Building a Single Source of Truth for Your Organization

I used to think data chaos was just part of running a business.

Different versions of the same customer data in Salesforce and HubSpot. Onboarding docs scattered across Google Drive, Notion, and someone's local hard drive. Financial reports that didn't match depending on which system you pulled them from.

Then I learned what this chaos was actually costing us. Not just in frustration, but in real money. Organizations with 1,000 employees lose roughly $25 million annually in lost productivity just from people searching for information that should be easy to find.

That stat hit me hard. I was running my first startup with 21 people. If we were losing productivity at that rate, we couldn't afford NOT to fix this.

The solution? Building a single source of truth, or SSOT if you want to sound smart at meetings.

I'm Yuval, founder and CEO of Glitter AI. After years of dealing with scattered information across multiple startups, I figured out how to create a centralized knowledge system that actually works. Here's everything I wish someone had told me about building a single source of truth.

What Is a Single Source of Truth (SSOT)?

A single source of truth is the practice of aggregating all your organization's data and information into one centralized location. It's not a specific tool or software. It's a state of being for your company's information.

Think about it this way: every piece of data, whether customer records, process documentation, company policies, or financial information, has one authoritative version. Not three slightly different versions. Not "well, check with Sarah because she has the latest copy." One version. One place. One truth.

In technical terms, SSOT architecture means that every data element is mastered (or edited) in only one place. If you want to update a customer's email address, there's exactly one place to do it. That change then propagates everywhere else that needs that information.

Without a single source of truth, your data exists in silos. Each department becomes a black box. Marketing has their version of customer data. Sales has theirs. Support has a third version. Nobody knows which one is actually correct.

I've been there. It's exhausting.

Why Your Organization Needs an SSOT Right Now

Let me hit you with some numbers that'll make this real.

49% of employees have trouble locating documents they need to do their jobs. Almost half your team is wasting time every single day searching for information that should take seconds to find.

Knowledge workers spend about 2.5 hours per day, roughly 30% of their workday, searching for information. That's 12.5 hours a week. Over 600 hours a year per person.

And here's the kicker: for a 1,000-person organization, this lost productivity costs approximately $25 million per year.

But the real cost goes beyond just time wasted searching.

What Happens Without a Single Source of Truth

When I was running my first startup, here's what our information chaos looked like:

Duplicate work everywhere. Three people would create similar documentation because they didn't know the other versions existed. We'd waste hours recreating things that already existed somewhere.

Inconsistent decisions. Leadership meetings were a nightmare. Someone would pull numbers from one system, another person had different numbers from a different system, and we'd spend half the meeting arguing about which data was correct instead of making decisions.

Onboarding took forever. New hires would ask where to find information and get five different answers. "Check the shared drive. No wait, it's in Notion. Actually, I think Sarah has the latest version."

Critical knowledge walked out the door. When employees left, their knowledge left with them. We had no way to capture what they knew because it lived in their heads and was scattered across 17 different tools.

Customer experience suffered. Support would give one answer, sales would promise something different, and the actual product capabilities were yet another thing. Our customers got whiplash.

What Changes With an SSOT

When you implement a proper single source of truth:

• Everyone works from the same data. No more "well, my numbers show..." Everyone sees the same truth.
• Decision-making gets faster. You spend time making decisions, not arguing about which data to trust.
• Onboarding becomes smooth. New employees know exactly where to find information. No treasure hunts required.
• Knowledge stays with the company. When someone leaves, their expertise doesn't leave with them because it's documented in your SSOT.
• Customer experience improves. Everyone in your company has access to the same information about customers, products, and processes.

Understanding SSOT: Data vs. Documentation

Here's something that confused me when I first learned about single source of truth: there are really two types of SSOT that organizations need.

