Knowledge has long been quoted as a vital form of power. From Francis Bacon’s writings to NBC’s “The More You Know” public service announcements, knowledge is referred to as a form of power currency. This is especially evident in business leadership, as leaders need knowledge for informed decision-making to direct the future of the company. That power to drive forward, then, is fueled by knowledge.

Leaders must have a full understanding of operations across their organization. They can get that knowledge through business software systems. These systems are incredibly beneficial to businesses when integrated correctly. But, if left separated across the organization, these systems could cause some far-reaching and expensive problems.

How Much Does Not Knowing Cost? 

The biggest mistake a company can make is allowing business software to operate in silos. This means that each department or business area has taken an independent approach to business management software systems by purchasing and incorporating their own limited software solutions. That may not seem immediately problematic—until you’re tasked with building a dashboard or database that must represent information outside your department. 

Information silos within departments isolate the different functions of your company from each other. These silos introduce several inefficiencies that ultimately hurt your business and your bottom line. 

Lagging Productivity

In smaller to mid-sized organizations, the issue of siloed business systems can occur if individual departments opt for off-the-shelf solutions that may meet the immediate needs of the department, but do not fully meet the needs of the company. 

This leads to a company with several different business solutions storing data in numerous individual databases. Separate customer information may be found in accounting software, order management systems, sales force databases, and marketing spreadsheets, and the data may not match up across any of the disparate systems. Since the databases are separate and disconnected, employees may end up spending hours manually transferring data from one database to another. 

Prone to Errors

Siloed systems do not speak each other’s language, so data will often need to be transferred or combined manually, opening the door to mis-keyed information. These data-entry errors may create data discrepancies across the company, leading to inaccurate historical records at best, and shipping/order errors which alienate customers and cut into the company’s bottom line at worst. 

Poor Decision-Making

When management can’t see integrated data across multiple systems, it’s very difficult to obtain an accurate 360-degree view of the business. This can be especially problematic for the CEO or CFO who needs to see information correlated across all areas of the business in real-time. 

Without an integrated business management system, it’s impossible to develop dashboards that provide immediate information and help leadership proactively respond to issues the moment they occur.

4 Reasons to Integrate Your Business Management Software Systems 

The difference between a business that has software in silos and one that uses integrated business software is staggering, and many case studies prove the benefits of integrated solutions. A properly leveraged ERP system could provide a company with increased efficiencies, improved customer support, and reduced IT support costs. 

Some of the most significant advantages your organization could see from implementing an integrated solution include: 

1. 360-Degree View

Integrating a business software solution across all departments throughout your organization lets you develop dashboards that wouldn’t have been possible before. With a 360-degree view of the organization, you can customize dashboards and bring in information from all areas relevant to what you need to know. 

With a 360-degree view, a shipping manager could view orders-to-ship compared with current resource demands to determine more accurate delivery dates. Salespeople could view inventory and supply dashboards and provide more accurate promises to customers during sales calls. The CEO or the CFO could customize their own dashboards to see the most important information from every department throughout the company. 

2. Greater Productivity

When information is integrated across the business, meetings are more productive, and teams can make better-informed decisions. 

Troubleshooting issues or performing a risk-analysis is extremely difficult if the decision-making team can’t easily see information from throughout the organization. Teams often need to invest a lot of time and resources into implementing data-collection methods and extracting the information they need to make an educated decision. 

With integrated business management systems, the team can save resources and time by looking at existing dashboards or quickly creating new ones to analyze the issue they’re responsible for. As a result, decisions become more efficient and produce better results. 

3. Reduced IT Costs

When a company must maintain multiple software products across many areas of the organization, it may also place a significant burden on IT resources. 

IT analysts often need to create custom solutions to integrate all the separate databases for the siloed software solutions. Consolidating all these software solutions into a single integrated business management system significantly reduces overall IT costs. 

4. Improved Customer Relationships

An integrated business management solution gives you a complete picture of your organization’s situation. With this integrated access, you can develop better pricing models, provide more accurate delivery dates, and offer customers more timely information. All these things lead to reduced time customers need to spend on the phone, a better overall customer experience, and ultimately more sales.

PositiveVision Provides the Right Business Software Systems for You 

For more than fifteen years, PositiveVision has been helping businesses streamline inefficient processes by leveraging ERP, manufacturing, CRM, and business intelligence software to create the best integration across organizations. 

Every company has specific needs for their business management software. Let PositiveVision help you create the best system possible. Rely on our extensive knowledge and dependable services to install and configure your newly integrated technology to your company’s specific needs. Find out how easy it can be.