How To Eliminate Data Silos In Your Tech Stack
Identifying and Eliminating Data Silos in Your Business
We live in a data-driven world. It's no longer enough to make decisions based on intuition. Businesses need accurate data to make educated decisions and stay competitive.
But managing data can be difficult. There’s so much of it, and it’s ever-changing. Human errors like duplicate entries, miscommunication, and especially data silos make data management all the more challenging.
Data silos can hinder business growth and prevent accurate data analytics, but they’re not impossible to overcome. Implementing simple digital solutions, like using a PDF form creator or modernizing your analytics tools can make a big difference. Learn exactly what data silos are, how they affect your organization, and how to solve them.
What Are Data Silos?
A data silo is data that is controlled by one department but isolated from the rest of that organization. It’s often separated due to outdated processes, systemic breakdowns, or because the information itself exists in an isolated state, such as an individual document. This makes it harder for other users and departments to access the data.
How Do They Start?
It shouldn’t be a surprise that it’s easy for data silos to arise in larger companies. Many teams operate on their own and without much interdepartmental communication. But, even smaller organizations with similar practices are susceptible to data silos.
Common scenarios that start data silos:
Independent Departments
Silos often occur when business departments are decentralized and managed solo. This is most common in large companies with many moving parts, but it's just as likely in smaller ones with similar structures.
Issues with Technology
Independent IT buying decisions allow teams to purchase technologies on their own. This often leads to databases and applications that aren't compatible with or connected to other systems. Some teams may be better trained in using the technology than other teams, leading to problems with data transfer.
Business Growth
When an organization becomes too large too fast, there may be structural issues. New business needs are addressed quickly and additional departments are created. Both of those situations naturally create data silos.
Why Are Data Silos Bad?
Data silos slow down business operations and limit the ability to use data. Siloed data means business decisions are often made without seeing the entire picture. They also prevent customer success and sales reps from accessing necessary data that may be held by other departments.
Specific ways that data silos can harm an organization include:
They obscure the complete picture
Silos lock data away from users who need access to it. As a result, business strategies and decisions aren't based on all available data. This leads to uninformed decision-making.
They threaten your data accuracy
When data is siloed, it increases the chances of inconsistent data. Data housed in multiple locations is less likely to be updated when changes happen.
They waste storage space
Data silos add to IT costs by increasing the number of storage systems an organization needs to buy. Each department manages their own duplicated processes and information.
They reduce collaboration
Isolated data reduces the opportunities for sharing and collaboration between different departments. It's harder to work together when users can’t see essential data.
How Can I Stop Data Silos?
Since data silos happen when databases are separate, managers think it's as simple as importing and exporting them together. Not quite. The problem is that data is not static. Data is ever-changing! Numbers change, contacts change, new customers come in, and the list goes on.
Manual information is never quite up-to-date. Depending on your business, it would take an entire data entry team to accurately cover every change and addition to your data sets. This takes a massive amount of time and increases the risk of human error.
Luckily, there are better options to prevent and solve data silos:
Go paperless
Minimize human error as much as possible by moving your teams away from paper. Keeping your data in a digital format means it can be universally read by all departments and software platforms. It’s faster than transferring by hand and ends up in the right place without getting lost. You can even collect data using mobile forms and send it everywhere it needs to go — no code or IT required.
Use integrated systems
Your data is most likely located within different pieces of software. Properly integrating those systems is the most effective way to avoid silos. You'll have high-quality data that gives you a complete picture. Also, it ensures that your data is automatically updated, helping your teams stay on the same page.
Create a collaborative culture
Data silos are created from rigid divisions of departments and teams. Break them down by embracing a culture that supports communication and cross-departmental work. This means encouraging all employees to be open and share their projects outside of their main group. This will help create a company that is more accepting of each other and collaborative.
Modernize your analytics tools
Eliminating silos should extend to building a solid technology toolkit. It’s important to identify tools the entire business can leverage, rather than dabbling with separate tools for each department. After all, the entire point of centralizing data is to establish a single source of truth and point of access for data-driven decision-making.
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About GoFormz
GoFormz is a digital forms solution that’s redefining how people and businesses collect and process information. With over 100,000 customers in over 150 countries, we’ve helped customers do everything from creating a work order template to automating marketing and sales workflows. We believe that everyone should be able to fill out their forms online and ditch outdated paper processes. That belief set us on a mission to help every business digitize their forms and modernize how work gets done — all without code.