SSOT for Data

This is what most people think of when they hear "single source of truth." It's about having one authoritative source for structured data:

• Customer data: CRM systems like Salesforce or HubSpot serve as the SSOT for customer information
• Financial data: Your accounting system (QuickBooks, NetSuite, etc.) is the SSOT for financial records
• Inventory data: ERP systems centralize supply chain and inventory information
• Employee data: HRIS platforms manage personnel information

The key principle: if someone wants to know a customer's email address, there's exactly one place to look. If you need to update it, you update it in that one place.

SSOT for Knowledge and Documentation

This is the type that saved my sanity. It's about having one place for process knowledge, documentation, and how-to information:

• How do we onboard new customers?
• What's our refund policy and how do we process refunds?
• How do we handle customer support escalations?
• What's the process for approving expenses?

This type of SSOT lives in tools like:

• Internal wikis (Notion, Confluence)
• Knowledge bases (Document360, Guru)
• Process documentation platforms (like Glitter AI)
• Company intranets
• Internal knowledge base tools designed specifically for teams

Most organizations need both types of SSOT. Your CRM handles customer data. Your knowledge base handles "how we do things."

Common Examples of Single Source of Truth Systems

Let me show you what SSOT looks like in practice across different business functions.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM)

Tools: Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive

Your CRM is the SSOT for everything customer-related. Contact information, deal status, communication history, customer preferences. It all lives here. If sales needs to know when a customer last contacted support, they check the CRM. If support needs to see what a customer purchased, they check the CRM.

When I implemented this at my first startup, we went from "let me check my email for that customer's info" to everyone having instant access to complete customer context.

Knowledge Management Systems

Tools: Notion, Confluence, Document360, internal wikis

This is where your company knowledge base lives. Standard operating procedures, onboarding guides, company policies, training materials. All centralized.

The key is making sure everyone knows THIS is where documentation lives. Not in random Google Docs. Not in Slack threads. Here.

Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP)

Tools: SAP, Oracle NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics

ERP systems bring together data from finance, inventory, supply chain, and operations. They provide a holistic view of business performance, serving as the SSOT for operational data.

Project Management Platforms

Tools: Asana, Monday.com, Jira

For project status, task assignments, and workflow tracking, your project management tool becomes the SSOT. No more "I thought you were working on that" confusion.

Version Control Systems

Tools: GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket

For development teams, version control systems serve as the SSOT for code. There's one authoritative version of the codebase, with clear history of all changes.

The pattern you'll notice: one tool per domain. Not three different systems trying to manage the same information.

How to Build a Single Source of Truth: Step-by-Step

Okay, so you're convinced you need an SSOT. How do you actually build one? Here's the process I followed, mistakes included.

Step 1: Audit Your Current Information Landscape

Before you fix the problem, understand how bad it really is.

I spent a week mapping out every place we stored information:

• 3 different Google Drive folders (with overlap)
• Notion workspace (poorly organized)
• Slack channels (where critical decisions got lost)
• Email attachments (chaos)
• People's local computers (terrifying)
• An old wiki nobody updated
• Random Google Docs that people shared ad-hoc

Write down every tool, every repository, every place where information lives. Ask your team. They'll tell you about systems you didn't even know existed.

Step 2: Choose Your SSOT Platform(s)

You need to pick the centralized platforms that will serve as your single source of truth.

For data: Choose based on your business needs:

• CRM for customer data
• Accounting software for financial data
• HRIS for employee data
• ERP for operational data (if you're at that scale)

For documentation and knowledge: Pick ONE platform and commit to it:

• Notion or Confluence for general knowledge management
• Document360 or similar for more structured documentation
• Glitter AI for process documentation (shameless plug, but it's what I built specifically for this problem)

Whether you choose an online knowledge base or an internal team knowledge base, the key is committing to one corporate knowledge base system.

The key: don't try to use multiple tools for the same type of information. Pick one. Make it the source of truth.

Step 3: Migrate and Consolidate Information

This is the hard part. You need to move information from scattered locations into your SSOT.

I recommend a phased approach:

Phase 1: Critical information first. Start with the documentation and data people need most often:

• Customer onboarding processes
• Common support procedures
• Sales playbooks
• Training documentation

Phase 2: Department by department. Don't try to migrate everything at once. Pick one department, consolidate their information, get them using the SSOT, then move to the next department.

