Data Accessibility Bottlenecks - The Growth Killer

You’ve invested in the optimal martech stack, hired data-savvy talent, and standardized processes.

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Yet, your marketing operations team spends most of their time hunting down data, reconciling spreadsheets, and begging IT for access. Time that should otherwise be spent on optimizing campaigns.

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THIS is the biggest problem for data-driven marketing.

The Illusion of Data Abundance

In a world with an abundance of data, we still lack actionable insights.

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B2B organizations now spend about 8.7% of revenue on marketing, generating avalanches of behavioral, intent, and engagement signals. But consider these realities:

• 91% of marketers acknowledge data’s critical importance, yet analytics inform only ~53% of decisions.
• 87% admit data is their most underutilized asset, trapped in silos or decaying in spreadsheets.
• 72% of B2B marketers’ time is consumed by non-revenue activities like data compilation, a direct symptom of accessibility failure.

The Hidden Cost of Data Fragmentation

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What’s Causing this Data Accessibility Problem?

1. Human Bottlenecks

When one person holds the keys to the Google Ads report, another understands the Salesforce custom fields, and a third can extract Zoominfo intent data, there’s no way that a single person can access it all in one go, make sense of the numbers, AND derive insights.

This isn’t about expertise. Such bottlenecks and dependencies harm the marketing team, with analysts drowning in requests but unable to provide answers.

2. Tool Fragmentation

HubSpot + Salesforce + 6sense + LinkedIn Ads + PowerBI = A Frankenstein’s monster of insights.

Fragmented data leads to granularity gaps as each tool operates differently. Even the supposedly “seamless” connectors between platforms like Salesforce and Snowflake still require complex setup processes that only experts can tackle. Even getting access to the right tools for these integrations requires jumping multiple hurdles.

B2B businesses face unprecedented data capture challenges amid economic uncertainty and regulation. Integration of data sources should be the vital starting point.

3. The Spreadsheet Sanctuary

Why do even the most sophisticated, highly experienced marketers always revert to Excel and Sheets? It all boils down to control, familiarity, and distrust.

Spreadsheets provide a sense of easy access, auditability, and transparency, unlike “black box” dashboards. When CRM and BI tools require access and permissions, spreadsheets become the path of least resistance.

Yet, the tragedy remains: B2B data decays rapidly. If you aren’t keeping your data up-to-date, it won’t give you the best insights.

That spreadsheet “source of truth”? It might just be giving you stale info.

Now, how do you move past these issues?

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Breaking the Chains of Inaccessibility

Solution 1: Embrace Composable CDPs

Forget monolithic customer data platforms. Composable CDPs(like Snowflake + Hightouch) centralize data without physical movement. With these, marketers can act freely, accessing live data while governed by automatic compliance filters. This also eradicates silos by syncing ads platforms to audience data.

Solution 2: Deploy Governance That Enables, Not Blocks

The best-performing teams don’t restrict access. Rather, they democratize responsibly.

Centralized access management: Track opt-ins/outs across channels in a single system, for a transparent view of who accesses what.

Embedded privacy: Automatically mask PII in dashboards using tools like Snowflake Horizon.

Self-service certification: Train marketers on data exploration via tools like Looker, Power BI, and Tableau.

Solution 3: Kill Spreadsheet Addiction with AI-Powered Interfaces

Generative AI can easily be the spreadsheet killer that you’re looking for.

Case in point, Hubspot recently introduced a ChatGPT connector that lets you chat with your CRM data to get the desired info.

For example, “Show me pipeline by campaign, filtered for Q2 enterprise deals” is a natural language query that any marketer can use, moving past the hurdles of BI tools, output tables, and dashboards.

AI could also flag anomalies in real-time (e.g., “Lead volume dropped 40% vs. forecast”), so you know exactly what numbers need your attention.

The Future Belongs to Unblocked Data

Data accessibility isn’t a mere IT project. It is the core competitive differentiator for 2025.

Companies solving these bottlenecks are more likely to outgrow peers, as they have more time on their hands to redirect to strategy.

The mandate is clear: Stop drowning in data you can’t use. Build an infrastructure where:

1. Marketers self-serve without compromising compliance.
2. Tools share data natively—no manual stitching.
3. Dashboards are so trusted that spreadsheets become obsolete.
4. AI handles the grunt work, freeing ops for innovation.

Success in B2B marketing boils down to this: Don’t just collect data. Use it to tell a story.