Under certain circumstances, you want to establish data redundancy. If one server houses all your company’s sensitive information and it gets compromised, you’re in trouble. It’s why IT departments create a series of backups as a standard practice. Backup systems aside, there are cases where data duplication isn’t efficient or desired.
For instance, have you ever discovered multiple systems housing the same information? However, there are inconsistencies between them. Maybe marketing uses a different set of customer contacts for its email list than sales. It can also happen amongst employees in the same department without a centralized platform.
Multiple data sets like this can be a recipe for disaster when various people use them. Nobody can be sure which set is accurate and up to date. Plus, it’s a surefire way for outdated info to linger. Here are four tech tools to help keep data centralized and current.
Global Address Lists
Chances are your company has lists of internal and external contacts employees frequently use. They email these individuals daily to ask questions, move projects along, and provide updates. Imagine the inconsistencies that could exist if each staff member worked off separate spreadsheets.
Bob in marketing might forget to note an updated point person for an important vendor. Meanwhile Joanna in accounting has people from the same vendor on her document Bob doesn’t. Depending on the size of your organization, internal points of contact can easily become scattered too. When someone leaves, joins, or switches roles, you need a way to sync those changes.
With a global address list, you can. It’s a tool that integrates into commonly used email programs like Microsoft Outlook. It shows who’s active in your organization while listing their department, role, and correct email address. Global address lists also display distribution lists and shared addresses, such as a generic email for the social media team. Everything is centralized and updated automatically so no one has to hunt or guess.
Customer Relationship Management Systems
Think your company needs to be sprawling and expansive to benefit from customer relationship management systems? Think again. Known as CRM for short, these systems are in 91% of companies with 10 or more employees. The advantages are impressive, with improved customer experiences leading the pack.
Other top benefits include faster decisions, streamlined operations, and better collaboration between departments. CRM systems help orgs realize these advantages by centralizing client data. But more than this, these platforms track who’s been contacted, when, and how. Employees across multiple departments can also see whether a customer is engaging with marketing communications and outreach attempts.
More than anything, a CRM establishes a single source of truth. It’s the reason behind improved collaboration between marketing, sales, and other customer-facing departments. There’s less in-fighting about whether it makes sense to target client segments with a re-engagement email campaign. And a sense of shared ownership emerges as employees across functions realize they’re working toward the same goal.
Centralized Instructional Software
If it seems like tech stacks are getting bigger, it’s because they are. Companies with 1-500 employees use an average of 172 apps. As you might’ve guessed, the number of apps increases with an organization’s headcount. Companies with over 10,000 staff members use 664 apps and spend $224.8 million each year on them.
It means a lot of data is floating around. And it can make anyone’s head spin trying to find what you need when you need it. Who hasn’t searched a conversation thread in Microsoft Teams or Slack hoping to find a much-needed answer? Intranets and online knowledge bases can be just as tricky to navigate when you have an urgent task before you. Time is of the essence and wasting precious minutes on a quest isn’t ideal.
This is where centralized instructional software can step in and save the day. These platforms sync information across apps and knowledge bases, pointing employees in the right direction. They don’t have to manually search multiple platforms in vain. Some platforms also integrate AI to deliver results based on an employee’s role, location, and previous activity. It’s a more efficient, simple way for everyone to benefit from the organization’s collective knowledge.
Deduplication Tools
Even if you only have one database in your company, duplication and errors will happen. Truncation, multiple entries of the same set, and typos are examples. Cases like this naturally occur when you have multiple cooks in the kitchen. The chances are higher when data entry and management standards aren’t cemented or communicated.
Now, when you have more than one database and information source, the chances only compound. Manually spotting every instance and fixing them becomes a nightmare. There isn’t enough internal bandwidth to get it done.
Deduplication tools take the manual part out of the process. The software regularly scans databases for duplication while automatically fixing these errors. No more sifting through exported data sets on spreadsheets or correcting mistakes as employees find them. Deduplication tools can work with CRM systems, servers, and numerous apps.
Reducing Data Redundancy
In the course of everyday business, data duplication is practically inevitable. The more employees and apps you have, the higher your chances. While some redundancy is advantageous, the majority of it leads to frustration, mistakes, and confusion. Data redundancy can dilute the employee and customer experience. Being proactive with tools that centralize info and automatically correct duplication ensures you don’t fall into the redundancy trap.
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