Phase 3: Legacy information. For old documentation that's rarely accessed, you can either migrate it slowly or mark it as archived in the old location with a pointer to the new SSOT.

Step 4: Establish Governance and Ownership

Here's where most SSOT implementations fail: nobody takes ownership of keeping information updated.

You need:

Clear owners for different information domains. At my startup:

• Marketing owned customer-facing documentation
• Support owned internal process guides
• Engineering owned technical documentation
• Operations owned company policies

Update processes. Make it crystal clear:

• How to request updates to documentation
• Who approves changes
• How often information gets reviewed for accuracy

Permissions and access control. Not everyone needs to edit everything, but everyone should be able to find what they need.

Step 5: Create Clear Documentation Standards

If everyone documents things differently, your SSOT becomes chaos in a centralized location. Congratulations?

Create standards for:

Naming conventions. "Customer Onboarding Process v2 final FINAL (1)" is not a name. Use clear, consistent naming.

Structure and formatting. Templates help. A lot. Every process doc should follow the same basic structure.

Metadata and tagging. Make information findable. Tags, categories, proper organization. It matters.

I learned this the hard way when our Notion turned into a well-organized mess because nobody followed any standards.

Step 6: Integrate Systems Where Possible

Your SSOT doesn't mean every piece of data lives in one physical database. It means data flows between systems in a way that maintains one source of truth.

Example: Your CRM is the SSOT for customer data, but your support tool needs access to that data. Instead of maintaining separate customer records in both places, integrate them. The CRM owns the data, the support tool pulls from it.

Common integration approaches:

• APIs: systems talk to each other in real-time
• Enterprise Service Bus (ESB): middleware that helps systems communicate
• Master Data Management (MDM): specialized systems for managing core data entities

For most small to medium businesses, basic API integrations are enough. Don't overcomplicate it.

Step 7: Train Your Team and Enforce Usage

Build it and they will NOT come. You need to actively drive adoption.

Training sessions. Show people how to use the SSOT. Where to find information, how to search, how to update documentation.

Make it the official source. When someone asks a question in Slack that's answered in your SSOT, don't just answer. Link to the documentation and encourage them to check there first.

Lead by example. If leadership doesn't use the SSOT, nobody else will. I made it a rule that I would only reference information from our SSOT in meetings.

Celebrate wins. When the SSOT solves a problem, like a new hire finding information without asking anyone, celebrate it publicly.

Step 8: Maintain and Update Regularly

A single source of truth is not a one-time project. It requires ongoing maintenance.

Set up:

• Regular review cycles (quarterly works well)
• Process for flagging outdated information
• Easy ways for people to suggest updates
• Accountability for keeping documentation current

I learned this when our carefully built documentation became useless six months later because nobody updated it as processes evolved.

Challenges You'll Face (And How to Overcome Them)

Let's be real: building an SSOT is hard. Here are the obstacles I ran into and how I dealt with them.

Challenge 1: Resistance to Change

People are comfortable with their current systems, even if those systems are terrible.

How I dealt with it: Start with the pain points. Find the people who are most frustrated by scattered information and get them on board first. Once they start seeing benefits, they become advocates.

Don't force everyone to change overnight. Let early adopters demonstrate the value, then expand.

Challenge 2: Integration Complexity

Organizations average more than 400 data sources. Global businesses can have over 1,000. Connecting everything is a massive undertaking.

How I dealt with it: Don't try to integrate everything. Start with your most critical systems, usually CRM, accounting, and your main operational tools. The 80/20 rule applies here: 20% of integrations will solve 80% of your problems.

For smaller organizations, sometimes manual updates to maintain SSOT are acceptable short-term while you build out integrations.

Challenge 3: Legacy Systems

You've got commercial off-the-shelf software from vendors that can't be easily modified. Each system maintains its own version of data.

