Challenges of a Complex Business Environment
When you start a business you never know if it is going to still be there the next day. Over a few years you realize that you are starting to get productivity bottle necks; whether it looks like it or not it is a form of success. You find that your staff are starting to lose their rag, and your turnaround is much greater; in itself a major challenge to resolve. Why? Because your business has a lot of tacit knowledge that is not explicit, you haven’t recorded it in ‘how to’ videos, policy or business documentation. As soon as they leave your exposed to that stark reality. The success or failure of a business depends on what you do next. You may have liked a smaller cottage industry business but that ship has sailed, so forget about trying to go back it isn’t feasible. So, you have to climb the change step to the next business maturity level.
Change Management
There are two ways to conduct change in a business, a large step change or multiple smaller increments and you will need to decide what is best for you. A large but quick change has a higher feeling of risk but saves you a lot of hassle, or smaller steps that can feel like they go on forever and staff leaving because of the constant irritation of upskilling and not in a comfort zone. At present you are dammed if you do and you are dammed if you don’t so just get on it.
Data Integration tools
At present you are likely using hundreds of different pieces of software, developed tens of websites for marketing campaigns, the main website and have backends for warehouse inventory MRP systems, logistic applications and marketing applications. At the moment everything is a struggle to remember what needs to be updated where, and failure to do this can have clients leaving, or excessively wasting your support team’s time.
You need to use a data integration tool to unify the data you use in different platfo
rms across the entirety of the business to save time, yield better profitability and reduce staff turnaround. These systems provide a ‘single source of truth’ that stops data duplication, reduce backup and system costs from hardware or cloud-service rental space needed to run the business.
These data pipeline tools take the values from the application and aligns it with a defined reusable variable into one database. Furthermore, these tools help mimic business processes and therefore allow administrators to define users, roles, and groups through administration software that straddles the pipelines between the database and user facing applications. By mimicking business processes, non-relevant information can be hidden from users or teams accordingly ensuring information overload doesn’t occur while also enhancing security.
The great thing about data pipeline tools is that some of the more advanced options allow applications to be added with a ‘no coding’ option to speedup role out processes. Thousands of file types are supported and everything from sales and marketing, it and analytics are all aligned throughout a business. As a business is essentially the same as the software and technology it leverages, a unification of applications makes the business a leaner business with less turnaround and much greater productivity. Instead of entering data in a dozen different places to get a product sold and shipped, it now only needs to be added once.
Data pipeline tool; the future of business
No matter what your business is, data pipeline tools can make it leaner, reduce staff turnaround and reduce wasted money from duplication activities. One database a system mimicking business workflows, security yet allow different applications to be added can shape your profitability and future growth.
