is the easy part. Getting organizational buy-in to fix it the right way is where the work actually happens.
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