Often business owners take a reactionary approach to running their business instead of approaching it systematically, which means that the bulk of day-to-day responsibilities rest on the business owners’ shoulders, and tasks get done in an ad-hoc or unorganized manner.
Embracing a single, centralised system allows you to see accurate, real-time data, so you can anticipate and react to changes as they occur. When you’ve got multiple systems competing, a unified and single view of all of your corporate data simply isn’t possible and this leads to decreased productivity, increased hours, increased costs and lack of collaboration and understanding between teams.
Competing systems lead to inefficiency
While process systemisation is all well and good, the problem many businesses face is an overload of systems which, at first glance, may seem to work well together but actually end up causing inefficiency.
In the last 25 years, technological development and IT have greatly advanced, and most business operations have software programs such as digital calendars, CRMs, email replacements, cloud storage, office productivity suites, and performance management at their centre. These programs were developed to make life easier for businesses, but as these businesses grow they have a tendency to slowly add more and more software until employees are confused and stressed, data is lost, and customers simply aren’t receiving the excellent service you strive to provide.
Having one system makes life easier for all of your employees since the learning curve for new staff is greatly reduced. When all processes are in the same database, team member only need to learn the one system, instead of figuring out multiple systems and switching between them throughout the day.
When all of your information is in a centralised system, it’s much easier for you to develop reports- giving you complete operational visibility. Multiple databases may result in duplicate records and missing information. A centralized systems allows you to achieve data integrity- meaning changes are updated across all systems automatically and all information is up-to-date.
Embracing a single, centralised system allows you to see accurate, real-time data, so you can anticipate and react to changes as they occur. When you’ve got multiple systems competing, a unified and single view of all of your corporate data simply isn’t possible and this leads to decreased productivity, increased hours, increased costs and lack of collaboration and understanding between teams.
By streamlining your critical business processes, you can ensure that your software system works for you, your employees, and the needs of your business. That means your ideas, rules and terminology are all taken into account in the development stage of the process, and systems are put into place that allow your business to run easily and effectively, even when you’re not in the office.
Upgrading outdated applications is essential for business growth
Once you’ve survived the early stages of your business systems and you’re focusing on growth, it’s easy to postpone switching to a centralised system, even when taking the benefits of systemising into account.
While it’s essential to replace your outdated systems before they reach their limits, many business owners are concerned about the time required to make the change. Projects like this usually involve reviewing existing and future processes, change management, training and much more.
However, it’s important to remember that the gains that come with switching to a single, centralised software system will lead to growth as you enjoy productivity, happier employees and customers, secure data, operational efficiency, and operational visibility.
Making the proactive decision to systemise and streamline your business by switching to a centralised system may seem like a big task, but the benefits far outweigh the costs. If you’d like to see how replacing your existing system (or systems) with a centralised, streamlined approach can amp up your business growth this year, get in touch with Intergy today.
If you think that creating order out of the chaos will help your business grow faster, get in touch today for business systemisation. At Intergy, we provide leadership in innovation while remaining highly competitive. Our passion is transforming our SME partners through digital software solutions.
