When Working Harder Beats Working Smarter

TL;DR

• Audit one workflow this week and remove every step that relies on a field no one updates

  
  

• Replace “smart routing” logic with a single, visible rule that Sales and Marketing can describe the same way.
  

• Stop auto-generating segments. Build only the ones tied to active campaigns or reporting.
  

• Document the real path a contact takes—not the ideal one someone mapped a year ago.

Introduction

Financial services teams love the idea of working smarter. New automation, new scoring models, new dashboards. But most CRMs in this industry don’t fail because the system is missing “intelligence.” They fail because the basics are buried under layers of old logic.

What usually happens: someone tries to “improve efficiency,” adds another rule, and the system gets slower, noisier, and harder to trust. Eventually, the team gives up and starts doing things manually again—because manual work, at least, is predictable.

This is the version of “working harder” that actually wins: not brute force, but stripping the system back to what people really do, not what the diagram says they do.

Below are the failure modes we see most often - and the fixes you can apply this week.

1. Automation Built on Fields No One Maintains

Many financial services CRMs still rely on fields created five restructures ago. The workflow technically exists, but the logic depends on data that no one updates.

What happens

• A welcome sequence relies on an “assigned adviser” field that Sales stopped updating last quarter.

• A reactivation campaign waits for “last meeting date,” but that field is populated only 30% of the time.

• Reporting breaks because “fund interest” contains eight different spellings of the same product.

When the field logic is wrong, every automation built on top collapses.

Fix Pick one critical workflow - welcome, onboarding, campaign handoff - and list every field it touches. Delete or replace any field that fails these tests:

• Sales or Marketing can’t tell you who owns it.

• No one knows how it gets updated.

• It hasn’t changed in six months.

Then rebuild the automation with fewer, visible inputs. Even if it becomes “less smart,” it will run correctly.

2. Over-engineered Segmentation That No One Trusts

Segments get bloated because every team wants their own version. Eventually, you end up with 70 segments, and only three are in active use.

What happens

• Segment rules contain nested logic, old campaign tags, and inactive statuses layered together.

• No one knows which segments feed which campaigns.

• Reporting pulls from inconsistent definitions - one dashboard uses “engaged,” another uses “active,” and another uses last activity date.
  

The complexity doesn’t make targeting smarter; it makes every output questionable.

Fix Start with a usage filter: if a segment hasn’t been used in two consecutive campaigns, archive it. Then rebuild the core segments around three criteria only:

1. Behaviour (actual activity),

2. Relationship stage,

3. Product relevance.

If the segment can’t be explained in a single sentence to Sales, it’s too complex to be reliable.

3. “Smart Routing” Rules That Break More Than They Help

Routing logic is often the most fragile part of a financial services CRM. Teams try to solve edge cases with more logic, not better logic.

What happens

• A contact with missing data branches into a rule that assigns no adviser.

• Opportunities get routed to a default queue because one field was empty.

• Marketing thinks a contact went to Distribution; Distribution thinks it went nowhere.

Routing doesn’t need to be clever—it needs to be predictable.

Fix Replace multi-branch routing with one primary rule and one fallback. For example:

• Route by region if a region exists.

• If not, route by adviser coverage list.

Make every routing rule visible in a single place. If someone has to click through four screens to understand it, no one will maintain it.

4. Dashboards That Assume a Perfect Process

Most dashboards in financial services assume a process that does not exist. They rely on fields that aren’t updated and steps that aren’t followed.

What happens

• The “opportunity pipeline” shows stages no one uses.

• The activity log shows meetings that never sync from calendars.

• “Campaign influence” reports rely on timestamps that aren’t captured anywhere.

The team stops trusting the data, so they stop using the dashboard, and the whole system becomes manual work again.

Fix Rebuild one dashboard using only the fields that are consistently updated today—not the ones you wish were updated. If logging meeting outcomes is inconsistent, drop it. If opportunity stages are misused, collapse them to the minimum set. A simple dashboard that’s accurate beats a clever dashboard no one believes.

5. Processes Documented for an Organisation That No Longer Exists

Most CRM documentation is outdated within a year. Roles change, coverage models shift, and entire workflows quietly disappear.

What happens

• Marketing follows a handoff process that reflects the 2022 org chart.

• Sales follows a different process that no one documented because “we all know how it works.”

• The CRM reflects neither.

When everyone follows their own version of the process, the system ends up serving none of them.

Fix Document the actual flow a contact takes today. Not the ideal flow. Not the diagram from the implementation. Walk through five real records and track how they moved through the system. Update the workflow and automation to match that reality.

Final TL;DR

• Strip out any automation that depends on fields no one owns.
  

• Reduce segmentation to a small set directly tied to current campaigns.
  

• Simplify routing to one primary rule and one fallback.
  

• Rebuild dashboards around data that’s reliably captured today.