How I dealt with it: Accept that perfect SSOT is often impossible. Focus on making one system the authoritative source and having other systems pull from it, even if it's not real-time.

For truly legacy systems that can't integrate, sometimes the answer is replacing them. I know that's a big decision, but the cost of maintaining data chaos might be higher than the cost of migration.

Challenge 4: Data Quality Issues

Garbage in, garbage out. If your SSOT has inaccurate, incomplete, or outdated information, people will stop trusting it and go back to their own sources.

How I dealt with it: Data cleanup before migration. Yes, it's tedious. Yes, it takes time. But you can't skip it.

Then establish processes to maintain data quality:

• Validation rules
• Regular audits
• Easy ways for people to flag incorrect information
• Clear ownership for data accuracy

Challenge 5: Ongoing Maintenance

Keeping documentation updated is the challenge that kills most SSOT initiatives.

How I dealt with it: Make updating as easy as possible. If updating documentation requires submitting a ticket to IT and waiting three weeks, it won't happen.

I also tied documentation maintenance to people's regular work. When you update a process, updating the documentation is part of the same task, not a separate thing to do "later."

Challenge 6: Cost and Resources

Building an SSOT requires investment in tools, integration, and skilled people.

How I dealt with it: Start small and prove ROI. You don't need to implement a full enterprise SSOT on day one. Pick one area, maybe knowledge sharing or customer data, fix it, measure the impact, then expand.

Calculate the cost of NOT having an SSOT (lost productivity, duplicated work, poor decisions) and suddenly the investment doesn't look so bad.

SSOT Best Practices I Learned the Hard Way

After building (and rebuilding) SSOT systems across multiple companies, here's what actually works:

Start with High-Impact, Low-Complexity Areas

Don't try to consolidate your entire enterprise data architecture on day one. Pick something that:

• Causes significant pain when scattered (high impact)
• Doesn't require massive technical integration (low complexity)

Customer onboarding documentation was my sweet spot. Huge pain point, relatively easy to centralize.

Make Search Ridiculously Good

If people can't find information in your SSOT, they'll go back to asking colleagues or maintaining their own documents.

Invest in search functionality:

• Tags and categorization
• Full-text search
• Filters
• Related content suggestions

Keep It Simple

The more complex your SSOT, the less likely people will use it.

I've seen companies build elaborate taxonomy structures with 47 categories and subcategories. Nobody can figure out where anything goes.

Start simple. Add complexity only when necessary.

Mobile Access Matters

If your team can only access the SSOT from their desks, it's not truly a single source of truth.

Make sure your SSOT is accessible from phones and tablets. Your support team answering customer calls needs mobile access. Your operations team on the warehouse floor needs mobile access.

Version Control and Change History

People need to see what changed and when. It builds trust in the system and helps troubleshoot when something breaks.

Every update should be logged:

• What changed
• Who changed it
• When it changed
• Why it changed (if significant)

Sunset Old Systems Definitively

Here's where I made a big mistake: we built our SSOT but left the old systems accessible "just in case."

People kept using the old systems.

When you move to an SSOT, shut down the old repositories. Make them read-only. Give people a migration period, then force the switch.

If you don't, you'll just have scattered information in a NEW set of tools.

Measuring SSOT Success

How do you know if your single source of truth is actually working? Track these metrics:

Time to Find Information

Measure how long it takes employees to find critical information before and after SSOT implementation. This was the metric that convinced our CFO the project was worth it. We cut average search time from 18 minutes to 3 minutes.

Documentation Usage

Track:

• Number of searches per day
• Most accessed documents
• Number of unique users per week

Low usage means people aren't adopting the SSOT.

Duplicate Information Instances

Count how many versions of the same information exist across your organization. Your goal is one. Track this over time. It should decrease.

Time to Onboard New Employees

How long until new hires are productive? A good SSOT dramatically reduces onboarding time because new employees can find information themselves instead of constantly asking questions.

We cut onboarding time from 6 weeks to 3 weeks after implementing our SSOT.

