Are your staff sitting around in a panic-induced sweat, waiting hours for manual information transfer before having to tear through the new workload in record time to meet company deadlines?
Growing companies have a habit of gradually adding new software and applications as deemed necessary. However, since there’s been no forethought to the future, they’re often left with a bunch of systems that won’t talk to each other. This is where system integration (or linking systems together) can create huge advantages.
Systems integration removes the need for manual data entry, resulting in increased productivity and a happier workforce.
If you haven’t put a focus on systems integration, you may be paying a bunch of people you don’t need to, to do things which don’t need to be done! Getting your systems talking automates business processes, reduces errors and streamlines business intelligence, making your organisation more efficient.
According to Gordon Tan, Managing Director of R & G Technologies, “Systems integration is creating links so separate software systems can communicate. For example, if you wanted your accounting system to talk to your CRM system, you’re able to effectively link both systems together so staff can receive information in real time.”
Aside from improving the general mood of the office by making their lives easier, systems integration reduces productivity loss due to inefficient business processes and allows you to redirect labour into other areas of the business. It also helps to streamline operations and makes it quick and easy to conduct business intelligence.
Read on to learn three ways that systems integration can increase your organisation’s productivity.
1. Make faster business decisions
The key to increased productivity in your organisation is getting more done faster, without sacrificing quality. Systems integration means that rapid information transfers between systems happens automatically and usually in real-time.
“System integration enables automatic information flow. Without linked systems, you often find yourself waiting for a monthly report to be produced before you can review results, or information to be transferred onto SharePoint. Linked systems deliver information at a faster rate,” explains Tan.
It ultimately gives staff members the capability to make faster decisions even as information is being entered in real time, leading to better response times to client needs. Rapid information flows reduce the time spent searching for information, whether that’s digging through data copied manually into excel sheets or waiting for next weeks sales report.
Providing real-time information between systems improves your ability for staff to deliver to your clients and also creates a healthier work environment, which ultimately increases your operational efficiency and gives productivity a healthy boost.
Related: 6 ways to increase IT efficiency
2. Reduces "manual data transfer" Errors
If you don’t have linked systems, staff have to manually transfer data from one application to another. In other cases, staff may transfer data in and out of excel sheets to get the desired outcome they need. Not only does this time-consuming task take away manpower from other projects, it also increases the risk of human error.
“Creating automated links between systems means your systems aren’t playing a game of Chinese whispers, transferring progressively more incorrect information from one system to the next,” says Tan.
It decreases the quantity of errors across your system because it removes some of the human, error-prone element. It’s difficult to stay focussed on any boring, repetitive actions such as retyping or copying and pasting data. System Integration means fewer errors being transferred from system to system.
The automated transfer of information mitigates the likelihood of errors getting worse as they’re transferred between systems, and makes them much easier to identify and correct.
3. Better business intelligence
If your systems aren’t integrated, business reporting is often a struggle with inconsistencies, or limited visibility into the organisation.
System integration removes the need to manually gather information from various departments, including data cleansing and typing data into different systems or spreadsheets. Since automated processes mean less overlapping or conflicting information, reports can be rolled out faster with the data more meaningful.
The closer reports are to the date you begin interpreting them, the more relevant and meaningful the analysis. For example, when your systems are capable of quickly showing a dashboard combining data from both the accounting system and CRM including transactions from the last hour, you have an extremely powerful business intelligence platform to power the organisation.
Implementing systems integration streamlines the processes required to get more meaningful data analysis, which can assist in forecasting, decision making and increasing your organisation’s productivity.
Challenges of System Integration
Some business owners struggle with the idea that systems integration can sometimes increase the complexity of your IT environment, but the increase is slight when weighed against the operational and productivity gains.
According to Gordon, a primary concern for business owners is the fear of software integration problems and difficulty at maintaining them.
“The fear is, if a system such as Microsoft CRM or Salesforce experiences a problem or is upgraded, connections written between the systems will break and disrupt all your systems.”
You can prevent minor errors from turning into widespread problems by getting an experienced systems integration engineer involved early in the process.
While systems integration often does increase the complexity of your IT environment, well-documented and best practice design means problems will be minimised.
Keep reading: 4 challenges of strategic IT planning
Should I look at systems integration?
If your organisation’s productivity is hampered by manual data entry, error prone reporting or agonisingly slow business processes, consult an IT consultant like R & G for a solution.
You’ve already spent countless thousands of dollars for solutions catering to individual problems. Don’t waste more time and money with systems that can't talk together. Instead, work with an IT consultant to learn how seamless systems integration could improve your organisation’s productivity.
Interested to learn more ways to improve productivity? I recommend these blog posts:
- 4 ways to improve productivity through better use of technology
- How mobility with the Cloud can boost staff productivity
- Three collaboration tools that can help you increase productivity