Systems integration: how absence can affect a team

Agility, innovation, and collaboration are three terms widely discussed in corporate environments today. This is because they characterize high-performing teams that truly generate value for organizations operating in today's complex and competitive environment. But to collaborate, be agile, and innovate, team members need technologies that simplify their routines.

Data from January 13, 2024, 4-minute read. By: Skyone

This isn't possible with old and obsolete tools that don't allow for system integration and end up hindering the exchange of information and data within a business. With these tools, instead of generating value for the business, the team ends up causing losses, even if that wasn't their intention. In today's post, we'll show how the lack of system and tool integration can harm team performance and, consequently, the company's performance. Check it out:

Failure to integrate systems makes collaboration and data sharing impossible

Older systems, created 7, 10, or 15 years ago, generally operate in isolation and do not allow integration with other tools. Accounting software, for example, does not integrate with the financial control system. This ends up forcing the accounting and finance departments to work separately, sending each other physical spreadsheets and reports with the data to be processed.

Not integrating systems is highly detrimental to a business's productivity, as it requires professionals to spend more time writing or typing data into spreadsheets than focusing on activities that truly generate value for the business. The lack of information sharing, in turn, prevents departments from working together and collaborating to generate better results.

Increasing the chances of errors and rework occurring

If team members or different departments within a company don't speak the same language, the chances of them making mistakes and generating rework increase dramatically. This rework leads them to perform the same task or process two or more times, wasting a significant amount of time, thus reducing their performance and compromising business results.

These errors typically occur during data transfer . If a colleague enters incorrect data into a spreadsheet and sends it to a professional in another department, the latter will also make the same mistake. In other words, a single error can impact several departments. Only with integrated systems can manual data transfer be avoided, allowing for error-free data sharing.

Preventing team members from innovating

Collaboration and constant, real-time information exchange are two factors that contribute to a team gaining greater innovation capacity and creating better products or services. And because a lack of integration prevents collaboration and the rapid sharing of information, the team ends up not innovating as it should, hindering the company from gaining a better market position.

If the IT team, for example, doesn't have access to data related to the experience of current customers and the desires of potential customers, collected by the support and sales teams, it ends up not knowing what the public wants. And without this information, it won't be able to innovate to create something that truly exceeds the expectations of current and future customers, nor contribute to generating value and increasing the company's revenue.

To avoid all these problems, the company should resort to integration through cloud computing, which guarantees the integration of systems and applications. With this technology, data flows securely between applications, without any interruptions. This prevents the company from having to manually transfer information and gives it more time to innovate and focus on tasks that will truly generate value.

Are your company's systems and applications already properly integrated? Tell us in the comments.