Support Ticket Reduction

If your SSOT includes good documentation, you should see fewer "how do I..." questions to support or IT.

Decision-Making Speed

Track how long it takes to make data-driven decisions in leadership meetings. When everyone's looking at the same data, decisions happen faster.

Tools and Technologies for Building an SSOT

Let me break down the actual tools you might use, based on what I've implemented and what I've seen work at other companies.

For Customer Data (CRM)

Salesforce: The 800-pound gorilla. Powerful, expensive, sometimes overkill for smaller companies.

HubSpot: Great for small to medium businesses. Good free tier to start.

Pipedrive: Simpler, more focused on sales pipeline.

For Knowledge Management

Notion: Flexible, modern, great for startups. Can get messy as you scale if not carefully organized.

Confluence: More structured, better for larger organizations, integrates with Atlassian tools.

Document360: Purpose-built knowledge base software. Good for customer-facing and internal documentation. Works well as an online knowledge base for distributed teams.

Glitter AI: What I built specifically for process documentation. Screen record while doing tasks, AI creates the documentation automatically. Solves the "nobody has time to document" problem.

For Project Management

Asana: Clean interface, great for teams under 100 people.

Monday.com: Very visual, highly customizable.

Jira: Standard for software development teams.

For File Storage

Google Drive: Works, but needs strict folder structure and governance.

Dropbox Business: Better version control features.

SharePoint: If you're already in the Microsoft ecosystem.

For Integration

Zapier: No-code integration tool. Great for simple connections.

Make (formerly Integromat): More powerful than Zapier for complex workflows.

MuleSoft: Enterprise-grade ESB for complex data integration.

The key: pick fewer tools, not more. Each tool you add is another potential silo.

Real-World SSOT Example: How I Built One at Glitter AI

Let me show you exactly how I implemented SSOT at Glitter AI, mistakes and all.

The Starting Point

When we started Glitter AI, we had:

• Customer data split between HubSpot (marketing) and a homegrown CRM (sales)
• Product documentation in Google Docs
• Support processes in Notion
• Engineering docs in GitHub wiki
• Company policies in... honestly, I'm not sure where half of them were

Chaos from day one.

The Implementation

Step 1: Customer Data SSOT

I made HubSpot our single source of truth for all customer information. We killed the homegrown CRM (painful but necessary) and migrated everything to HubSpot.

Rule: If you need customer data, you check HubSpot. If you update customer data, you update it in HubSpot. No exceptions.

Step 2: Knowledge and Process Documentation SSOT

We chose Notion as our main knowledge hub. Everything goes here:

• Company policies
• HR procedures
• Sales playbooks
• Support processes

But here's where we hit a problem: nobody had time to write documentation. Our team was moving too fast.

That's actually what led me to build Glitter AI's core feature. You screen record yourself doing a task while explaining it, and AI generates the documentation automatically. Now creating docs for our SSOT takes minutes instead of hours.

Step 3: Engineering Documentation SSOT

GitHub remained the SSOT for code and technical documentation. We didn't try to move this to Notion because GitHub's designed for this purpose.

One exception: High-level architecture decisions and non-technical explanations of how systems work went into Notion so non-engineers could access them.

Step 4: Integration

We integrated:

• HubSpot with our support tool (so support could see customer history)
• Notion with Slack (so documentation surfaced in conversations)
• GitHub with our project management tool (so code changes linked to tasks)

Not perfect, but good enough.

The Results

After six months:

• Time to onboard new team members: down from 4 weeks to 1.5 weeks
• "Where is that document?" Slack messages: dropped by 78%
• Duplicate documentation: went from 23 instances we knew about to zero
• Leadership meeting efficiency: improved noticeably (no more arguing about which data to trust)

Worth the effort? Absolutely.

What I'd Do Differently

If I rebuilt our SSOT today:

1. I'd be more ruthless about sunsetting old tools. We left Google Drive accessible too long and people kept putting stuff there.
2. I'd establish documentation standards on day one. We had to reorganize Notion twice because early docs were a mess.
3. I'd assign clear ownership immediately. For the first few months, nobody felt responsible for keeping things updated.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is a single source of truth in simple terms?

