How to map your sources before connecting
The data inventory that saves you from reconnecting everything later and gets you started with the right source.
- Make a simple inventory of your sources
- Prioritize what to connect first
- Get to the connection step knowing what to expect
The temptation is to open Nekt and start connecting everything you have: HubSpot, Meta Ads, the orders database, the targets spreadsheet. It feels productive, but it usually turns into rework. You connect a source that nobody uses, leave out the one that would have unlocked the first report, and two weeks later you are redoing the setup. Mapping first is a ten-minute step that saves days. And the map does not start with the source: it starts with the business question you want to answer, and works backwards to the source that answers it.
Why map before you start connecting
Mapping solves three problems at once. First, it keeps you from connecting the wrong source: the one that seemed important but does not feed any real use case. Second, it avoids rework: reconnecting, renaming and reorganizing later because you started without a plan. Third, and most important, it helps you prioritize: a handful of sources almost always unlocks most of the value, and the map makes that obvious before you spend any energy.
Start with the question, not the source
The most common mistake is to look at the list of connectors and ask "what can I hook up?". The approach that works is the opposite: start from a concrete business question and reverse engineer your way to the source. First the question, then the data that answers it, and only then the source that delivers that data. That way you never connect anything without knowing what it is for.
An example. The question is "which channel brings in the most revenue?". To answer it, you need two things: the value of the sales and the source of each lead. Sales live in the e-commerce platform or the orders database. Lead source lives in the CRM. Done: the question led you, on its own, to the two sources that matter.
The inventory questions
Once the business question has pointed to the candidate sources, a good inventory answers five questions per source: what data it brings, where that data lives, how fresh the data needs to be to be useful, who the owner is (the person you go to when something breaks or access is missing) and which use case it unlocks. You do not need a tool: a table on a single sheet does the job. Here is a filled-in example.
| Source | What data it brings | Freshness needed | Owner | Use case |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| HubSpot | Deals, contacts, funnel stages | Daily | Sales team | Pipeline and conversion report |
| Meta Ads | Investment, clicks, leads per campaign | Daily | Marketing | Cost per lead by channel |
| Orders database | Orders, items, values, status | Hourly | Engineering | Revenue and average ticket |
| Targets spreadsheet | Monthly target per sales rep | Monthly | Finance | Actual versus target |
Notice how much freshness varies: the orders database needs to be almost real time, while the targets spreadsheet changes once a month. In other words, how often each source needs to update is very different. This column alone already changes how you will configure each source's sync later on.
Prioritization: value versus effort
With the inventory in hand, add two assessments per source: how much value it unlocks and how much effort it takes to connect and clean up. Place each source on a 2x2 matrix and what to do first becomes obvious on its own.
Decide where to start
An e-commerce customer came in wanting to connect all eleven sources they had in the very first week. The inventory made it clear that the first goal was a revenue and acquisition cost dashboard. Only the orders database and Meta Ads unlocked that, about 80% of the value requested. They connected those two, delivered the dashboard in a few days, and the other nine came in gradually, as new use cases came up. Without the map, they would have spent the whole week on sources nobody was going to look at early on.
When you are torn between two sources, ask which one your first report needs in order to exist. The one the use case cannot do without comes first. The rest can wait at no cost at all.
Use cases that apply what this guide explains.