Smart City Locating · Acktiv Digital · August 2026

Open decisions

Three threads of design work exist for Smart City. All of it is paid for and none of it is currently moving. Every one is blocked on a decision rather than on design or engineering time. This page lists what exists, what is already settled, and the specific questions that would unblock each thread.

Three threads, stopped at three different points for three unrelated reasons. Only one of them is a design question, and it is already answered.

Thread 1

Action Planner

Awaiting a build decision

20 screens across three walkthroughs, reviewed by the team on 28 May 2026. A costed build menu with three tiers was delivered on the same day. No tier was ever selected.

20 screens · 3 build tiers priced · 0 selected
Open the walkthrough →
Thread 2

Agent Money

Paused since April

Four of eight screens delivered 8 April 2026, all approved through Checkpoint 3. Held for a post-launch review that has not taken place in four months.

4 of 8 screens delivered · 0 shipped
See the delivered design →
Thread 3

Property search

Largely delivered

Search and responsive CRM patterns designed across 2025, including five user-testing sessions with Smart City agents. Confirmed on 17 August: most features are built and in staging, with the full prop build still in progress. No major open UX questions.

171.5 hours · 5 research sessions · in staging
No open decisions

Cost per acquisition cannot be calculated from the current data model

This is not a reporting problem or a dashboard problem. Cost per acquisition is spend divided by acquisitions, and the figure is only meaningful next to the attempts that did not convert. In the current model a request record is created when a placement succeeds. The attempts that went nowhere are therefore not in the data at all.

There is no denominator. No amount of BI tooling or dashboard work produces the number, because the entity that would carry it does not exist yet. This is the reason a competent team can spend a call on it and not converge.

Move from a single request to opportunity as an attribute or state, so every client is tracked yearly regardless of whether they re-lease. Right now data is skewed because requests only open when a placement succeeds. Acktiv working notes, 28 May 2026, following the pipeline walkthrough with Dustin, Luke and Ben

The same constraint was named from the other direction in that meeting: "did the client you could have helped this year go with you or not, and why not?" That question and cost per acquisition are the same question. Neither is answerable until an opportunity can exist in an unconverted state.

The surface for it was scoped and never built. The company-forecasting roll-up frame rolls agent annual goals against the company sales target and marketing's lead target, which is where acquisition cost becomes visible and actionable rather than merely reported.

These decisions are not a checklist. They are a chain, and answering them out of order wastes build time. Anything to the right of an unanswered question gets built on an assumption that may not hold.

Answer first
Becomes possible
Then these unlock
Can an opportunity exist without a placement?
The data-model question. Everything downstream inherits the answer.
Is marketing spend attributable to lead source?
Inside the system, or outside it.
A CPA definition everyone trusts
One number, one owner, one method.
Opportunity and funnel state
Tracks the misses, not only the wins.
Company forecasting roll-up
Designed 28 May. Never built. The acquisition-cost surface.
Annual goals and seasonality
Seven frames designed. The cornerstone gap from the May call.
Cold-lead reactivation
Around 500,000 leads with no prioritisation logic.

Agent Money sits outside this chain. It depends on one unrelated question, whether the comp plan shipped as designed, and it can move in parallel the moment that is answered.

Each of these is a business, data or ownership question. None of them is a design question. Design decisions are already made and documented; these are the ones only Smart City can answer.

Is a request record created only when a placement succeeds, or can it exist in an unconverted state today?
Owner: Jason Blocks the entire chain
This single answer determines whether cost per acquisition is a reporting exercise or a data-model change. If unconverted opportunities cannot exist, no dashboard will ever produce a trustworthy CPA figure, and the first piece of work is modelling rather than interface.
Unblocks: CPA definition, funnel state, forecasting roll-up, annual goals, cold-lead prioritisation
Does the CRM store per-agent prior-year lead counts?
Owner: Dustin Open since June
Every forward-looking comparison in the annual-goal design assumes this exists. If it does not, those comparisons need replacing with something measurable before the screens are built rather than after.
Unblocks: Set the Year, Year View, seasonality weighting
Once CPA is defined, who publishes it and who is accountable to it?
Owner: leadership Adoption risk
A metric with no owner does not survive contact with a quarter. This decides whether the forecasting work becomes an operating rhythm or another dashboard nobody opens.
Unblocks: forecasting roll-up scope, GM and team-lead views
Is the annual-goal system a leadership tool or an agent tool?
Owner: Dustin and Jason
The same screens serve both, but not at the same time. Agent-first means goal setting, pacing and personal seasonality. Leadership-first means aggregation, gap detection and marketing demand. Answering this halves the build.
Unblocks: the seven forward-planning frames, build sequencing
Which build tier is Action Planner: MVP, Bridge or Full?
Owner: Jason Open since 28 May
Three tiers were priced and presented in May. The MVP tier delivers the core value with no AI dependency at all, which was designed deliberately so a build could start before any model, vendor or compliance question is settled.
Unblocks: all 20 Action Planner screens, dev-ready specification
If calculations move out of the CRM into Tableau, what does the Agent Money page become?
Owner: Jason Raised 17 Aug
The direction discussed was CRM as system of record with reporting in Tableau. That is an architecture decision that changes what the delivered screens are for. If the agent-facing view stays in the CRM it is a display surface reading from elsewhere, and the four finished screens still stand. If agents are sent to Tableau instead, the page is a different product and the designs need revisiting rather than building.
Unblocks: whether the four delivered screens are buildable as-is
Did the new comp plan ship as designed?
Owner: Smart City Open since April Parallel track, not gated by the chain
Four finished screens are waiting on this. If tiers and splits are unchanged they can go to a developer as they are. If they moved, the screens need revision first. Ten minutes to answer, four months unanswered.
Unblocks: the remaining four Agent Money screens

Everything below has been delivered and reviewed. Nothing here is a proposal.

What happens next

The fastest path is not a build. It is a short, defined engagement that settles the opportunity-state question and the CPA definition, confirms what the CRM already stores, and produces a sequenced plan with the first tier scoped for development.

That work turns six open questions into a set of decisions with owners and dates, and it makes the existing 24 screens buildable rather than theoretical. Everything above was designed against the live SC-CRM design system, so nothing needs to be redrawn to start.

Pick this up →