A single source of truth (SSOT) means that every piece of data or information in your organization has one authoritative version in one central location. Instead of having customer data scattered across three different systems with slight variations, you have one system that everyone trusts as the "truth."

What's the difference between SSOT and centralized storage?

SSOT goes beyond just centralized storage. You could have everything in Google Drive (centralized) but still have five different versions of the same document (not SSOT). SSOT means not just centralization, but having ONE authoritative version of each piece of information with clear processes for maintaining it.

How long does it take to implement a single source of truth?

It depends on your organization size and complexity. For a small startup (under 50 people), you can implement basic SSOT for knowledge management in 4-8 weeks. For larger enterprises with multiple systems to integrate, it can take 6-12 months or longer. Start with one high-impact area rather than trying to do everything at once.

What are the biggest mistakes organizations make with SSOT?

The biggest mistakes I've seen: (1) Trying to do everything at once instead of starting small, (2) Not establishing clear ownership and maintenance processes, (3) Making the SSOT too complex to use, (4) Leaving old systems accessible so people keep using them, and (5) Treating it as a one-time project instead of an ongoing practice.

Can small businesses benefit from SSOT or is it just for enterprises?

Small businesses might benefit MORE from SSOT than enterprises. When you only have 10-20 people, you can't afford to have them wasting hours searching for information. The implementation is also simpler. You don't need enterprise software or complex integrations. Start with a good knowledge base and clear documentation practices.

How do you maintain data quality in an SSOT?

Data quality requires: (1) Clear ownership, specific people responsible for specific data domains, (2) Validation rules, automated checks for data accuracy, (3) Regular audits, scheduled reviews of critical information, (4) Easy update processes, if updating is hard, it won't happen, and (5) Training, people need to understand why data quality matters and how to maintain it.

What happens if the SSOT system goes down?

This is a valid concern. Mitigate it with: (1) Choose reliable, cloud-based platforms with high uptime SLAs, (2) Have backup access to critical information, (3) Regular backups of your SSOT data, and (4) Redundancy for mission-critical systems. That said, having scattered information across 17 different tools has its own reliability problems.

How do you get employees to actually use the SSOT?

Make it easier to use the SSOT than not to use it. When someone asks a question answered in your SSOT, link to the documentation instead of just answering. Make the SSOT the official source. If it's not in the SSOT, it's not official. Celebrate people who use and contribute to it. Most importantly, make sure leadership uses it consistently.

Your Next Steps for Building an SSOT

Look, building a single source of truth isn't sexy work. It's not going to make headlines or impress investors.

But it might be one of the highest-ROI projects you undertake.

Remember those statistics from the beginning? Organizations with 1,000 employees lose $25 million annually from poor knowledge management. Even if you're smaller, scale that down. If you have 50 employees, you're probably losing over $1 million in productivity every year.

That's money you could get back by implementing an SSOT.

Here's what I recommend:

This week: Audit where your information currently lives. Just make a list. You'll probably be horrified. Good. That's the first step.

This month: Pick ONE high-impact area to consolidate. Maybe it's customer data. Maybe it's your onboarding documentation. Pick something that causes real pain when scattered.

This quarter: Implement SSOT for that one area. Choose your platform, migrate information, train your team, establish ownership.

This year: Expand to other critical information domains systematically.

You don't need to boil the ocean. You need to stop hemorrhaging productivity on information chaos.

By the way (shameless plug incoming), if your biggest barrier to building an SSOT is "we don't have time to create documentation," that's literally the problem I built Glitter AI to solve. You screen record yourself doing a task while talking through it, and AI generates the documentation automatically. Minutes instead of hours.

But whether you use Glitter AI or some other tool, the important thing is to start.

Your future self, and your team, will thank you.

Yuval / Founder & CEO, Glitter AI