As a security dealer, you might work with a patchwork of systems that covers your financial and operational needs. This mishmash is often viewed as temporary or short-term until you have the time to review, purchase, and integrate an all-encompassing system.
All too often, though, that day never comes, and you’re left with a variety of data systems that don’t work well together. Aside from being frustrated, you will find yourself wasting time, energy, and money.
If you’re in this situation, it’s time to review the ways data from multiple systems are causing harm to your company.
Multiple Data Systems Provide No Single Source of Truth
All companies rely on data to evaluate benchmarks and inform decision-making. To help communicate this data across the company, there needs to be a single source of “truth” from which everyone operates.
When you use multiple systems to handle your financial and operational needs, you’re left with multiple sources of information that may contradict each other. For instance, if your customer relationship management software lists a different billing address for a client than your financial management system, where does your accounting team send the invoice?
With multiple sources of “truth,” the answer for which your team searches will be obscured by the inconsistencies that come from stitching tables of data from disparate systems together. This leads to greater uncertainty when making decisions.
Inconsistency Leads to Inefficiencies
Identifying accurate data while working with multiple systems can be like the children’s game of telephone. The most efficient way to communicate an idea is to simply have the person holding that idea say it directly to the person who wants to hear it. When you start to include more and more intermediaries, that initial idea can morph into something unintended.
However, the harm with this isn’t just the lack of certainty around the data. It also stems from the need to have teams check and double-check the presented data every time you need it.
To connect back to the initial analogy here, this means the person at the end of the telephone chain can’t take their information and operate from that starting point. Instead, they must go back and spend time, energy, and your company’s money to determine if the data is accurate.
As an operational leader, it’s your job to plan for the right processes to empower your people. The inefficiencies that come from using multiple systems to manage your operations and data make your job nearly impossible.
Effects on Time and Money
Instead of paying for one team to manage and operate a single, all-encompassing system, you’ll need to pay for multiple teams to do the upkeep on each system. This means hiring multiple people to work on weekends, at night, and on holidays to ensure your systems are working properly.
As specific systems upgrade, you’ll find your costs increasing. You may find yourself holding off on systems upgrades, not only due to the price but also to ensure there’s no disruption on data moves from system to system. If you’re forced to upgrade to meet security standards, you’ll then have to spend money to rework previously created scripts or code that no longer work post-upgrade.
Multiple Data Systems Equal Multiple Security Holes
There is some wisdom behind the adage that states you shouldn’t keep all your eggs in one basket. But there’s also a flip side to that: the more baskets you use, the more likely you will have at least one broken egg.
This applies to data and cybersecurity. If you’re using multiple systems to store and house your company’s data, the higher the odds that you’ll experience at least one data breach.
These breaches don’t just harm the trust you’ve built with your clients, it harms your bottom line, too. In 2020, the average cost of a data breach was around $3.86 million. That number represents a slight decrease from 2019 when the average cost of a data breach inched just north of $3.9 million.
Of course, the best way to reduce the costs of a data breach is to not have one in the first place. Far too often, however, utilizing multiple systems makes your security teams play a game of whack-a-mole against potential threats.
Bold Group Offers Security Dealers All-in-One Systems
At Bold Group, we have decades of experience providing comprehensive technology solutions to security dealers. Our devotion to our customers means your organization won’t fall by the wayside or find yourself operating software that’s years, if not decades, out-of-date. AlarmBiller and SedonaOffice can help small- to medium-sized businesses and enterprise organizations with their billing, customer files, scheduling, invoicing, and more. By integrating these functions in a single system, security businesses can have better visibility and make more data-based decisions.
Reach out to us today to learn how we can offer solutions for your business’ needs.