When starting a new business, disconnected data is not something most people consider. Oftentimes, ensuring you have systems that integrate with each other is simply not the priority. Many companies will choose software for basic accounting, like QuickBooks to get started. They then use spreadsheets, such as Excel for much of their data. As the company grows, they continue to add systems to assist with various parts of their business. Eventually, they'll realize they have data in numerous siloed systems. Suddenly, they don't know how to connect these systems to get holistic insights. This can lead to financial loss and stunted growth of the company.
The Cost of Disconnected Systems
When data disconnects are present, companies will have difficulty scaling and growing. This can inhibit their flexibility, productivity, budgeting, and planning and can slow the company's overall growth.
Major Costs
- Lack of Employee Productivity
When data is in various, disconnected systems, it becomes difficult to keep track of it all. Oftentimes employees must manually enter data, which can lead to data loss, an increase in errors, and precious time taken away from more important, core tasks. - No Real-Time Data Leading to Lack of Meaningful Insights
When financial systems are disconnected, it is impossible to come up with meaningful insights in a reasonable amount of time. For example, if you have your accounting and bookkeeping in one system, track transactions in another, and use yet another for budgeting and forecasting, it becomes impossible to see the big picture in real-time. It can take too long to source, extract, and analyze the data leaving important financial insights up to chance. In fact, 46% of business leaders say disconnected document processes impair their ability to plan, forecast, and budget because of lack of visibility. This can lead to major missed growth opportunities and put a big dent in a company's bottom line. - Integration Complexity & Cost
Eventually, to make sense of the siloed data, integration becomes a topic of conversation. At this point, there are multiple systems that don't "talk to each other" and the company needs a solution so they can continue to grow. The next step is to ask IT to find a solution to connect all of these systems. This wastes valuable time and money where IT could be working on more important tasks. Furthermore, it isn't a one-time setup and done. It takes time to maintain and anytime a new version of any of the software system releases, IT would have to create new connections. This leads to both wasted time and skyrocketing maintenance costs.
Why Integration is Important to Avoid Disconnected Data
I know what you're thinking. I've just told you data integration can be expensive and time-consuming. While this is true, we have also seen why having connected data is incredibly important. However, we don't want you to reinvent the wheel and try to transfer all of your company's financial data to an entirely new system. The key is finding a solution that frees up your IT team to do what they do best, while also having real-time, meaningful insights. That is where DataBlend comes in. We can quickly and easily set up connections between all of your financial systems so you always have up-to-date information at your fingertips. This means you can choose the best individual solutions for each aspect of your company while not having to worry about how they can integrate.