Web terms SME operators need to understand #3: Integration

How much time do you or your staff waste on menial data entry or duplication?

And how much would your business improve if you could re-purpose the time wasted on data entry and processing into something more constructive and productive?

Chances are, much of your data processing can be eradicated by “integrating” as much of your customer, order and financial information as possible.

It’s a topic we’ve visited in this blog several times before. Because in small business, data duplication tends to run rampant. And both the duplication and the work required to keep all data records up-to-date can be a major waste of time and money.

Customer data running wild

Take your customer data for example. Chances are it resides separately in all of:

• Multiple email address books.
• Sales records.
• Marketing records.
• Old mail merge documents.
• Financial systems.
• Email marketing lists.

Potentially a range of others.

Worse still, some of these records may be stored “on paper” instead of digitally, which means they have to be hand-keyed to be able to process them properly.

There are three serious issues with this scenario.

First, each record requires time in either keying or copying and pasting. Second, every time the information changes it has to be changed in several places, multiplying the processing time each time. Third, every time a piece of information is handled, it increases the chances of an error being made – which in turn could lead to a serious miscommunication and yet more time spent finding and rectifying the source.

So it’s quite obvious that data duplication should be eradicated as much as possible.

Integration a boon for organisations large and small

The great news is that the one-time pipedream of integration – a single, organisation-wide depository of data, can actually be achieved quite affordably – even for smaller organisations.

Integration has become a “hot” spot in the digital arena. Technology organisations have heard the cry from business operators about the waste the data duplication within their organisations and have responded with a range of applications and system “connectors”.

Now it’s quite possible to have the same customer data that was entered as an opt-in to an email newsletter, be used to generate a sale, provide an invoice and be recorded in financial systems without a single cut and paste.

The “Holy Grail” of customer record-keeping – Total Data Integration. All parts of the organisation draw customer data from a single source.

Better still, it can now happen automatically in real (or close to real) time.

Inventory another sore point

Another topical area where integration is becoming vital is with retail inventory. Given that sales can now come from a range of channels, retailers can quickly be caught short of product if their inventory systems fail to keep up with sales emanating from all sources.

Therefore, it’s important that website sales are integrated with inventory systems so as to avoid this embarrassing and time-consuming issue.

So next time you are looking at a website, or a database, or an email marketing system, or a financial system, it’s important to look beyond its core functionality and assess its capacity to be integrated with other data sources – in as close to real time as possible.

While it may take some short-term pain to achieve a truly integrated system, the productivity gains will be more than worthwhile.

Have you had a bad experience due to a lack of data integration? Tell us all about it by commenting below.

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.