SME data duplication losses in plague proportions

It’s one of the biggest time (read: money) wasters for smaller organisations, and it’s happening at a computer near you.

It’s a malaise that could be multiplying your labour costs when a solution is likely to be just some expert advice away.

Data duplication is at plague proportions in SMEs everywhere as a result of the unplanned and uncoordinated adoption of computer programs and systems.

How many places is your customer data hidden in?

Think about client data within your own organisation.

There’s every chance that it could exist in a variety of digital locations throughout your organisation.

And it can be tracked by simply following the sales procedure within the organisation.

Typically it starts with an email address entered by a sales person into their contacts system.

Then it might find its way into a client database as that contact becomes a more likely sales candidate.

Then you might want to add them to your email list for a newsletter, meaning yet another duplication of their data.

Once they do decide to do business with you, their details may go into a job tracking or other product oriented system.

Finally, they may well be entered into your financial or bookkeeping system to keep track of, and account for financial transactions.

So without any effort at all, we’ve identified five likely areas that your business stores different data about a single customer.

And depending on how many ‘touch-points’ you have in your business, chances are there are more.

Duplication leads to errors

Of course it’s easy to guess what happens next. The client will change a detail and all of a sudden your data is wrong in several parts of the organisation, leading to missed communications, sales and worst of all, timely payments.

And the cause of all this data duplication is just as easy to identify.

The problem is that all data systems are in 90% of occasions, not adopted simultaneously.

You might commence your financial system one year, introduce a Customer Relationship Management system the next, then an email broadcast capability and so on.

As all this is going on, procedures for maintaining client data integrity are often an afterthought, leading to a digital dog’s breakfast.

Smaller organisations particularly vulnerable

In larger organisations these issues are often prevented or at least minimised as their IT departments flag future issues and guide their employers accordingly.
But most smaller organisations either don’t have such a resource or don’t feel the change is critical enough to bring it in.

So in most occasions, data integration is a later fix rather than a planned rollout.

So what’s the answer for organisations on a lean budget?

Actually, there are probably two answers.

The first is to bring expertise in as early as possible to assist in planning for future data integrity.

The second is to understand that every new system represents a future duplication, so decisions should be made with future scalability in mind.

What’s important is that action is taken as soon as possible to plug this invasive and often unidentified drain on your resources.

In addition to being a leading eBusiness educator to the smaller business sector, Craig Reardon is the founder and director of independent web services firm The E Team which was established to address the special website and web marketing needs of SMEs in Melbourne and beyond.