8 Issues Caused by Disconnected Business Systems

In previous blog posts, we’ve made the case that disconnected business systems can cause some serious issues for organizations. These issues ultimately lead to wasted time, inaccurate data, weakened performance, and considerable costs.

Why is that? When each department is operating independently with their own processes and systems, the lack of integration makes it impossible to track and measure what’s happening across the organization. Disparate systems collect different data in different ways. This results in different business functions managing to multiple versions of the truth – even when calculating the same metrics.

The most obvious and immediate impact of disconnected systems is on the people in the organization. Disconnected systems create frustration and pain for everyone in the business – billable resources, non-billable staff, managers, and executives. 

The 8 issues caused by disparate systems

• Multiple UX/UI (User Experience/User Interface) models mean that your people need to learn and manage multiple technologies
• These multiple technologies have different security and administration models, resulting in larger budgets for IT and frustration for staff due to user name/password management
• Disconnected and/or manual work processes can lead to redundancy, wasted time, inaccuracies, skipped steps…all of which result in poor work quality.
• Redundant or unnecessary data entry and manipulation leads to wasted time.
• Relying on e-mail to communicate between functions and share data can lead to communication complications and versioning issues with shared documents.
• Multiple systems make accessing data remotely and from various devices a challenge, causing mobility issues.
• There is a hidden cost for training and onboarding staff to multiple UX/UI systems.
• Disconnected systems can lead to poor business insights, which lead to poor business decisions.

Integrating your business systems

All these issues can be solved by connecting your disparate people, processes, and technologies. The goal should be to create one unified, integrated, automated system. Your people won’t have to deal with learning, onboarding, or managing multiple UX/UI technologies and their associated user names/passwords. Additionally, you won’t have to spend the extra time and money training them.

Data entry, retrieval, and reporting will be easy, efficient, and accurate and your employees won’t have to rely on sending data or reports back and forth via email to share information. They will also be able to access their data from whatever device they choose, wherever they are in the world, at any time. Finally, and most importantly, your business leaders will have quality data that provide accurate business insights which lead to sound business decisions.

Read more about the issues that arise from disconnected business systems and how to connect your people, processes, and technology to improve your bottom line.